Better to be a Pastor than a Culture Warrior

Michael Sean WInters has a column here attacking the appointment of Bishop Caput to the archdiocese of Philadelphia. It is an easy column to write and he writes it well. From Winters' perspective Caput is a culture warrior and a poor pastor. In my favorite part of the column, he contrasts the action of Caput in excluding the child of lesbian parents (but apparently not the children of divorced parents) from a Catholic school with an action of then Bishop, now Cardinal Sean O'Malley: "[I}n Boston, Chaput’s seminary classmate, Cardinal Sean O’Malley reached a completely different conclusion in circumstances that were almost identical, adopting a policy that does not discriminate against any children. Cardinal O’Malley is just as orthodox and just as conservative as Archbishop Chaput. The difference? O’Malley is not a culture warrior, he is a pastor. Here is how O’Malley explained his decision in his blog: 'As a young bishop in the West Indies I once celebrated a memorial Mass for a local ‘madame’ who ran a brothel near my Cathedral. It was said she smuggled women in from other islands in oil barrels for her business. Some women suffocated in the crossing. She herself was murdered by her lover. At the Mass I met the woman’s daughter, a lovely little girl. I asked her what grade she was in. She replied that she didn’t go to school. I sent a stern glance to her grandmother, who said: "Her name is the same as that of the brothel. The other children were so cruel to her, she left the public school." I told her grandmother, ‘Take her to the Catholic school tomorrow.’

"'Catholic schools exist for the good of the children and our admission standards must reflect that. We have never had categories of people who were excluded. We have often given preference to children from a parish where a school is located, siblings of children already enrolled at the school or Catholic children from nearby parishes. Sometimes we might not be able to accept children, because of behavioral problems or other circumstances that would be disruptive to a school community. While there are legitimate reasons that might lead to a decision not to admit a child, I believe all would agree that the good of the child must always be our primary concern.'

"The difference in tone is obvious, but the difference is more than one of tone. Cardinal O’Malley, by avoiding an opportunity to win a skirmish in the culture war instead provided his flock with a parable worthy of the Gospels. He did not just do right by the child, he called everyone involved – and everyone reading his blog, to holiness which, for a Christian, must include reaching out to and embracing those whom society marginalizes. The problem with the culture war approach is that it loses the Gospel in its defensive moralism. So busy wagging a finger at the culture (certainly never at oneself or at the Church) the culture warrior never engages the culture in a way that makes evangelization possible. As Cardinal Francis George has written, 'We have to form people with a genuine love of today’s city and love our culture itself. Even with its demonic elements, the culture must be loved, because you cannot evangelize what you do not love.'"