Am I a liberal or a conservative? No. I reject those labels. Today, “conservatives” are too often stuck in the past. And “liberals” are frequently unhinged, cut off from traditional values. 

Many years ago, when we first moved to Kentucky, Sharon and I registered as Independents. In those days (the mid-1980s), all of the important positions were decided in primaries that we couldn’t vote in. We considered changing to one of the main political parties, but a careful look at the two party platforms convinced us that the most honest course was to remain independent and judge each candidate and/or issue on the merits rather than party affiliation. 

My position is much the same when it comes to Church politics. The Catholic Church’s teaching and practice are broad and inclusive at the same time that they are narrowly focused on “the way” Jesus lived and “the truth” he taught. These have been handed-on faithfully by the apostles and we have the testimony of witnesses—the saints and martyrs—who for the past 2000 years have shown us by their words and example how we are called to live. 

The Christian way is not set in concrete, but it is also not set in quicksand. Set on a rock (Peter and his successors up to and including Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis), the Church is also neither liberal nor conservative. It is both traditional and progressive—always journeying forward in living continuity with the past. 

Here is the way Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) explains this in his book Church, Ecumenism and Politics:

Anyone who wants to cling exclusively to the wording of Scripture or to the formulas and structures of the patristic Church, banishes Christ to yesterday. The result is, then, either a completely sterile faith that has nothing to say to today or else an arbitrariness that skips over two thousand years of history, tosses it onto the scrap heap of failed enterprises, and now decides to figure out what Christianity should really look like according to the Scriptures or according to Jesus. But that can only amount to an artificial product of our own making that has no inherent stability. There is real identity with the origin only when there is at the same time a living continuity that unfolds it and thereby preserves it. (Joseph Ratzinger)

I have no desire to “banish Christ to yesterday.” Nor do I want the Church to be “an artificial product of our own making.” What I want is both creativity and continuity, tradition and progress,  a vision for the future that is faithful to the best of the past.

 I believe that this is authentic Catholicism. I also believe that this stance represents the American way at its finest. God knows that neither Church nor country is perfect. Our sinful humanity prevents that. But God calls his imperfect people to move forward in faith, hope and charity to a future that is better far than this—God’s kingdom which begins to be built here on earth and is completed in our heavenly homeland. 

Veni, Creator Spiritus,
Mentes tuorum visita:
Imple superna gratia,
Quae tu creasti pectora.

Come, Holy Spirit, Creator blest, and in our hearts take up your rest. Come with your grace and heavenly aid to fill the hearts which you have made..

Seventy years ago today, my parents were married at Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church in Cleveland, Ohio. Fifty years later, five months before my mother passed away, they celebrated their golden anniversary at St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Naples, Florida. 

From A Man of Few Words: Remembering Jack Conway by Daniel Conway

When Jack Conway first met Helen Bernet Callaghan in the late 1940s, she was vibrant, athletic, intelligent and very attractive. My mother used to say, “I dated a lot of bums, but I married Jack Conway.” It was an exaggeration, of course. Many of the men she dated and their eventual wives remained my parents’ good friends throughout the years. Still, there was something about Jack Conway that attracted her to him over and above his good looks and winning personality. He certainly was no bum. There was something good and solid in him that she recognized as being special.

They were a great match. She shared his love for sports and politics and could more than hold up her end of the conversation on any subject. (Although she had close friendships with women all her life, my mother used to say that at parties she preferred being in the kitchen with the men discussing politics and sports to “girl talk” in the parlor with the women.) Mom had a lifelong love of literature, especially poetry, and classical music that my dad didn’t share, but the things they had in common—including their deep devotion to their Catholic faith—far outweighed their differences.  

Their wedding photos show a couple who were definitely drawn to one another. My father’s smile, which was always radiant, seemed to increase in intensity when he and my mother were together. That intensity, and the fact that he was deeply in love with her, never changed. Nearly 70 years later, Jack Conway was still madly in love with Helen Callaghan.