Capitol gains: how the church keeps faith with the political system.

In an interview with the editors, John Carr, secretary for social development and world peace for the U.S. Catholic Conference, reveals what a representative and lobbyist for the Catholic bishops can and can't do in Washington. As the U.S. Catholic bishops' Secretary for Social Development and World Peace, what are some of the things you do?

I have a great job, but a lousy title. The title sort of combines Washington pomp and ecclesiastical arrogance.

At the bishops' meeting last summer in Chicago, a couple in the hotel lobby was looking at the big National Conference of Catholic Bishops name tag I was wearing.

One of them said, "You're not a bishop." I explained that obviously I wasn't a bishop but that I work for the bishops.

The man looked a little closer at my name tag and then said to his wife, "He's in charge of social development and world peace."

She was clearly not impressed. She said, "Well, judging by the morning newspaper, he needs to do a better job."

Our department has basically four tasks. First, we help the bishops communicate Catholic social teaching. For example, the bishops issued a statement on the 100th anniversary of Rerum novarum that summarized a century of social teaching.

Second, we help the bishops apply that teaching to major domestic and international policy issues such as policies affecting children and families, the budget, arms, and human life and dignity.

Third, we assist the bishops in advocating for Catholic values and principles in the public arena, both in Congress and with the administration. Right now, we're deeply involved in legislative battles as diverse as welfare reform, land mines, and the earned-income tax credit.

Finally, and this is perhaps our most important task, we work to build the capacity of the church to fulfill its social mission. Probably the best example of that is the bishops' recent document on parish social ministry, "Communities of Salt and Light."

Because we are a department of the bishops' conference, it is the bishops who set our agenda. That means that we cannot act on a particular policy or issue unless that action is in fact based on policies adopted by the bishops. So we don't move very fast. But once the conference has clearly established its policy, we can sometimes be a powerful force.

Give us an example.

Recently we took up in a serious way the issue of land mines. This may seem like a very small piece of a very big issue, but the Vatican and bishops around the world had repeatedly asked the U.S. church to take the lead in dealing with the millions of land mines shittered around the earth.

Some 26,000 people, most of them kids, are killed or maimed by land mines every year. In Cambodia and Angola, for example, there are more land mines than there are children.

Land mines don't discriminate between civilians and combatants or even between periods of peace and war. It takes about $3 to bury a land mine, but it takes more than $1,000 to remove one.

It's a horrible scourge, and we have a great responsibility because the United States produces and has exported them. There's no getting rid of them without an active U.S. leadership role.

So last summer the bishops' conference adopted a statement on land mines, and we intensified our lobbying of Congress and the administration, urging them to take the lead in establishing worldwide restraints on land mines. We were able to raise the moral dimensions and the human dimensions of what was previously debated as just a military matter.

When the Senate recently passed a moratorium on land-mine use, the author of that legislation, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), acknowledged that it wouldn't have been passed without the concerted effort of the Catholic community.

So that's a small example of where our efforts have resulted in something concrete.

Where else have you focused your public-policy efforts?

Recently our main focus has been on domestic issues. Last year we concentrated on health-care reform, and this year we have been spending much of our energy seeking to influence the welfare-reform debate.

The framework we have been using in evaluating the various welfare-reform proposals is how they touch poor children and vulnerable families. The earned-income tax credit is a high priority for us, as are aspects of housing and health care.

On health care, we're focusing more on Medicaid than Medicare. There are a lot of groups--well-organized, well-funded, powerful groups in Washington--that worry about how proposed changes will affect seniors, but not many groups are focused on how they will affect poor kids.

Several of these issues have prolife and abortion dimensions, so we work closely with the bishops' prolife office and have been active with this Congress on prolife issues as well.

In Washington, international issues get reduced to 15-second sound bites. The sound bite for our international agenda would be: "fewer weapons, more development."

Unfortunately, the United States ranks at the top in arms exports and near the bottom, on a per-capita basis, in the development aid we provide abroad. We believe our country ought to reverse those ratios.

What's your view of the shifts in public policy over the last couple of years?

I think the American people are frustrated. They're not happy with the status quo, and they want change. They don't think government is working well, and they don't think their dollars are well used.

In 1992 Americans voted for change and, frankly, they didn't get much change. So two years later they voted again for change, and now they're getting some. But the polls seem to indicate that people are a little nervous about some of the change they are getting.

Do you find those polls reassuring?

Just to a certain extent. Medicare is the most popular government program in America. Everybody's mother is at some point going to be on Medicare. But how does that translate to other issues?

The Democrats--and I don't want to overgeneralize--seem to have lost not only the votes in the Congress, but to a certain extent many have lost their voice and maybe even their values. They spend more time complaining about things like Newt Gingrich's book--waving ketchup bottles around--than making their case. Their party won't even begin to have a conversation about unborn children.

The Republicans seem to be so set on pushing through their "revolution" that there's not much room for dialogue. It's become a matter of discipline rather than discussion.

