Changing Culture Through the Gospel| National Catholic Register

While the Catholic Church is not — nor does she want to be — a political party or a special-interest group, she does have a profound interest — and rightly so — in the good of the political community.

Editor’s Note: This commentary by Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami was first printed in the Florida Catholic Sept. 24, 2024. It is reprinted here with permission.  

Much of our culture today in America is deeply wounded by individualism, by narcissism; it is wounded by materialism that denies the transcendence of the human person. It is confused by false ideologies about what it means to be male or female. Men and women of faith are facing rejection, ostracism, exclusion from an ascendent secularism that has confused people about what is real, what is good and true. Many today have been bewitched with a false sense of human autonomy that even justifies the killing of a baby in her mother’s womb.  (This is the faulty reasoning behind those who would support Amendment 4.) 

This explains a lot about why our politics have become so polarizing. And since neither party fully reflects Catholic social teachings, Catholics should feel “homeless” in either political party.  Nevertheless, as faithful and faith filled citizens, we should exercise our right to vote.  And Catholics should see politics as a noble vocation in which people of faith can dedicate their lives with integrity to serve the common good of society and help create the conditions necessary for human flourishing. Otherwise, we won’t ever get to choose to vote for the “best candidate” but rather only to opt for the least “worse” candidate. 

The journalist and political commentator Andrew Breitbart (1969-2012) had a famous quote, “Politics is downstream from culture.” As people change their beliefs about what is ‘good and true’ (i.e., their culture), their politics change as well. 

Politics — or politicians — follow the culture. Ted Kennedy, Al Gore, Jessie Jackson, Joe Biden, and many others all started their political careers as “pro-lifers.” Don’t think when they became “pro-choice” their flip-flopping was in any way a “profile in courage.” They had their fingers in the air and sensed a change in the winds of our culture, at least among that of their constituencies. The same with President Obama, Hillary Clinton and other politicians on so-called “gay marriage.” They were against it before they were for it. No profile in courage there either. 

Pope St. John Paul II, who survived both Nazi and communist tyrannies, understood this. In fact, when bishops would meet John Paul II for their ad limina visits, he wouldn’t ask them what they were doing to change the politics in their particular countries. Rather, he would ask them, what were they doing to change the culture? The Church, through the preaching of the Gospel, wants to change the culture and thus to effect change in our politics by shaping a culture based on what is truly “good and true.” 

While the Catholic Church is not — nor does she want to be — a political party or a special-interest group, she does have a profound interest — and rightly so — in the good of the political community, the soul of which is justice. She does have something to say, a word to share. That Word is Jesus Christ, who, because he is true God and true man, is the human face of God and the divine face of man.  

For this reason, the Church engages in a wide variety of public-policy issues, including the defense of unborn life, which, because of the vulnerability of the unborn child, remains a “preeminent priority” of the U.S. bishops.   

This stems from a Judeo-Christian anthropology, that is, our understanding of man as the imago Dei. “God made us in his own image and likeness, male and female he created us.” 

The individualism, the narcissism, the materialism of popular culture today has brought us “deaths of despair” — people dying from drug abuse or suicide; it has undermined civil society among many other ills. The healing of America’s culture and politics will require hard work and will not be easy. But it will only come about through the rediscovery of what is truly “good and true” that begins in acknowledging the rights and dignity of every human being,  made by God in his image and likeness, not to die one day, but to live in communion with him and in community with one another.