Archbishop Charles J. Chaput delivered a lecture at the University of Toronto, in which he spoke out against the “spirit of adulation bordering on servility” toward Obama that “already exists among some of the same Democratic-friendly Catholic writers, scholars, editors and activists who once accused prolifers of being too cozy with Republicans.” He also says:
I think Catholics—and I mean here mainly American Catholics—need to remember four simple things in the months ahead.
First, all political leaders draw their authority from God. We owe no leader any submission or cooperation in the pursuit of grave evil. In fact, we have the duty to change bad laws and resist grave evil in our public life, both by our words and our non-violent actions. The truest respect we can show to civil authority is the witness of our Catholic faith and our moral convictions, without excuses or apologies.
Second, in democracies, we elect public servants, not messiahs. It’s worth recalling that despite two ugly wars, an unpopular Republican president, a fractured Republican party, the support of most of the American news media and massively out-spending his opponent, our new president actually trailed in the election polls the week before the economic meltdown. This subtracts nothing from the legitimacy of his office. It also takes nothing away from our obligation to respect the president’s leadership.
But it does place some of today’s talk about a “new American mandate” in perspective. Americans, including many Catholics, elected a gifted man to fix an economic crisis. That’s the mandate. They gave nobody a mandate to retool American culture on the issues of marriage and the family, sexuality, bioethics, religion in public life and abortion. That retooling could easily happen, and it clearly will happen—but only if Catholics and other religious believers allow it. It’s instructive to note that the one lesson many activists on the American cultural left learned from their loss in the 2004 election—and then applied in 2008—was how to use a religious vocabulary while ignoring some of the key beliefs and values that religious people actually hold dear.
Read the rest of Chaput’s four simple things to remember, as well as his full remarks, here.