An op-ed on my favorite Michigan governor

Gov. Jennifer Granholm last week publicly challenged the Christian faith of legislators who favored spending cuts to balance the state budget, saying, “That’s when I question whether somebody is really living out the faith that they profess.”

Forgive us the obvious: A professed Catholic who vetoes protecting partially born babies from having their brains sucked out has no business lecturing others about “living out the faith.”

This kind of thing is just going to come up more and more, so let’s make a few things clear.

The issue is not politicians or government leaders “taking marching orders” from the Catholic Church. The issue is their use of religion and self-representation. What I find most puzzling about this, as it manifests itself over and over and over again at every level of political life, is the absolute unapologetic stance of abortion-enabling and gay rights – supporting Catholic politicians. It’s one thing to struggle with one’s conscience, or try to balance one’s own beliefs with the desires of one’s constituents, and so on, but it’s another thing altogether to present the issue as if it’s all really no problem, and that your stance, if you enable abortion, for example, is perfectly compatible with your public identity as a Catholic, as you construe it, and that if anyone’s at fault, by God, it must be the Church.

What happened to the Bad Catholic? Was Dr. Tom More the last one?

(And if you need that explained see “Percy, Walker”)

It’s not just the politicians – it’s all of us, from bishops on down.

When my daughter was attending a Church of God preschool, she learned the alphabet, at the age of 3, by learning a Scripture verse a week associated with that letter. I still vividly remember her first letter – “A”, and can still practically hear her saying it, tinged with the deep Southern accent of Miss Joy Biles, her teacher.

“A – All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God – Romans 3:23.”

And that’s what we have forgotten. No, we’re not gloomy Calvinists, but we are realists about human existence as well.

As I have reflected on the troubles of the Church and its leaders over the past years, I have often, like you, wondered about accountability. It finally came to me in a flash, when reading about some episcopal atrocity: “It’s not just that they don’t feel accountable to each other or to the laity. They don’t feel accountable TO GOD!”

The evidence indicates that few of us do.

So how does this all tie together? We all need a good dose of humility. In this case, Catholic politicians who publicly flout Church teaching (as in – Church teaching – not , say, statements of a USCCB policy statement on immigration – which may be part of the confusion here) would do well to just admit that they’re bad Catholics, like a lot of the rest of us, who fail to live out this or that aspect of the Gospel in our lives. Instead of setting themselves up as the Magisterium in Lansing or Trenton, just ADMIT IT, for God’s sake. “The Catholic Church teaches this. I don’t live it. In fact, I support laws that stand in opposition to the Church’s goals of preserving and protecting life. I guess that makes me a bad Catholic, and maybe I shouldn’t go to communion anymore, sad to say.”

These poseurs are really starting to get on my nerves, and I can’t help but wonder why, in a culture that normally holds up hypocricy as the First Deadly Sin, why these folks get a pass.