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October 17, 2020
The Gallup poll has, since at least June 1999 asked this question, “Do you approve or disapprove of the way Congress has handled its job. This is the way that question has been answered from April 2020 to the middle of September.
DATE
YES
NO
NO OPINION
April 1-14, 2020
30%
66%
4%
August 31-Sept 13
17%
80%
3%
During the time the poll has been taken, the highest approval rating Congress has enjoyed is during the month after the 9/11 attacks when their rating soared to 84% approval. It remained high for several months after. In the years that followed, the approval rate hovered in the 40% range and then took a dip during the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market in 2007. In the aftermath of that disaster, the Congressional approval rate languished in the 20% range. It remained there until April 202, momentarily soaring into the 40% range as the government confronted the Coronavirus and then, here we are, back into the approval rating doldrums at 17%. Because of his long-term lack of confidence in Congress, some pundits have asked whether American politics are exhausted.
Are politics in America exhausted?
People probably remember twenty years ago, when President George Bush climbed on top of a pile of mangled wreckage that used to be the Twin Towers, put his arm around a firefighter’s shoulder and started talking through a bullhorn. Someone shouted, “I can’t hear you.” The President replied,"I can hear you!" he declared. "The rest of the world hears you! And the people – and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon." The crowd reacted with loud, prolonged chants of "USA! USA!", US News and World Report
Twenty years later we are still in Afghanistan and Iraq unable to extricate our soldiers from that morass. I have noticed, as perhaps you have, that more articles are appearing that argue that politics as we know it is exhausted. People may have little faith in their government, but you wouldn’t know it by the vitriol campaigns can still generate.
The present pandemic called for a rational thoughtful response that was swift and effective. We have, we believe, some of the best medical personnel in the world. Science, however, requires time and experience in order to operate. People complain about masks, social distancing, closing of businesses, suspension of athletics and other inconveniences, large and great. The disproportionate impact of the pandemic on the elderly, however, has eluded thoughtful consideration and analysis.
The Center for Disease Control said out of the 218,000 deaths to date from the coronavirus in the United States, about 40% have been in nursing homes. (NY Times) True, because of their age, they are more susceptible. Are you comfortable with a moral decision that knowingly puts infected people into a living environment in which you know the most vulnerable live? Are we our brother and sister’s keeper in this country or what?
In the midst of all of this, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dying of pancreatic cancer, held on to her judicial seat to the very end, perhaps hoping that time and an election would bring a more favorable regime. What a year. The Senate should be given some credit, in my opinion, that they passed over the secular joy of Catholic bashing in Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearing. No one repeated that ill-considered line, “The dogma speaks loudly in you. “ My favorite moment, and perhaps yours, was when, after Judge Barrett rattled off a laundry list of relevant authorities, a senator asked to see her notepad where, presumably, she had written down the citations. She held up a blank tablet. Can you imagine what a domestic disagreement might sound like with a mother of seven who has that kind of memory? She is a devoutly religious person, an academic, a judge and a mother who opens her home and family to adoption. Whose image does Judge Barrett hope she bears?
The Gospel: The Riddle of What Belongs to Caesar, Matthew 22:15-21
In the Gospel, apropos of the senate confirmation hearings, the Pharisees tried to “entangle” Jesus, setting a trap, asking whether it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar.” (22:17) If Jesus answered ‘Yes’: he would be accused of being a Roman sympathizer; If he said ‘No’: he would be accused by Romans of rebellion or sedition. Jesus responded “Show me the money” or something like that. The Roman denarius is stamped with the face of Tiberius Caesar (A.D. 14-37) Jews, of course, have an objection to “graven images” (Exod 20:4) and the inscription, “Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of the Divine Augustus” is blasphemous in Jewish eyes. Jesus ignored the blasphemy and instead asked, “Whose likeness and inscription is on it?” and then said, “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God, what is God’s.” The coin was made by Caesar, but human beings are all made in the image and likeness of God. (Gen 1:26-27)
Liberty, Equality and Fraternity: The duties of Catholic believers
What do we owe to Caesar and what do we owe God? Christians would answer that fraternity, love of neighbor, is something we owe one another and God. In Pope Francis’ encyclical Fratelli Tutti, he opened with these words from St. Francis of Assisi:“FRATELLI TUTTI,”[all brothers] With these words, Saint Francis of Assisi addressed his brothers and sisters and proposed to them a way of life marked by the flavor of the Gospel. Pope Francis. Fratelli Tutti . Associazione Amici del Papa. Kindle Edition.
Encyclicals, like almost anything human, exists in a context. The Holy Father explained the context of Fratelli Tutti:Issues of human fraternity and social friendship have always been a concern of mine. In recent years, I have spoken of them repeatedly and in different settings. In this Encyclical, I have sought to bring together many of those statements and to situate them in a broader context of reflection. Pope Francis. Fratelli Tutti . Associazione Amici del Papa. Kindle Edition.
