Archbishop Chaput calls Catholics to fight for ‘soul of public square’

By David Gibson
Catholic News Service

“God did not put us here to sit out the struggle for the soul of the public square,” Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., of Denver writes in “Render Unto Caesar.” If one needed to sum up the book’s principal intent in just 18 words, that sentence might well suffice.

Archbishop Chaput wants Catholics in today’s America to nourish their nation’s greatest ideals with “courage, honesty and active political engagement,” and without leaving their faith on the sidelines of the public square. He carefully explores how faith and political life interrelate—what their relationship should and should not be.

I suspect many will feel after reading this book that they’ve gotten to know Archbishop Chaput in a new way, particularly if in the past they knew him largely through brief quotations in news reports on occasions when he weighed in publicly on the church and politics. This is, indeed, a book of strongly held convictions, strongly presented. Still, more than a few Catholics—whether right-leaning or left-leaning on political or ecclesial issues—may find themselves challenged by the archbishop’s restraint and balance here on several sensitive matters.

What does Archbishop Chaput oppose and favor in “Render Unto Caesar”? In his vision, Catholics never would remain silent or complacent when faced with abuses of human dignity and violations of the natural law in the public realm.

Neutrality is decidedly not what Archbishop Chaput wants Catholics to express in public debate, nor does he want Catholics reduced by contested issues to a cowardly posture. The archbishop wants Catholics to shape their activities in the public square according to their beliefs.

If America “has changed from the land of opportunity to the land of private appetites over the last few decades,” one reason is that “we haven’t lived what we say we believe,” he says, adding, “Homelessness, poverty, abortion, the exploitation of undocumented immigrants, the neglect of the elderly—these are brazenly real problems in contemporary America. They won’t go away by ... kicking religion out of the public discussion.”

For its survival, American democracy “depends on people of character fighting for their beliefs in the public square—legally, ethically and nonviolently, but forcefully and without apology,” says Archbishop Chaput.

The 12 chapters of “Render Unto Caesar” afford Archbishop Chaput the opportunity to examine several issues now considered basic in discussions of the Church and politics: abortion; the Catholic voter; whether to refuse holy Communion to some Catholic politicians; conscience; the separation of church and state; the natural law; bishops’ roles; and major statements in the recent history of these discussions.

“Elected leaders,” he says, “must make laws that reflect a well-formed conscience. When such laws are not produced, those same leaders must press to change them.” Furthermore, he insists, Catholics need to look much more self-critically at themselves as believers and at their “wholesale assimilation—’absorption’ might be a better word”—by America’s culture.

It is quite natural for a book on Catholics and political life to turn some attention to Church teaching on the relationship of the Church and the modern world, a relationship that has preoccupied the entire Church in a unique, ongoing way ever since the Second Vatican Council. This relationship is addressed in a special way in Chapters 6 and 7 of “Render Unto Caesar”—key chapters for me.

In the council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, readers can see “a generous desire to positively engage the modern world,” Archbishop Chaput says. He points in a positive manner to Church efforts to establish solidarity with the world’s people and learn from the good things of this world. At the same time, driving home his theme, he says Vatican II did not welcome “the extremes to which free societies tend,” and he rejects any conclusion “that religion has nothing to say to the public square.”

Chapter 7 concludes with this judgment: “Too many of us have become ‘evangelizers’ in the most ironic sense of the word: preaching the world to a Church we claim to love, but which we no longer really understand.”

David Gibson was the founding editor of Origins, Catholic News Service’s documentary service. He retired in 2007 after holding that post for 36 years.