I blogged yesterday (here and here) about the continuing collusion of centrist American Catholic political commentators with the political and religious right. I noted, in particular, the presently-unfolding attempt of the right, abetted by the center, to spin a discourse about the new president as obtuse to Catholic voters and Catholic concerns. In recent days, a powerful—and carefully planned and massaged—rhetoric about Obama's purported polarization of Catholic voters has begun to plant itself all through the mainstream media.This rhetoric completely ignores the continued support for President Obama among a majority of American Catholics. It ignores the complexity of Catholic positions on many social and moral issues, including the two identify-defining issues of abortion and same-sex marriage around which a right-wing politics of Catholic identity seeks to construct itself—issues regarding which the Catholic right (aided by the center) refuses to permit any substantive discussion.
As my postings yesterday suggest, this rhetoric is an attempt to consolidate a definition of what it means to be Catholic in the public sphere today which kowtows to the narrowest, most ill-informed, and most politicized positions of some bishops today. The warning that Mr. Obama is polarizing Catholics, and the confinement of “the” Catholic perspective to a rigidly ideological definition of what it means to be Catholic in the public sphere, not only serves the political interests of the right: it also shields the church itself from a necessary and healthy conversation about Catholic identity and Catholic faith at this point in history.
In playing this game, centrists are doing what they have willingly done for some time now: serving the right. For those interested in the broader political context of yesterday’s analysis, I recommend an essay by Robert Parry at Alternet today, on the collusion between the right and the mainstream media in crafting rhetoric of Obama as a polarizer (here). Some choice passages:
By and large, the Washington press corps continues to function within a paradigm set in the 1980s, mostly bending to the American Right, especially to its perceived power to destroy mainstream journalistic careers and to grease the way toward lucrative jobs for those who play ball.
The parameters set by this intimidated (or bought-off) news media, in turn, influence how far Washington politicians feel they can go on issues, like health-care reform or environmental initiatives, or how risky they believe it might be to pull back from George W. Bush’s "war on terror" policies.
And:
The commentariat class also has continued to frame the Republican hatred of Obama as Obama’s fault, describing his "failure" to achieve a more bipartisan Washington or -- in its latest formulation -- calling Obama "the most polarizing President ever."
It might seem counterintuitive to call a President with approval ratings in the 60 percentiles "polarizing" -- when that term was not applied to George W. Bush with his numbers half that of Obama’s. But this notion has arisen because Republicans have turned harshly against Obama, while Democrats and Independents have remained supportive.
And finally:
Already a new conventional wisdom is taking shape, that "polarizing" Obama would be wrong to use the "reconciliation" process to enact health-care and environmental programs by majority vote, that he should instead water them down and seek enough Republican votes to overcome GOP filibusters in the Senate, which require 60 votes to stop.
Make no mistake about it: the rhetoric of Obama as a polarizer, with its Catholic corollaries about the new president as a polarizer of Catholic voters, timed as it is to spin out in the same week as the tea-bag protests, is all about stopping necessary conversations regarding significant social issues. It is an attempt to undercut the new president’s mandate for progressive change that a majority of the citizens of the nation—including a majority of Catholics—clearly want.
In the Catholic context, this rhetoric is an attempt to confine the conversation about what it means to be Catholic in the public square today to the rhetoric of the right, and to the narrowest pronouncements of bishops in the pocket of the political and religious right. If American Catholics permit this thwarting of a conversation that many Catholics clearly want, and if they allow the definition of what it means to be Catholic in American culture today to be confined by right-wing interest groups and their centrist collaborators, the Catholic church in the U.S. will succeed in doing further damage to itself at a point at which it is hard to imagine a church that seeks viability sustaining more self-inflicted wounds.
