Political Parties

It's Election Day - albeit an "off-year" election, with just a few really big races commanding national attention. But this Election Day is a good occasion to think about the current state of our two principal political parties. Forty years ago, when I was studying such things in college and graduate school, it was fashionable to analyze why we in the U.S. always end up with two parties and why the parties tended to be (as they then tended to be) more like broad coalitions than narrowly ideological parties, as was and is often the case in other democracies with parliamentary systems.

In those days, anyone who studied American politics learned how certain institutional factors - notably, "single-member" electoral districts, as opposed to proportional representation - fostered the development of a 2-party (as opposed to a multi-party) system, since only one candidate could win, and there was thus nothing to be gained (unlike in a proportional representation system) by getting a respectable but non-winning vote in a district. Likewise, the Presidency functions as the biggest "single-member" district of all, reinforced by the "winner take all" system of allocating each state's electors. The result, we all learned, was two broad-based political parties, in which coalitions were formed before the election - unlike parliamentary systems with their more ideological parties which, having competed electorally, then had to form coalitions among themselves to govern afterwards. Given the proverbial instability then associated with many (but not all)parliamentary coalitions, the American experience was widely touted as preferable. (In my post-60s political fervor, I tended at the time to the view that a parliamentary system with more ideologically defined parties might have been a better alternative.)

That was the institutional explanation of why we had two parties for most of our history and why those parties perforce tended to be broad coalitions. There was also a historical explanation - namely that people tended to vote as they fought (or would have fought) in the Civil War. With some modest modifications beginning with the New Deal (e.g., the shift of northern black voters from the Republican to the Democratic column), that political division of the country seemed to hold, more or less, until the party realignment unleashed by the 1960s.

The gradual, but inexorable result of that realignment process has been two parties which are much more coherently identifiable ideologically - the Republicans having become a very conservative party, with its base in the South, the Democrats having become a more liberal party, with its base on the two coasts and in urban areas. The consequence has been the collapse of the political middle.

A recent on-line article, "Party Polarization Signals the End of the 100-Year War,' by James R. Rogers http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/11/04/party-polarization-signals-the-end-of-the-100-year-war/ traces this process. Rogers relates how in 1982, 344 House members (almost 80%) were ideologically positioned between the most liberal Republican and the most conservative Democrat. In 1994, the "middle" had declined to 252 members; in 2002, 137 members, in 2011, 16 members, and in 2012, a mere 11 members (less than 3%). Rogers acknowledges the multiple factors that may have contributed to this process - "partisan Gerrymandering and closed-party primaries" and "increasingly polarized voters electing increasingly polarized legislators" - but also puts forward his own theory that connects it with "generational change - the dying off of the last generation of voters whose partisan affiliation was significantly influenced by residual Civil War loyalties." It is that century or so of post-Civil War ideologically mixed political parties which Rogers regards as the aberration, rather than the current more polarized politics, and he seems to favor the latter as promoting "electoral accountability."

There is much to recommend Rogers' analysis. His endorsement of the outcome, however, seems debatable. He is somewhat dismissive of "the slower, back-slapping way of policy-making and debate in Washington during the 1950s" as simply something politicians and journalists enjoyed more.

At the time in fact, many - especially in academia -  lamented that "slower, back-slapping way" and wanted to see more ideological coherence in political parties and more electoral accountability. Many (myself among them then) applauded how the civil rights era's migration of the southern white vote to the Republicans liberated the Democrats to be more liberal. In the process, however, it liberated each party from the effect its minority wing (liberals for the Republicans, conservative for the Democrats) had in restraining extremism and fostering balance, which made cooperation and compromise possible. If the 1950's system was slow and hindered the march of progress, the current system is infinitely more so - with the added cost of higher intensity conflict.

The fact that we now live increasingly in politically segregated jurisdictions and that people now receive all or most of their news from ideologically congenial sources contributes to perpetuating this polarization and consequence political dysfunction - from which it is harder and harder to envisage an escape.

Back to Gracie Mansion

According to today's New York Times, the next mayor of New York (whichever candidate wins) is likely to return to living where mayors have traditionally lived since the 1940s - the colonial home on the East River known as Gracie Mansion. To read the actual article (and see a slideshow of photos of Gracie Mansion inside and out past and present) go to http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/nyregion/new-york-mayors-mansion-seeks-a-missing-item-the-mayor.html?ref=todayspaper

Outgoing Major Bloomberg brought much to the city in his 12-year reign as its uncrowned king. But no one is perfect, and he may fittingly be faulted for having preferred to live in his own (presumably classier) private quarters than in the home that has been the official residence of New York's mayors since Fiorello LaGuardia. True, Gracie Mansion has continued to be used for official functions and has been well cared for even while empty, but something is lacking when official residences are not used as intended and when private quarters are preferred to what is publicly provided. For an official residence is precisely that. It is official - an emblem of the irremediably public character of the official who doesn't just have a job but also a socially symbolic function that is important in itself.