So despite all the changes, people continue to be frustrated. Political money is still a very dominant force. Partisan gamesmanship continues in both the White House and Congress. And there's a lot more bumper-sticker and sound-bite discussion than real dialogue.

How does this kind of a political culture affect policymaking?

A key problem is that we end up with these funny false choices. In the family-values debate, for example, you've got one crowd that says, "What we really need is more personal responsibility, more time with our kids, more sexual restraint, more good, old-fashioned morality."

Then another group says, "What we really need are better jobs with better wages, better health care. Family leave would help. Raise the minimum wage." As if you had to choose between those!

In the Catholic community, we are strong advocates of moral values. We preach and teach sexual responsibility and sacrifice for children every day. But we're also advocates for helping families deal with the problems in their lives. Decent jobs, decent wages, health care, and family leave are all part of our agenda.

So our Catholic agenda doesn't fit the categories very well, which occasionally confuses the people in Washington, but is also a source of some respect.

What's the key in your approach to public-policy work?

We're not a political-interest group, we're a community of faith. We don't build our agenda based on polls. We don't do a lot of focus groups.

The Catholic Church has been called a lot of things, but we've never been called trendy. So we don't wake up in the morning and say, "How do we reshape our agenda today?"

As Catholic advocates, we're not free to abandon the unborn because they're politically incorrect. We're not free to walk away from immigrants because they don't vote. We're not free to forget about kids and poverty because welfare mothers are stereotyped.

The American Medical Association and the National Rifle Association make their deals. They can play the Washington game, which in many respects is determined by the power of money, endorsements, and political-action committees.

We don't do any of that. But we bring to the political process some assets that other people don't have. What we have is a set of moral principles and a lot of experience.

What are the theological foundations for your public-policy work? There are still many Catholics who say the church shouldn't get mixed up in the dirty business of politics.

I've heard that one. You just have to be clear that this is a work of faith. Our involvement isn't based on a political option or secular or ideological preference of a few religious leaders.

This involvement goes back to Jesus in the synagogue in Nazareth. He unrolled the scrolls and said, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me. I bring good news to the poor, liberty to captives, new sight to the blind."

What does it mean to bring good news to the poor when, in the richest nation on earth, a fourth of our preschoolers are growing up poor? What does it mean to bring liberty to captives with so much addiction and materialism and consumerism that enslaves us? What does it mean to bring new sight to the blind in a society where we are often blinded to the dignity and lives of unborn children, poor kids, and people with disabling conditions?

Before you get to the church's social teaching, you've got to start with the life and words of Jesus. And Jesus said it clearly: we'll be judged by our response to the least among us.

In these days, that challenge is very direct. You can't walk from the el train to your offices here in Chicago without walking by homeless people who--if you believe our traditionare in effect "Jesus in disguise for us," as Mother Teresa says.

So you start with the scriptures, which are at the heart of our faith, and then you look at the principles of social teaching that the Catholic Church has developed over the last 100 years. That's a remarkable policy framework.

How receptive is our current political culture to that message?

Right now, it's not very receptive at all. What's going on--not just in Congress but in our society as a whole--is a tendency to turn away from the poor and focus little attention on questions of justice and peace.

We have a society that's turning inward: perhaps neo-isolationist, frustrated by the failures to overcome poverty in the past and tempted by political leaders and their own frustrations to turn away from the challenge to work for justice and peace and to combat poverty.

Despite our efforts, we have not been able to protect the unborn. We have more poor children in this country now than we have had in a long time.

What we're trying to do right now, both with the administration and the Congress, is limit the damage in the short run, but do that in a way that increases our capacity and our credibility to affect the debate in the long run. This country is going to have to face questions of poverty and international responsibility again. We're trying to lay the groundwork for making a difference in the future.

So ours is a countercultural message, but it provides a moral framework that allows Catholics, along with people of differing convictions, differing faiths, or no faith, to make a contribution.

What are some of the contributions Catholic social teaching can make to improving the social and economic order in the U.S.

One of the things that I think American Catholics can bring to the public debate in this country is the broad approach of Catholic social teaching to economics.

This has never been a country or, for that matter, a church attracted by Marxist theories. Our tradition says that markets have not only advantages, they also have limitations. There are some common goods like the environment or health care where the market by itself isn't sufficient to meet the requirements of justice, human life, and human dignity.

What I find disturbing is when people who are ideologically driven look at Catholic social teaching and pick out the things they really like. "I love the option for the poor, but this stuff about abortion I don't really like." Or the reverse.

The same is true with economics. There is a temptation to affirm the church's strong support of private property and our teaching on the limitation of government and to ignore the emphasis on solidarity, the responsibilities of government, and the limits of private property. Or vice versa.

Selective orthodoxy is a risk for all of us. We have a very rich tradition, and we can't reduce it to bumpersticker messages.

When John Paul II came to our country, he asked: "Is present-day America becoming less sensitive, less caring toward the poor, the weak, the stranger, the needy? It must not." We must accept his challenge and do all we can to ensure that America does not.

Excerpted with permission from the March/April issue of Salt of the Earth magazine, published by the Claretians. For subscription information, call 800-328-6515.