Paul Ryan’s appointment to the 2012 Republican presidential ticket has reignited a firestorm over the congressman’s Catholicity that is reflective of an emerging divide in the Catholic Church in America. The Ryan debacle started in April when he was chastised by 90 Georgetown University professors, led by Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J., for “profoundly misreading Church teaching.” It was then the bus-riding-nuns’ turn to play magisterium and critique his policies by calling into question his Catholic faith. This, of course, had the effect of taking any legitimate critique that may have originally existed and burying it beneath a lot of conscious evolution and new age feminism masquerading as Christianity. The issue went dormant for a few months but has now resurfaced in a big way.
Here, I recall a previous refrain that many, including the activist Catholic left, have a very limited vision of Catholic Social Teaching that is a convenient fit for a particular political philosophy. It is not my intention to explicitly support or decry Paul Ryan’s policies. Rather, I intend to evaluate the way in which people, like the Georgetown 90 or the nuns on the bus, make such policy evaluations in light of the teachings of the Catholic Church. At issue here is a proper understanding of moral equivalence and ecclesiology, insofar as they are integral to an authentic hermeneutic for interpreting Catholic Social Teaching.
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