The King of Spain lives, I believe, in the smaller Zarzuela Palace and "commutes" to Madrid's enormous Palacio Real  for official functions. Yes, the trend toward privatization, the preference for what is private and individual over what is public and communal and official, is endemic; and that, it seems to me, is precisely the problem. 

Admittedly, not too many people's lives are directly affected by such things, but symbols do matter and have a large and lasting effect. Returning the Mayor to Gracie Mansion won't solve the city's affordable housing shortage or any of its other immediately pressing problems, but reclaiming the character of the city's public space is a small symbolic step toward recovering the city's communal character.

All Souls Day

The month of November is traditionally devoted in a special way to remembering and praying for the dead. A Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed on November 2 (“All Souls Day”) has been observed in the Church at least since 988, when St. Odilio of Cluny established such an observance in his influential monastery. Tomorrow afternoon, we will have our annual recitation of the Rosary for the Faithful Departed at our parish cemetery (photo).
 

In preparing for this year’s November, I have been reading The Good Funeral: Death, Grief, and the Community of Care, by Thomas G. Long and Thomas Lynch. Lynch is a funeral director (and son of a funeral director).  Long is a Presbyterian pastor and writer. The authors reflect on how “remarkable changes in religious practice over the past half century are coincident, correlated to, and in many instances, trafficked in cause-and-effect with changes in our mortuary customs.” In reaction to this, the authors encourage us to recall the original function of a funeral. “The formula for funerals was fairly simple for most of our history: by getting the dead where they need to go, the living got where they needed to be.” For the authors, a funeral has four essential elements – someone who has died, survivors who care, some understanding (usually a religious one) of the meaning of this situation, and the practical need to attend to the disposition of the dead person’s body. Contrary to some contemporary tendencies that downplay the physical presence of the dead, the authors place great stress on its significance and argue that “a culture prepared to hide the bodies of the dead as if they were an embarrassment or an insult to the living … is also a society prone to cast aside its elderly, neglect its sick, leave its poor without shelter, and deprive its young of proper care.” They remind us that one thing that most religions agree on is that “we will learn wisdom about how to live when we care lovingly and reverently for the bodies of the dead.”
 

Reading Long and Lynch reminds me of what Saint Augustine of Hippo wrote some 16 centuries ago, in his treatise “On the Care for the Dead” (De cura pro mortuis gerenda). “The bodies of the dead are not to be uncared for in any way, since these bodies are nearer and dearer to us than any garment. These bodies are not ornaments or aids applied from without; they are of the very nature of man. … The care bestowed upon the burial of the body is no aid to salvation. It is merely an act of humanity, regulated by affection for ‘no man hates his own flesh.’ It is most proper that a man should care for the corpse of his neighbor as best he can, when that neighbor has died. If these offices are paid to the dead, even by those who do not believe in the resurrection of the body, how much more should they be paid by those who do believe in the resurrection on the last day. Thus these duties toward a body which, although dead, is destined to rise again and to live throughout eternity, are in a way a testimony of faith in that belief.”

Asking About the Family in the Context of Evangelization

Last month, the Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops sent out a preparatory document for next year's Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the theme Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelization. What has gotten this so much attention is the request that the dioceses "share it immediately and as widely as possible to deaneries and parishes so that input from local sources can be received regarding the themes and responses to the questionnaire, as well as any helpful statistics, for the preparation of the Instrumentum laboris."

 

What precise form this consultation may take in the United States remains yet to be seen. In the U.K., the bishops of England and Wales have actually set up a website for anyone to comment who belongs to a local diocese or ordinariate. I'm not personally familiar with how British Bishops conduct consultations. but I'm guessing that creating a website is a relatively novel approach. I went online yesterday just to look at it, and it does seem easy to navigate. How many responses it gets, what their quality will be, and how representative they actually are - all, of course, remain to be seen.

 

The questionnaire itself is quite interesting.  The introduction situates the Church's mission to preach the Gospel to all in the context of contemporary pastoral challenges concerning the family, which it calls "the vital building-block of society and the ecclesial community." The document then goes on to pose a series of questions on how widely and well the teachings of Scripture and the Church's magisterium are known, natural law, the pastoral care of families both before and after marriage, cohabitation, the pastoral care of the separated and divorced, same-sex unions, the religious education of children in irregular marriages, and contraception and family planning.

 

Needless to say, none of these questions ask anyone's opinion of the validity - i.e., the truth - of magisterial teaching. But the document does ask important questions about what people really know about the Church's teachings, how well those teachings are actually understood, whether they are followed or not, and how local churches are responding to the pastoral challenge of ministering to people in these varied and complicated situations.

