Billy Graham to the Rescue?
CHRIST & NEIGHBOR
The Roman Catholic bishops have thrown the second draft of their pastoral on the U.S. economy out into the winds of controversy and have held firm, thank God, to the central theses of the first draft. These were that “the disparities of income and wealth in the United States [are] unacceptable” and that economic democracy and “economic rights are as essential to human dignity as are the political and civil freedoms granted pride of place in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution.”
Reading the statements of President Reagan and of Congressional leaders, both Democratic and Republican, the thought occurs that the bishops face a dim prospect of getting the kind of America they want either out of Congress or the White House.
As I contemplate the remarks of Ronald Reagan to the effect that social programs must be cut, Star Wars fought and funded for untold billions, and the rich protected from tax increases, I console myself with a phantasy that there shall arise in Washington someone who might play Nathan to Reagan’s David.
You remember the story of David, Bathsheba, and Nathan. David was riding high. He had won battles against an opposition that was even more formidable than the military might of Grenada. Israel was back and standing tall. If there had been an election he would have swept all 12 tribes of Israel, including Minnesota.
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Vertical religion and horizontal religion are parts of an integral whole. You go up by going sideways, and you go best sideways by focusing upward.
Communism was founded on false anthropology, reminds John Paul, and that was its undoing. Consumerism can be undone the same way.
Given an absence of time for imagining alternatives, our humanity is defined in terms of consumption. We lack the peace needed to cultivate ourselves as unique persons.