Prophetic and Public: The Social Witness of U.S. Catholicism

CHAPTER FOUR

The Catholic Church in the United States has maintained a presence in Washington since the National Catholic Welfare Conference was established just after World War I. Today, its successor, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), works in part to advocate for the vulnerable and apply Catholic teaching to major social and political issues. Yet the Catholic lobby extends beyond this official arm of the U.S. church, including a variety of membership organizations, religious orders, and other associations. Although these groups, in most cases, do not directly oppose the work of the bishops’ conference , there are a range of differences in emphasis and approach. The political patterns of Catholic advocacy generally defy typical partisan divisions, due to its progressive stances on social welfare and labor and conservative positions on abortion and education policy, yet various Catholic groups operate across the typical ideological spectrum. Those who tend to collaborate with more progressive secular groups include Catholic Charities USA, Jesuit Social Ministries, and the Campaign for Human Development. The more conservative Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights works to fight anti-Catholic bias in the media and is generally opposed by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.1 Associations of Catholic hospitals and parochial schools lobby largely to protect their own financial interests. State Catholic conferences engage in legislative advocacy at more local levels. Finally, some groups are sustained by significant Catholic memberships although they are not chiefly Catholic organizations , such as National Right to Life (the oldest antiabortion group in the United States), JustLife (lobbies for the seamless garment agenda) and Bread for the World (the Christian hunger lobby).2 In their comprehensive study of religion and politics in the U.S. context, political scientists Fowler, Hertzke, and Olson name several strengths of the American Catholic lobby: “a theological comfort with politics, a scholastic tradition of serious reflection on issues, clear lines of leadership, and a potentially strategic position in broader political alignments.”3 The ways in which CHAPTER FOUR Catholic Political Advocacy in the Contemporary U.S. Context Catholic groups approach public life are also shaped significantly by the fact that theirs is uniquely a world church, and by their connection to Catholic institutions (hospitals, schools, charities, and universities). The social and political issues taken up by Catholic lobbyists in general tend to defy strictly partisan boundaries, so Catholic advocacy frequently serves as a bridge between liberal Protestant and evangelical approaches and social issues, due to its positions on poverty and welfare on the one hand, and abortion and schools on the other. Once again, for our purposes, NETWORK, Pax Christi USA, and the policy and advocacy arms of the USCCB will serve as illustrative cases that point to certain tensions that we have been examining. These three organizations are not intended to provide a comprehensive account of Catholic advocacy in the U.S. context. Rather, by exploring the activity, motivations, and selfunderstanding of these three Catholic advocacy groups, we will examine how the theological approaches we encountered in chapters 2 and 3 play out in the real world.4 How do such groups consider their Catholic identity? What is the relationship of that identity to their political activity or how do they move from Christian values to the politics of Washington? What do some of their internal practices (such as their decision-making processes and coalition work) reveal about these differences in mission and practice? How do they measure their own effectiveness? An overview of each organization with an eye to these dimensions will shed further light on the appropriate possibilities for and limits to political advocacy.5 NETWORK In December 1971, 47 religious sisters from a variety of orders and 21 states convened in Washington, D.C., to discuss organizing a network of women religious concerned about public policy issues. There they decided to form a political action network for the communication of information, political education , and action, and with that step NETWORK became the first registered Catholic social justice lobby in the United States.6 From its origins, the group set out to be “women-led, linked to the economically exploited, rooted in the social justice tradition of the church, reflective of experience, centered around working collaboratively, and dedicated to educating and organizing grassroots constituencies for political lobbying.”7 That description well fits the group thirty years later: Today, NETWORK’s membership surpasses 12,000 and the group...