Orthodoxy and Litmus-Testing

Religion and politics are not above the unseemly usage of orthodoxy in litmus-testing. Purity of orthodoxy can be a deceptive measure that bedevils popes and presidents alike. Pope John Paul II’s zeal against communism included zeal against Liberation Theology and Liberation Theologians. Seems his anti-communist zeal was used as a litmus-test in making Episcopal appointments, and liberation theologians were screened out from appointment. President G W Bush’s politically professed favoritism for the religious right was his litmus-test in qualifying political appointees and in appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Putting Pope John Paul II and President G W Bush side-by-side as to their usage of religious/political litmus-testing causes an unlikely irony to surface: President Bush’s use of his religious beliefs in political appointment decisions is an object-lesson in bad politics, and Pope John Paul II’s usage of his political beliefs in episcopal appointments is an object-lesson in bad religion. Ironic, indeed!

In hindsight it may reasonably be concluded that the Church and its credibility would have been better served had Pope John Paul II not used a political litmus-test in episcopal appointments, and the nation (Republicans!) would have been better served if President Bush had not use a theological litmus-test in political appointments. The lesson here is a cautionary one: be careful what you wish for, you may get a lot more than you expect.

The Republican Party was soundly rejected in the last election (2006) cycle in no small part for its cynical politicizing of religion (dominion theology). Churches should learn from voter rejection for the election outcome was a public slap at them also for their too willing complicity in cynical politics. Imperial theology and politics are not the wave of the future, whether in Church or in government, as Republicans and churches may have thought.

Turmoil in the Catholic Church now stems also from Pope John Paul II’s conservative appointments and his rejection of Liberation Theology, which is the logical theology of Vatican II. This rejection is interpreted by adversaries of Vatican I and Vatican II alike as a rejection of the ecclesiology and theology of Vatican II and an endorsement of the ecclesiology/theology of Vatican I. The faithful are dismayed by ideologues within the Church who now polarize the faithful over which Vatican Council is to be believed. Vatican II and its theology of liberation are for real and will not be wished away, no matter the anathemas, fiats and excommunications. Vatican II was about openness and partnership with the laity. Bishops, like politicians, mostly realize that the alienation of the laity from the hierarchy is not in their best interest or the Church’s.

The ideological alienation of laity from Church is on its face neither Christian nor politically sensible. Excommunication, for example, came into existence in imperial times as a tool of imperial control. The device seems ineffective and inappropriate in modern circumstances. Its use is likely to hurt Church more than help it. There will always be differences within the Church family, and excommunications will never change that. Scandal in Church isn’t so much from good-faith differences of the laity as it is from authoritarians who use a heavy hand to stifle good-faith discussions and the resolution of differences.

A very public and sorry thing is going on in Nebraska now. Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz’s 10-year old excommunication of the Nebraska “Call to Action” group was approved recently by the Vatican; curiously, the bishop is adamant in his refusal to join his fellow bishops in their agreed strategies for counteracting clerical sexual abuse by the Catholic clergy. In his mind, he is ethically and theologically consistent with the time-honored culture of imperial thinking and doing. But in the view of many, his purity measure of orthodoxy is radically unchristian and is a scandal-lesson of harm that comes from episcopal fixation in the mindset of Vatican I. This saga scandalizes for it demonstrates de-facto rejection of the Vatican II “People Church” and it affirms fixated insistence on the hierarchically exclusive Vatican I Church.