National Catholic Register: "Moving Beyond the Catholic Stereotype"

Donald DeMarco writes on the positive impact Catholics can and should have in the formation of public policy in the September 23-29, 2007 issue of the National Catholic Register:

To stereotype a person is to locate him in a category that forbids recognition of his individuality.

It gives preference to the fictional over the real, the abstract over the concrete. Hence, it is an act of injustice, and has much in common with a laundry list of detestable “isms”: racism, sexism, colonialism, communism, etc.

And yet, despite the near universal repudiation of stereotyping, it remains active, indeed, even fashionable, to stereotype Catholics.

According to this stereotype, a Catholic is a one-dimensional creature that acts solely on the basis of a faith that he cannot share with non-Catholics. As a consequence, Catholics are often disenfranchised from the political process simply because they are Catholics. As we read over and over again in the secular press, “Catholics should not try to impose their faith on others,” “Church and state must remain separate,” “We live in a pluralistic society,” and so on.

In reality, a Catholic is not simply a believer. He is also a knower, and one, as a matter of fact, who has a great enthusiasm for reason. The philosophy of politics is not alien to the Catholic mind either historically or presently.

Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have sought passionately and persistently to remind Catholics of their proper place in the democratic scheme of things, which is to help in providing society with a rational basis that makes justice and peace possible.

In other words, a Catholic is a humanist in the best sense of the term. To limit him to his faith is to stereotype him unjustly.

In his encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love), Pope Benedict draws a clear line between the Church and the state when he writes, “The Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot and must not replace the state.”

On the other hand, the role of the Church, according to the Holy Father, “is simply to help purify reason and to contribute here and now to the acknowledgment and attainment of what is just.”

Properly formed Catholics provide a corrective when reason gives way to trends, opinion polls, political correctness, pressure groups, convenience and a peculiar form of relativism that claims to be absolute (the “dictatorship of relativism”).

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The world of politics should welcome Catholics because they actually show a more cultivated appreciation for reason than what is usually displayed by self-serving politicians or legislators who sacrifice justice for convenience.

Robert George, professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University, has made the observation that the Catholic Church is far more committed to reason and rational discourse than is the world of secular politics. “It seems to me,” he states, “that these people have it backward. The Church’s moral teachings are in line with reason; secularist ideology is not.”

[More]

(emphasis added)

My Comments:
I have to admit that when I was growing up as an evangelical, the stereotype I had of Catholics acting in the public sphere - because the most "prominent" Catholic politicians were people like Ted Kennedy and Mario Cuomo, who went to great pains to separate their "personal beliefs" from their public actions - was that they were hypocrites who didn't take their faith seriously in the formation of public policy.

It was the late Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, and those Catholics who took his teachings to heart and put them into action, who changed my mind about Catholics. I am glad to have been wrong in my initial impresssions, and in discovering that those "prominent" Catholic politicians are not reflective of Catholics as a whole.