 

The usefulness of such data will depend in part on how it is collected, who is asked, and who responds. There is always the intensity factor. Some people are intensely ideologically committed one way or the other on certain issues, and their responses can skew a survey's result. How representative are such intense reactions? On the other hand, if there are many who do not feel intensely one way or the other, may that also be a symptom of a serious problem?

 

Underlying all this is the important reality that our culture has changed radically - and in a relatively short period of time. (I am old enough to remember when divorce, for example, was still widely frowned upon. It was legal, but in my home state - New York -  it was possible only for very serious grounds. And it was taken for granted that a divorced man could never be elected President. All those things have changed dramatically in the space of my lifetime!) Of course, the Church is always challenged to proclaim the Gospel whether it is convenient or inconvenient (2 Timothy 4:2). At the same time, how the Church's teachings are actually received and lived is perennially a challenge for how the Church ministers effectively to people who, in fact, may be found to be all over the place.

A Sad Anniversary

On this day in 1517, Martin Luther famously nailed his 95 Theses to the door (photo) of the University Church in Wittenberg, unleashing the great ecclesiastical calamity of the 2nd millennium - the Protestant Reformation. (In school as kids, we were taught never to call it that, always to refer to it as the Protestant Revolt, reserving the term "Reformation" for the Catholic Reformation, aka the Counter-Reformation." Words matter, but whatever one calls what Martin Luther unleashed, it was - and remains - a catastrophic calamity for the Church and by extension, therefore, for the world.) 

The separation from the Catholic Church of what became the Protestant Churches (and the Protestant countries) of northern Europe was an inestimable loss to both sides, a loss which the general trajectory of both Catholic and Protestant communities has more recently begun to try to remedy. And certainly much misunderstanding has been corrected and many opportunities for collaboration and even shared worship have been among the beneficial fruits of modern ecumenism. Over a century ago, Paulist Founder, Servant of God Isaac Hecker hopefully anticipated this: "Who knows? Perhaps the time has come when men will consider impartially the causes which have brought about the deplorable religious dissensions and divisions existing among Christians, and that a movement is about to set it on all sides towards unity, and the prayer of Christ that “all who believe in Him might be made perfect in unity” will find its fulfillment. This is our hope. To contribute to this result we labor" (The Church and the Age, 1887, p. 235).

I first seriously studied Luther (and Calvin) not in seminary but earlier as a grad student in political theory. I easily found in Luther, the person, someone I could appreciate - not for his rebellion or for his dismantling of the sacramental economy or for his subordination of the Church to secular princes, but for his personal struggle with his own scrupulosity, his struggle - as it is usually phrased - to "find a gracious God." Ein Feste Burg ist unser Gott is not just a stirring hymn (though it certainly is that), but more importantly it is a celebration of what a merciful God has done - and continues to do - on our behalf and an invitation to a new and more abundant life as a result. It may have historically been the anthem of the Reformation, but it is a hymn we can all join in singing

Sheldon Wolin's Politics and Vision introduced me seriously to John Calvin as a substantive theorist of ecclesial and social order, a re-situation of the individual in community contrary to the Reformation's more extreme individualizing and anti-institutional tendencies. Meanwhile, a graduate seminar with Paul Ramsey and Horton Davies took me directly into Calvin's most monumental work The Institutes of the Christian Religion. There I was personally particularly touched, for example, by Calvin's treatment of Divine Providence in his in Part 2 of The Institutes, chapter 17, notably section 10, Without certainty about God's providence life would be unbearable.

The New England Transcendentalists, who so influenced Hecker were part of a reaction against classical Calvinist theology. Hecker himself assimilated the Transcendentalist critique of Calvinism, but my impression is that he had little or no direct familiarity with the spirituality of classical Calvinism, let alone with with the writings of Calvin himself. Indeed, Hecker’s understanding of Protestantism was largely derived from his early experience with the Transcendentalists. His diagnosis of 19th-century American Protestantism as being in decline may have been prescient. It may, in some respects, have anticipated the 20th-century decline of the so-called "Mainline" Protestant denominationalism with which we are all now so familiar, but it was a limited perspective nonetheless. As Paulist Father James McVann acknowledged (in his 2-volume unpublished history of the Paulists), Hecker’s “facts and figures mostly took account of a decline in Eastern Massachusetts, without considering the strong roots of Protestantism in other parts of America, which his travels South and West should have shown him.” It is fair to say  that Hecker’s limited experience of American Protestantism failed to appreciate evangelical Protestantism’s continued relevance and dynamic energy in modern and post-modern society. The mutual sharing of Catholic and Evangelical ideas and spiritual insights that is occurring today offers much promise for contemporary American religious experience - and, by extension therefore, for the re-evangelization of American society.