This is my last column for Our Sunday Visitor as the magazine, print and online, ceases publication at the end of September. When then-editor Father Patrick Briscoe asked me to write the weekly column in December 2023, he gave me a wide mandate with broad discretion about topics and themes. Having published freelance essays, articles and reviews in a number of other periodicals, I was happy to have a regular forum to write about Catholic moral theology in its many and varied aspects.
Over the course of these two years, for example, I have written about popular culture through theological interpretations of music, poetry, novels, films, television and sports. I have also used this space to comment on hot-button social, political and legal issues, such as abortion, surrogacy, gender issues, immigration and religious liberty. Regardless of the topic or issue, I have always tried to write my column with three general principles in mind. First, all that exists is good. Second, Catholic theology is “both/and,” rather than “either/or.” And third, that we Catholics must resist moral and political narratives that are corrosive of Catholic witness.
And God saw that it was good
All Catholic thought begins with the foundational doctrine that everything that exists is created by a good and loving God, incapable in his very nature of doing or creating evil. Thus, as Genesis tells us, everything that God created is good. Moreover, Genesis also teaches us that all created things are created for the use and enjoyment of the human person, uniquely created in the image and likeness of God. For this reason, we do not make a hard separation between so-called “secular” and “sacred” things. These categories can be useful for making a distinction between what constitutes prayer and worship and what does not. But we cannot make too much of the distinction, lest it cause us to denigrate those aspects of creation that we do not consider “religious” in their essence.
Thus, I have used the column to celebrate music, literature and sports that have no obvious connection to Catholic theology but which reflect truthful claims (or a good-faith search for truth) about the human person, society or political life. I have written about the music of Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Jelly Roll; about the TV series “Ted Lasso,” “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul“; about poets such as W.H. Auden and Jane Greer; and about novelists such as Marilynne Robinson and Cormac McCarthy. None of these are “Catholic art” (although McCarthy was a baptized Catholic), but they are all catholic art. Where truth is found in beauty, it is a participation in the good creative nature of God. These three transcendentals — beauty, truth and goodness — are not confined to Catholic art and culture, but can be found in any art and culture that reflect the goodness of God and his creation.
Both/and, not either/or
A perennial challenge to Catholic life is the misguided temptation to think in sharp, exclusionary divisions. As early as St. Augustine’s struggle with Manichaeism in the fourth century, we have had to battle a false worldview in which all things are divided between exclusively good and (allegedly) exclusively bad, in eternal conflict. But this worldview is not consistent with the doctrine, noted above, that all that exists is good. Therefore, we Catholics must recover “both/and” thinking, rejecting the Manichean tendency to affirm things that resonate with us and condemn things that do not.
So, for example, we celebrate both work and leisure, not as contrasting, but rather as complementary. Work is good, and it serves the good of leisure. We affirm both celibacy and fecundity as moral goods, particular to various vocations in life. We both celebrate feasts and observe fasts. We are saved by grace as assisted by nature. We affirm both worship in community and prayer in solitude. Joy is our destination, but we recognize the redemptive quality of suffering. Conscience is binding but must assent to authority. We find goodness in both giving generously and accepting graciously. We both judge moral actions and refrain from judging persons. We both embrace the goodness of earthly life and look forward to eternal life after death. Works of mercy are both spiritual and corporal. All of which is to suggest that we are called both to celebrate existence and to discern what contributes to human flourishing.
Learning to speak Catholic
While a definitive dichotomy is elusive, I write from the standpoint that, generally speaking, culture is downstream from politics, rather than vice versa. This implies that political, legal and regulatory structures have a performative influence over the moral, spiritual and cultural lives of persons. In the United States, this means that our lives are formed and informed by the fundamental principles of Enlightenment liberalism. This is a commitment to a notion of the human person as solitary and naturally alienated from every other person in a mutually antagonistic struggle of competing interests. We call these interests “rights” and hold that every individual has absolute claims against every other individual.
These subjective, possessive individual rights claims are contrary to the Catholic Christian theology of the human person. To reclaim a robust, uncompromising Catholic witness, we must reject the ideology of possessive individual rights and replace it with a theology of dignity, solidarity, subsidiarity and the common good — the four pillars of Catholic social doctrine. Thus, I have used this column to promote and commend an authentic Catholic vocabulary and grammar, which affirms the social nature of the human person and the priority of our obligations of love toward one another rather than claims against. This is no small task, as we have been so heavily influenced by the individualist culture that is celebrated by nearly everyone — Catholic and non-Catholic alike.
A new beginning
I have not always succeeded in making these points as clearly as I desired. And, of course, I have made mistakes. But I hope this column has induced my readers to think differently and deeply about what it means to be a Catholic in a liberal society and to know the difference between them. This hope includes this, my last column for Our Sunday Visitor.
But I am not going away. Beginning in October, I will be writing a monthly syndicated column through OSV News, OSV’s Catholic news wire service. The column will be distributed to diocesan papers and websites, parishes, and other subscribers, potentially reaching a broader and more diverse audience. In addition, I’ll return to regular contributions to other Catholic media outlets, many of which readers of Our Sunday Visitor will be familiar with.
I am grateful to Scott Richert, the publisher of Our Sunday Visitor, and to the magazine’s editors, Father Patrick Briscoe, Matthew Kirby, Cecilia Hadley and Gigi Duncan. Most of all, of course, I am grateful to my readers, without whom this column would have ceased long ago. May God bless us all as we continue our pilgrim journey to our ultimate rest in God.
