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Church institutions are the backbone of society
Richard Garnett, a law professor at Notre Dame, writes in USA Today about parish closings nationwide and why this is of more than sectarian interest. He also argues why—despite the effect on all Americans, not just Catholics—this is not a matter for the courts to meddle in.
On the first point, he recalls the important contributions Catholics have made to America in the areas of education, healthcare, human rights, workers’ rights, care for the disabled and the elderly, and more. But there’s also a larger, more nebulous reason as well.
We might also care about the closings for slightly more abstract but no less important reasons. In a nutshell: It is important to a free society that non-government institutions thrive. Such institutions enrich and diversify what we call “civil society.” They are like bridges and buffers that mediate between the individual and the state. They are the necessary infrastructure for communities and relationships in which loyalties and values are formed and passed on and where persons develop and flourish.
Catholics and non-Catholics alike can appreciate the crucial role that these increasingly vulnerable “mediating associations” play in the lives of our cities. Harvard University Professor Robert Putnam and others have emphasized the importance of “social capital,” both to the health of political communities and to the development of engaged citizens. In America’s cities, it has long been true that neighborhood churches and schools have provided and nurtured this social capital by serving as places where connections and bonds of trust are formed and strengthened. As Joel Kotkin writes in his recent book, The City: A Global History, healthy cities are and must be “sacred, safe and busy.” If he is right, Catholic parishes, schools and hospitals help make America’s cities great.
Getting government off the churches’ backs
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You would find similar reasoning in both “It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good,” by Sen. Rick Santorum, and “Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots,” by Rod Dreher. Catholic institutions, and not just parishes either, provide a crucial role in knitting together the social fabric and making connections between people. Without them, our society could end up as a collection of individuals sitting at home alone in the dark typing on keyboards and mesmerized by the TV. I would bet, in fact, that aside from work, churches are the number one places in which people interact with those outside their own families.
Yet as important as churches are to the fabric of our communities, Garnett argues that asking the courts to meddle in parish closings and the internal organization of the Catholic Church is a clear violation of the First Amendment. So what can government do to support the institutions without violating the Constitution?
That said, legislators and citizens should take care not to add needlessly to their regulatory and other burdens by requiring Catholic hospitals to provide “emergency contraception,” or authorizing lawsuits against religious schools relating to the hiring and firing of teachers and ministers, or by misusing zoning and land-use laws. And urban Catholic schools’ many contributions to the public good provide yet another, entirely secular, reason to embrace school-choice programs.
After all, what good is a church that’s forced to stay open but has been effectively neutered by the government. In that scenario, I don’t think I could find much difference between it and Communist China’s government-run Patriotic Catholic Association.
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COMMENTS
A good editorial, but aren’t rural parishes in as much peril as urban? Is there something to urbanism that merits our support more than ruralism?
JBP
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/18/06 at 05:17 PM Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.
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