Speaking of Article VI, back at the beginning of February, I wrote a review of the movie, which discusses the intersection of faith and politics in American life. Executive Producer John Carosella graciously took the time to respond to my review, but with everything I had going on, I never got around to returning the favor.
I realized this today and decided it was time to fix that. John’s comments will be blockquoted for clarity:
If you’ll indulge me, I want to share with your readers a perspective that I have about faith and politics. (NB: What follows is *not* meant as a comment about the film, or your perspective on it…just me thinking and sharing.)
Like a cloth, I think of faith as having two parts - warp and weft. Two dimensions, say.
One dimension is a toolkit for experiencing the Divine, for establishing a personal relationship with God, for bringing the sacred into our lives. I will call this toolkit “doctrine”, although that’s neither complete nor entirely fair in either direction. I believe that in many cases, doctrine cannot be explained or rationalized. Rather, it must be experienced to be appreciated. “Use the tools, and see if they bring you closer to God.” If they work for some one, great. If not, you may not be using them right, or they might not fit you.
I don’t think I like the “toolkit” analogy here, even granting it’s incomplete characterization. I think that doctrine is in fact entirely explainable and rational, provided that it’s good doctrine. The Catholic belief in the Eucharist is a perfect (and particularly complex) example. To simplify it to it’s rational components, I’ll break it down:
- Catholics believe that the bible is the inspired and inerrant word of God.
- In the Gospel of Saint John, there is a compelling narrative (John 6:31-72, Douay-Rheims) in which Christ repeatedly tells his disciples that he is the bread of life; that his body is real food and real drink; and finally that eating this flesh and blood of Christ is the prerequisite for everlasting life.
- In the Gospel of Saint Matthew (Mt. 26:26-29), Jesus makes the meaning of this more clear: “And whilst they were at supper, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke: and gave to his disciples, and said: Take ye, and eat. This is my body. And taking the chalice, he gave thanks, and gave to them, saying: Drink ye all of this. For this is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins.” Similar accounts are given in the Gospels of Mark (14:21-25) and Luke (22:19-20).
Fusing the understanding of these Gospels together, including his commandment to the apostles to “do this for a commemoration of me”, and taking into account our beliefs (also scriptural) about the Catholic priesthood, the teachings of the Church Fathers in the patristic period, etc., the Catholic belief that the Eucharist we adore and consume in our churches is the real body and blood, soul and divinity of Christ is entirely sensible. It’s a profound and impenetrable mystery and a stumbling block to many, but it’s hardly inexplicable or irrational.
Only in rare cases should this tool set be used to judge another. Who am I to judge your relationship with the Divine? To me, it’s almost a ridiculous notion. Such a personal, transcendent thing…even if I walked many miles in your moccasins, I’d still be presumptuous to do so.
This is a logical fallacy. Of course you and I as individual men are not in any way capable of judging, from our own standpoint, someone’s relationship with the Divine. But God is in this position. And if God hands down an authority and a tradition and set of instructions that says, “Hey guys - this is it. There’s only one true faith, and you need to be going about converting others to it so they can get into heaven…” then we have a Divine imperative to look at other religions as something at best less perfect than the religion He established and at worst not at all salvific.
God never had a problem being judgmental. He also never had a problem using his chosen people to carry out these judgments. The old testament is filled with these stories, and the new testament books following the gospels begin again - in a less harsh, but still exclusive way.
The other dimension of faith is the moral code. How am I called to live in the world? What are my motivations, my callings, and my obligations? In particular, with regard to my fellow man? Essentially, “Who am I in this world, and how am I serving?”
I think I agree with this, though I’d say that the good doctrine we were speaking of before is what informs this moral code. Doctrine is basically a set of rules inspired by (or directly ordered by) God, that gives us the precepts we need to live by and the things we must believe in, which in turn make those precepts make sense. If the bible isn’t the infallible word of God, we don’t have any good reason to do what it says. If the Eucharist isn’t Christ’s body, we’ve no need to treat it as anything other than a Sunday snack. If human sexuality is not sacrosanct, the sacrament of marriage is nothing but a formality, etc.
In *every* case, not just this moral code but the expression of a candidate’s intentions (and history) with respect to that code, should be the subject of scrutiny by the public — even (and particularly) where the candidate and the code diverge. The code affects public policy, and the moral decisions that are inevitably made by government. Totally fair game.
So when I think of Article VI of the Constitution, I think about that dichotomy. Separate the former, scrutinize the latter.
This is where I see the error in the thinking of the film as it regards Article VI. This is where Kennedy had it wrong. Any faith worth a damn has doctrine that isn’t flimsy. Doctrine informs the moral code. The two things can’t be divorced from each other. Without doctrine to fall back on, a moral code is by and large a big encumbrance on my perception of freedom - I can’t do whatever I want with whoever I want as long as it feels good to me and doesn’t hurt anyone else. This is why Wiccans with their, “First, do no harm…” mantra can engage in any number of pagan practices long condemned by the Christian world and feel as though they are not breaking their “moral code”.
Doctrine and moral code are simply inseparable in any religion that is consistent.
That’s all I’ve got for now. Feel free to chime in.
