Gospel of Mark, chapter 12:17

Editor’s note: The following blog about the conflict between politics which serves self- interest and greed; and Christianity which is devoted to self-sacrifice and love; is most appropriate in today’s political and cultural climate.

It happens every four years, as the presidential election cycle comes full circle: my heart cringes, feels wounded, battered, and my intelligence, once again, is brutally ravished by the tsunami of imbecility coming off the TV sets and other media, disguised under the form of political advertisements. But, in a democratic structure, I guess these are unavoidable pains and stresses . . . someday, people will get the true meaning of democracy right, as Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas so clearly conceived it. I will not live to see it, but I might just manage a smile from heaven . . . saying this, of course, amounts to an enormous presumption of salvation, but, I trust in God’s mercy . . .

Assuming here the Catholic stance, we need to say, once again, that a true Catholic cannot:
FIRST: Openly and publicly oppose abortion, same-sex marriage, and other aberrations, while ignoring the cry of 34,000-plus children, under the age of 12, who die of starvation, or starvation-related diseases, every day; turn a deaf ear to the pleas of the homeless, the sick, the victims of racism, those marginalized by society, cast into the fringes of mainstream “prosperity,” nor can such a Catholic advocate, promote, or rejoice at racist laws that treat migrants like inferior beings, like chattel, like excrement.

SECOND: A true Catholic cannot openly advocate the cause of the hungry, the poor, the homeless, the victims of racism, etc,, while ignoring, or worse, tolerating or even advocating abortion, same-sex marriage, and similar aberrations.

It is totally wrong and reprehensible to identify or confuse the teaching of the Catholic Church, which always advocates the concrete incarnation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the human pursuit of the common good, of truth in charity, and its foundations in justice, with the always-flawed, always tainted political platform of any given party, whose members are always ready, at the first bidding, to sell their souls to the devil of political expediency.

In this particular election, 2012, allow me to say something rather unpopular and uncomfortable, burning inside the marrow of my bones, and begging for release: neither one of the two main parties truly embodies or echoes, to any significant degree, the doctrinal and spiritual public witness of the Catholic tradition on social and political matters. They represent polarized, actually, schizophrenic views of reality: on the one hand, we find a given party tolerating or even endorsing and promoting, abortion, homosexual marriage, and other unnatural sins. On the other, we find the other party making mincemeat of the rights of immigrants, ignoring the demands that define the Catholic notion of the common good.

Is this a manifesto a pessimism? To be honest, and to some extent, yes – it is a matter of realism, I believe. But my holy and wise spiritual directors, and the beauty and wonder of my Christian Catholic tradition, the tradition of doctors and masters, of martyrs and confessors, set my heart, soul and mind at ease: they tell me that truth will prevail, that life will conquer death, heaven will embrace the earth, and love will banish hatred.

Sixto Garcia ( Doctor Garcia is professor of Theology at the Catholic seminary in Boynton Beach, Florida.)

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