Is the Christian Democratic
enterprise even legitimate? The monstrous elephant that must be eaten makes a
negative answer to the question a sore temptation. The social and political
problems America confronts are so many, the strength of the prevailing system
so insurmountable, the vast legal edifice of the United States so complicated,
and the results of systemic changes so unpredictable, that any effort to infuse
our politics with the Gospel seems radically inconsistent with a spiritual
peace that will pass muster with our expectations.
But it is a struggle we must
engage in, because Catholicism, although it is not of the world, is situated
inextricably within it. We must engage in the struggle, because our religion is
one of incarnation. Christ took on real flesh and blood, indeed, remains flesh
and blood, and eternally so. He came into the world, and so we must come into
the world. Jesus touched the unclean lepers, and thereby showed us that we are
to regard nothing as unclean or common, even politics, which in many ways is
the most unclean thing of all.
We must reject the dualism, the
utter Gnosticism, that holds that the world of politics, economics, and society
is no place for the Christian. We must renounce the timidity that would fear
contamination from these things.
At the same time we must remain
vigilant against taking on the nature of that which we seek to transform with
the Gospel. The world we want to change fights back, and seeks to transform us
into its own image. Fortunately, there are signs to tell us if we are succumbing
to that transformation. Most notably, if we find ourselves engaging in evil for
the supposed sake of a greater good we should then know that we have been
hoodwinked. Our mission is to insist on justice without compromise.
The purpose of the Christian
Democratic enterprise is not to acclimate and adjust ourselves to the sinister
intentions of the political factions with which we are surrounded, but to let
it be known that we expect better from ourselves than that we treat any human being
as something other than an end in himself. What’s more, we should not be afraid
to so engage the world, and we should certainly not think of the effort as
beneath us.