He then specifically referenced his recent meetings with two leaders, an Orthodox Christian and two Muslims. Here is the backstory to Fratelli Tutti.
The Pope has reached out fraternally to the Orthodox. Pope Francis has, as have his predecessors, been working to heal the schism between Eastern and Western Christianity. The Orthodox world, on the other hand, is suffering a new schism between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Greek Patriarch, Bartholomew, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. The schism occurred when the Patriarch of Moscow excommunicated the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew because Bartholomew recognized the Patriarch of Kiev (Ukraine) as a new autocephalous church without Russian acquiescence. Ukrainian Orthodox Christians were removed from the Russian Patriarch’s jurisdiction. Pope Francis publicly supported the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew by giving him a relic from St. Peter’s grave. The schism between East and West and, now, the schism within Eastern Orthodoxy is a grave threat to the Christian witness to our world at a critical time and evidences the consistent fraying of fraternity in Christian communion.
The Pope also reached out fraternally to Islam. The Pope met with Grand Imam Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, in Abu Dhabi, where they signed a joint declaration, “"A Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together." The Holy Father and the Grand Imam declared that “God has created all human beings equal in rights, duties and dignity, and has called them to live together as brothers and sisters”. (Ibid.) Grand Imam Tayyeb is the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, the oldest university in Egypt and the center of Sunni scholarship. He was a member of the Egyptian Government and the Muslim Brotherhood. The signing of the agreement was brokered by Abu Dhabi's crown prince, Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Since then, the United Arab Emirates, has among other gestures of fraternity, sent humanitarian aid to Peru, a Catholic country, and signed a peace accord with Israel. Muslim UAE and Jewish Israel are exchanging ambassadors. This is a hopeful step forward, fraternally speaking.
Fratelli Tutti was composed in this context, reflecting papal bridge building. At the heart of the popes and bridging gaps, is the ideal of fraternity. The Pope does have a criticism for the Western governments that reminds democracies of the fundamental human importance of fraternity. He wrote“103. Fraternity is born not only of a climate of respect for individual liberties, or even of a certain administratively guaranteed equality. Fraternity necessarily calls for something greater, which in turn enhances freedom and equality. What happens when fraternity is not consciously cultivated, when there is a lack of political will to promote it through education in fraternity, through dialogue and through the recognition of the values of reciprocity and mutual enrichment? Liberty becomes nothing more than a condition for living as we will, completely free to choose to whom or what we will belong, or simply to possess or exploit. This shallow understanding has little to do with the richness of a liberty directed above all to love.” Pope Francis. Fratelli Tutti. Associazione Amici del Papa. Kindle Edition.
In 1789 the French Revolution, which in an important way is at the ideological root of liberal political philosophy, proclaimed that its goals were liberty, equality and fraternity. When Catholics spoke of liberty, they meant freedom to live in God’s world ordered towards love. The Enlightenment meant freedom from government intrusion into various areas of our lives and has lead America inexorably to the American throwaway culture. For Catholics, equality means that rich and poor, the unborn child with Down’s syndrome and the Harvard scholar are equal in God’s eyes. For the liberal democracy, equality means, equality before the law enforced by the state. In George Orwell’s famous critique of liberal political equality in Animal Farm he observed, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” The Holy Father means something far more when fraternity informs equality and liberty.
Catholics, although they may not always feel the love, at least know that they are supposed to love their neighbor, their brothers and sisters. The Bishops of Arizona call us to fraternity when we exercise our rights as citizens. We should do so with an intention to care for the common good by following a properly formed conscience. The price human community pays when individual freedoms like liberty and equality are emphasized at the expense of fraternity is, as the British political philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued, the war of all against all, that is, the state of nature. Leviathan, Hobbes, Thomas. . What the French and other political thinkers rejected about fraternity as a political ideal was that it seemed inherently religious. What the Enlightenment, according to Pope Francis, presented the Western World, was a politics dominated by individualism and consumerism threatened by increasingly controlling central governments and bureaucracies reflecting the deep divisions and, sometimes, hostilities of the citizenry enflamed by irresponsible media of various sorts.
The Pope in Fratelli Tutti reminds us that in the New Testament, all roads lead to the Book of Genesis. When the Lord, in the Gospel this Sunday, reminds us of the creation of the human in Genesis, that we bear the image of our Creator, please remember the story a couple chapters later about Cain and Abel. God asks Cain, “Where is your brother Abel? He answered, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” Gen. 4:9. Given the disproportionate effect of this pandemic on the vulnerable and the open hostility of our brothers and sisters to each other in this political season, how do we Catholic citizens of America answer our Creator’s question?