Sunday, November 9, 2014

The Unification of Catholic Orthodoxy with Social Justice: The unique opportunity Cardinal Burke's new position presents to the Church


‘Master, I knew you were a demanding person, harvesting where you did not plant and
gathering where you did not scatter"

In my experience Catholics who actively practice their Faith tend to fall into one of two camps.  There is the Orthodox crowd who tend to devote most of their energy on the spiritual needs of people, and then there is the social justice crowd who tend to focus more on people’s material needs.  It is not uncommon to find people with a strong zeal for one or the other camp.  It is almost impossible to find someone with a strong zeal for both.  Mother Teresa was one such rare person.  She had great concern for the poor, but she ran her order with salvation as the highest goal.  People who can integrate both into their thoughts, emotion and action do exist, but they are very uncommon.  It is also worth noting that these two camps often do not trust each other.  To a more orthodox person, social justice persons often look like they are overly permissive and embracing of relativism, while social justice persons often paint the orthodox as heartless, legalistic and cruel.  This schism in thought does not have to exist, and I think the Church may have been presented with a unique opportunity to heal the divide. 

As of roughly yesterday Cardinal Burke was named the Patron of the Sovereign Order of Malta.  For those not familiar with the Cardinal, he is currently considered a strong defender of orthodoxy and is quite highly respected in those circles.  He has also become a very visible Cardinal in the sense that it is not unusual for the media to broadcast his views.  I have been trying to figure out exactly what the Cardinal’s new position in the Order of Malta entails, and as far as I can tell he is basically the chaplain for the order.  I am not familiar with the Order of Malta, but from their website it appears they focus on working on taking care of the poor and elderly.  They also appear to run medical, humanitarian, and diplomatic missions.  My understanding based solely on what is reported in the media is that this is a position that comes with very few formal responsibilities compared to his previous positions.  I for one hope and pray that he leverages these unique conditions to the advantage of the Church – this is an environment that is ripe to unify Orthodoxy with Social justice.  If this type of thinking could be implemented in the hearts and minds of the Faithful it would truly be an earthquake in the Church. 

Cardinal Burke is in a unique opportunity to show to the world how to bring Orthodoxy back to social justice work.  Cardinal Burke is already a leader among Orthodox Catholics, he doesn't need a formal title as a defender of orthodoxy.  He is already well respected by many and has proven himself to be a staunch defender of the Faith.  He is man who has nothing to prove in that regard.  By placing him in a position that focuses on humanitarian efforts he has the potential to become a much more rounded world leader.  He is uniquely positioned to become an authority at implementing social justice work in an Orthodox manner.  This could potentially be huge since I would argue we have not really had a Church leader at the level of Cardinal with his international name-recognition who did this in my lifetime and I doubt in my parent’s lifetime as well.  Below are possible ways this appointment could benefit the Church:

Participation in Social Justice Work of the Church:
Lately I have found myself increasingly confused when trying to figure out which social-justice-type groups I should direct donations to because even those within the Church have faced scrutiny for their lack of adherence to Church teaching.  Whether or not this scrutiny is warranted is up to debate.   Regardless with Cardinal Burke in charge I feel like I don't have to worry about those issues at least with regards to the Order of Malta. 

Orthodoxy on Bioethical Issues:
The order of Malta seems pretty involved with medical care. I would love to see Burke take on all the ethical challenges that have been coming up in the day-to-day life of medical providers.  Examples include immigration, stopping the spread of AIDs and other communicable diseases, addressing the right-to-die crowd, artificial contraception, abortion, ethical challenges associated with modern health care directive documents and protocols and conscience rights.

Healing the “Conservative” and “Liberal” divide:
Roughly speaking the orthodox-social Justice dichotomy I mentioned earlier is very similar to the conservative – liberal dichotomy we see in American politics.  American Christians have basically ended up adopting this dichotomy and applying it to Christianity.  I suspect the reason for this has a lot to do With Roe vs. Wade.  Abortion is an issue that Orthodox Catholics cannot compromise on and tends to trump almost all other issues for them.  My assessment of this is that they have tended to align themselves with Republican-conservative thinking.  Democratic-liberal thinking is seen as suspect because the Democratic party supports access to abortion. There is also some interplay here between Capitalism and Communism.  Catholic social justice teaching is much easier to reconcile with a capitalist system than a communist system, and once again the Republicans tend to be more capitalist than the Democrats, so orthodox Catholics tend to align themselves with the Republican-conservatives.  The opposite tends to happen with social-justice Catholics.  What Orthodox Catholics have to remember though is that Republican/conservatives values are a compromise at best.  Catholic values are actually somewhat orthogonal to the conservative-liberal and capitalist-communism scales.  I am not sure a political system has ever existed that reasonably align itself with Catholic values. 

It is also worth noting that when you have a position with very few actual responsibilities it opens up the possibility of inventing your own responsibilities.  In some ways a position like this is similar to a sabbatical that a professor might go on to either write a book or explore new directions.  Cardinal Burke's time is cheap right now.  He is now free to attempt much more experimental, forward-thinking techniques to unify Orthodoxy with social justice.  The beauty of this is that he has very high credibility among orthodox Catholics.  Orthodox Catholics tend to be more conservative in their thinking, but they will probably entertain forward-thinking ideas or proposals Burke puts forth.  If in his social-justice role he can gain respect the respect of the social justice role we may finally find ways to mend social justice and Orthodox thinking that have been in existence for at least the last 50 to 100 years. 

Pope Francis has made no secret that he feels caring for the poor and outcast is his highest priorities.  It is noteworthy that he has placed Cardinal Burke in a position where he can focus on just that.  In some ways this opportunity allows for cross-training similar to that seen in high-level succession planning.