Prophetic and Public: The Social Witness of U. S. Catholicism
The United States was founded on a commitment to religious tolerance. Based on this commitment, it has become one of the most religiously diverse and religiously observant liberal democracies in the world. Inherent in this political reality is the question, "What is the appropriate relationship between religious beliefs and public life?" This is not a new question, but in contemporary U.S. politics it has become a particularly insistent one. In this intelligent, wide-ranging book, Kristin...
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If faithful Catholics are called to be a light to the world, how should they make their faith known? What sort of public witness best reflects authentically Catholic behavior? Christians through the ages have faced a dilemma: if you want to remain morally pure, you'll have no impact on the system; but if you try to change the system, you'll compromise your moral purity. So while an ethicist such as Michael Baxter--one of the figures Heyer discusses--claims that the most important thing the church can do is to be prophetic, and champion nonviolence, and not get its hands dirty in politics, that's fine--but that speaks to only one aspect of what it means to be Catholic. Similarly, while the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops--which Heyer also discusses--can forumulate brilliant philosophical pronouncements and policies on just warfare, say, that recognize the role of government, they, too, are speaking to one side of the faith spectrum. Both sides are witnessing to their faith, and both are genuinely Catholic, but both sides are incomplete.Heyer looks at two prominent Catholics--Baxter and Bryan Hehir--as well as three Catholic social justice organizations--NETWORK, Pax Christi USA, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops--and demonstrates how their differing methods of public witness are both legitimate and complementary. Catholics, Heyer writes, should recognize and appreciate that there is no single, correct means of public witness.
1Public theology in contemporary U.S. civil society12Catholic foundations of public theology and political participation273Divergences within American Catholic social ethics : J. Bryan Hehir and Michael Baxter, C.S.C.594Catholic political advocacy in the contemporary U.S. context1195Catholic public theology for the twenty-first century177
