Reflection / Sean Gallagher

‘We have no lasting city’: nurturing a Catholic perspective on politics

Politics was part of the air I breathed from a young age. I was 6 in 1976 when my dad, a Democrat, was elected as an at-large city council representative in Shelbyville. In 1980, I pulled my wagon decorated with a spray-painted sign for my dad as I canvased our neighborhood for him in his re-election campaign—a race which he lost in a landslide.

With my mom coming from a line of Rush County Republican local and state office holders, I grew up in a bipartisan household. A running joke between my parents was how they cancelled out each other’s votes on each election day.

Later in life, Mom looked with a rather jaundiced eye at the developments in political culture in our country. So, she often wore to the polls on election day a pin from the 1956 re-election campaign of President Dwight Eisenhower that read “More Than Ever, I Like Ike.” She rolled her eyes when, more than once, poll workers asked her to remove the pin for a politician who had died in 1969.

There was no political tribalism in our home, no awkward conversations around the dinner table at holidays or any other time of the year. I was blessed to witness as a normal part of my life each election season how my parents’ love for each other wasn’t in spite of their political differences. No, their mutual love was so deep that they respected each other’s political convictions, even if they could not share them.

That’s a great lesson that was instilled in me at a young age, one that grows in value as political incivility and divisiveness continues to increase in our culture. It’s one that my wife Cindy and I are trying to pass on to our sons. We want them to see that love for God, their family and others must transcend political differences in their lives.

But as important as this principle that I received from my parents is, I’ve come to see that the faith they instilled in me is even more crucial.

Our Catholic faith offers a healthy and balanced perspective on the effort through politics to build up the common good in society.

On the one hand, we Catholics are called to build up the kingdom of God with the help of God’s grace and our own efforts in the public square. That’s what I believe was ultimately at the foundation of my father’s service in local government nearly 50 years ago.

On the other hand, we Catholics must always remember that here, on this side of eternity, “we have no lasting city, but we seek the one that is to come” (Heb 13:14). While we’re called to build up God’s kingdom here and now, it will never find its fullness in this life.

This should moderate our reactions to election results, be they good or bad in our view. And not just that, such an outlook can help us maintain and nurture good relationships with people whose political views differ from ours.

These words from Psalm 146, sometimes prayed in Morning Prayer in the Church’s Liturgy of the Hours on the day after elections, can also help us put politics in its proper perspective: “Put no trust in princes, in mortal men in whom there is no help. Take their breath, they return to clay and their plans that day come to nothing” (Ps 146:3-4).

No political candidate for any office, from president down to dog catcher, is our Messiah. That title belongs to Jesus Christ alone. I wish that this was so obvious that it did not need to be said. Unfortunately, as secularism has taken a greater hold in our society, we tend to put a worth on our political candidates that starts to rival what we should give exclusively to God.

Fostering a more modest view of those running for office—both those that we support and oppose—can hopefully lower the temperature of our political discourse and open us to more loving relationships with people who hold political views different from our own.

In an age of heightened political debates, where each election is portrayed as the most decisive in our lifetimes (that is, until the next one), this kind of an approach might be seen as an intolerable compromise.

But I would propose something very different: that fostering such a balanced view of politics, society, this life and the next might actually build up unity in our society and help us take concrete steps to fulfill those high ideals we have for our common life together that are ultimately signs of God’s kingdom.
 

(Sean Gallagher is a reporter for The Criterion, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.) †