Catholic Capitalists and a Baptist Debtor
Published in Marietta Daily Journal March 5. 2017
I am indebted to two Catholics who
have taught me much about the American way of life and who have given me an
example of how to stand firm even if you must stand alone. It all started in my childhood.
When I was eleven, a small Catholic
church was built on the east edge of town on U.S. Highway 80. In Forest, Mississippi there were at the time
five churches: two Baptist, one Methodist, one Presbyterian, and one Assembly
of God.
The word ecumenical certainly wasn’t
in my vocabulary, but ecumenical we were, if only once a year. When revival time came, normally at
mid-summer, the churches all visited each other. “Revival” had both a functional and a
spiritual meaning. Functionally it was a
week of evening preaching services from Sunday through Friday. Ordinarily the week’s preacher was an
evangelist or a pastor from far off. Spiritually
it was a time for concentration on renewal, rededication, and bringing the
faithless to faith.
In
terms of decibels, the Assembly of God, pastored by the brilliantly red-headed
Sister Robinson, was the loudest. The
Presbyterians were, without question, the quietest. In fact, the Presbyterians were deathly
quiet, but their quiet was penetrating and meaningful. It taught me that quiet can often afford
self-examination in a way noise cannot.
The Baptists and Methodists were
somewhere in the middle on the decibel scale, although we could get down and
loud with those wondrous hymns that are now so disrespectfully ignored. Speaking of ecumenicalism, had it not been
for Charles Wesley, that great hymn-writing Methodist, we Baptists would have
had very little to sing.
I don’t know if Catholics would have joined us or not, but I
remember the effect that the new little Catholic church had on a school bus
full of energetic children and teenagers.
When St, Michael’s building was finished and a sign was placed near the
highway, we realized that “the Catholics” had come to our area. Set back into thin woods, the chapel-like
structure bespoke as much quietness as the Presbyterians.
Every morning as the school bus
approached and began to pass by the new church, everyone grew absolutely
silent. Those on the church side of the
bus pressed their noses to the window and stared. Those on the opposite side of the bus stood
up, leaned over toward the church side, and stared in silence as well. As soon as the church was out of sight, the
bus became noisy again.
This pattern continued for at least
two weeks until we finally got used to the church, or more precisely, to the
word “Catholic.”
A few years later, because of a deep
interest in politics, I became more acquainted with Catholicism. At age 16 I saw my first copy of National
Review magazine and became a fan of its Catholic editor and columnist, William
F. Buckley. Buckley was not ashamed of
his faith. Having written “God and Man
at Yale” while in college wherein he charged Yale professors with being
committed anti-capitalists, Buckley never minimized his faith, never gave up on
his church, and never viewed politics and faith or science and faith as being
mutually exclusive. Buckley became my
teacher.
A Catholic I admire just as much is
the recently departed Michael Novak.
Novak was a theologian, professor, and Democratic speech writer who took
a philosophical turn in his 40’s from leftist to staunch defender of
capitalism. “Capitalism has its flaws,”
he wrote, “but all other known systems of political economy are worse.”
With a deep concern for the poor and
for immigrants like his Slovak parents, Novak in his “Spirit of Democratic
Capitalism,” wrote,” Any hope we have for alleviating poverty and tyranny lies
in the much despised system of capitalism.”
Faulting his own party for not
defending the working class, Novak wrote, “If America is going to come apart
into those who went to college and those who didn’t, I want to be with those
who didn’t, those who don’t want their kids taking acid, sleeping around, or
having abortions.”
It is rare for a Catholic theologian
who trained for the priesthood to be a defender of capitalism. It is even rarer for such a defender to be
avid about it and to write, “Socialism is the residue of Judeo-Christian faith
without religion.”
As for St. Michael’s on U.S. Highway
80 that made me start wondering what a Catholic was, it’s still there, sitting
pretty. I hope the school bus route
still takes youngsters by the church. It
might lead them to wonder and learn as it did me.
Roger
Hines
3/2/17
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