Catholic Reading Wednesday

With many thanks to our awesome curator, Karen Celano, you can delve into a faith-related news article each Wednesday! Karen writes:

On December 31, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor put a temporary stay on the Affordable Care Act's requirement that the Little Sisters of the Poor provide health insurance coverage for birth control to its employees (or find third-party insurers to do so). In the wake of this ruling, Jamie Stiehm of US News published an op-ed that has gained notoriety for its anti-Catholic prejudice. Sotomayor, Stiehm argues, was not acting out of jurisprudential concern for the Constitution, but rather trying to "impose" her Catholic beliefs on the rest of the nation. The Catholic Church, she goes on to say, offers "no justice or mercy" to women. The Little Sisters of the Poor themselves, in Stiehm's view, are probably being manipulated by "meddlesome" bishops who seek to "wield tremendous power" over the public sphere.

Stiehm's article has been justly criticized for its extreme and unfounded claims. Certainly her views are nothing new: they are of a piece with a long tradition of anti-Catholicism in America. This prejudice is not often expressed as explicitly as in Stiehm's writing, but it is prevalent and insidiously pervasive. Yet I have to wonder if, perhaps, Stiehm's screed is something Catholics should be proud of - because it could be a sign that we're doing something right.

Catholics in America have fought a long struggle to be accepted into mainstream American society and culture. But now, especially in the midst of the health care controversies, we must ask ourselves if the price of acceptance is worth the risk to our faith. Catholic values are in many ways opposed to or at least critical of "traditional" American values. In Evangelii Gaudium, for instance, Pope Francis condemned Western culture's tendency to emphasize a secularism that pushes God to the sidelines of public discourse, an individualism that can devolve into selfishness and pride, a capitalism that leads to greed and exploitation, and an autonomy that degenerates into anomie. When some American commentators reacted by using Scripture to defend capitalism from Francis' critiques, I had to wonder whether some Christians in America are a little too eager to make Christ in their own image in order to justify their own inclinations.

Catholics must resist this temptation. Standing on the scaffold after being sentenced to death by Henry VIII, St. Thomas More spoke his final words: "I die the King's good servant and God's first." I believe that Catholics in America must follow More's example: be good citizens of our country, but know that the best way to serve our country is to be true witnesses to the Gospel. Be willing to critique our country's sins, whether they are excesses of individualism and autonomy that lead to endorsements of abortion, or excesses capitalism that lead to exploitation of the poor. And be willing to be condemned, as St. Thomas More was, as Christ was.

So though I believe Stiehm is misguided in her unjust criticisms of Sotomayor and in her flailing attack on the Church, perhaps she is on to something. The Church's values are not coterminous with America's values. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.