- Feb 5, 2002
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EDITORIAL: Unlike a political community, the unity of the Church is not our own effort. It is a work of God, who guaranteed that the gates of hell would never prevail against it.
This year, midterm elections were followed a week later by the U.S. Conference of Catholics Bishops’ general assembly, during which the bishops were set to elect a new conference president and several other officers. The juxtaposition of the two elections provides an important opportunity to reflect upon the differences between worldly politics and ecclesial communion — and the danger of allowing the logic of the former to inform our participation in the latter.
This is especially a threat today, when our culture is dominated by electoral politics, which are increasingly characterized by partisan brinkmanship and zero-sum contests over power. This kind of political warfare offers a mode for thinking about all forms of community and relationships, and if we’re not vigilant, it can begin to characterize the way we understand and live out our belonging to the Church.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger warned about this in an instructive homily, later entitled, “Party of Christ or Church of Jesus Christ?” The future pope cautioned that “factional strife” can arise in the Church when we each “develop [our] own idea of Christianity,” which “conceals from us the word of the living God, and the Church disappears behind the parties that grow out of our personal opinion.”
Continued below.
Rejecting the Logic of Politics in the Church
This year, midterm elections were followed a week later by the U.S. Conference of Catholics Bishops’ general assembly, during which the bishops were set to elect a new conference president and several other officers. The juxtaposition of the two elections provides an important opportunity to reflect upon the differences between worldly politics and ecclesial communion — and the danger of allowing the logic of the former to inform our participation in the latter.
This is especially a threat today, when our culture is dominated by electoral politics, which are increasingly characterized by partisan brinkmanship and zero-sum contests over power. This kind of political warfare offers a mode for thinking about all forms of community and relationships, and if we’re not vigilant, it can begin to characterize the way we understand and live out our belonging to the Church.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger warned about this in an instructive homily, later entitled, “Party of Christ or Church of Jesus Christ?” The future pope cautioned that “factional strife” can arise in the Church when we each “develop [our] own idea of Christianity,” which “conceals from us the word of the living God, and the Church disappears behind the parties that grow out of our personal opinion.”
Continued below.
Rejecting the Logic of Politics in the Church
