Catholic Catechesis and Conservatism: Key to Victory for Social Conservatives and the GOP

The old guard is passing, and the torch, willingly or no, is being passed on to a new generation of Catholics, a generation for whom their parents' and grandparents' blind adhereance to the Democrat party is a thing of the past.

Liberalism, for all its malice and strength in the passing boomer generation, simply does not reproduce itself in the Church. Such is a truth dawning upon a new generation of conservative Catholics as well as the liberals themselves still vying for control of the Church and its substantial voting block. Even though in politics it will long outlive the "Luv fest" that once held sway in Americn parishes, convents, schools and dioceses, liberalism simply has no staying power in the Church. No one cares any longer to dedicate an entire life of sacrifice and celibacy simply to be a poorly paid social-worker-psychothera-priest. Its easier to walk away from a Church with no meaning, no message, no transcendant sacred character, and no challenge. If everyone goes to heaven, all paths lead to salvation, and nothing is sinful, why persevere? The game on TV or extra sleep on Sunday brings greater reward than the banal music, inane psychobabble sermons, and watered down catechesis of the old guard liberal American Catholic experience.

However, evidence for a rebirth of Catholic conservativism abounds in the blooming orthodoxy and spiritual resurgence in many American seminaries, in a quiet but substantial embrace of true Catholicism at a growing number of established and newly founded Catholic universities, and in an exploding market in Catholic apologetics ministries, books, and tapes. Fearful of the collapse of their control over the catechesis of a generation of young Catholics, diocesan education bureaucrats are desperately pushing guidelines to reign in the surging orthodoxy and strength of the homeschooling movement. Some dioceses are using ecclesial blackmail, the witholding of the sacraments, to try to force homeschooled children back into diocesan controlled CCD programs, with their sex ed and AIDS curricula, to gain back control lost to parents in homeschooling. Almost universally, Rome is siding with the parents and their rights as the primary educators of their children in these turf wars between the American hierarchy and families.

Because this resurgence in Catholicism is new and broad-based yet subtle, with no central organizing institution or focal celebrity such as in the days of the Oxford movement and John Cardinal Newman, its political ramifications may be underestimated. Furthermore, while priestly pedophilia and its repurcussions threaten to hide this new reality behind shameful headlines, these revelations will not stop but embolden this quiet revolution. In fact, these very headlines may signal the death rattle for the debased liberal theology and morality that has embedded homosexuality and pederasty in the priesthood and episcopacy. It is a fact lost on few conservative Catholics that these crimes are the natural consequences of the same liberalism run amuck in institutional American Catholicism.

As this part of the sleeping giant that is the Catholic voter block awakens, they are looking for leadership and direction. They have finally recognized that there is a monster lurking not only in their church halls but also in the halls of government, a monster that only faith and grassroots conservative activism has a prayer of slaying. Their natural inclination to fight this monster, an inclination inspired and emboldened by their emerging understanding that they are members of a "Church Militant," living in an "age of the laity" ushered in by Vatican II, must be tapped into and guided towards effective political action.

How do we accomplish this task, as conservative and Catholic activists?

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