Wash. Post: Nationalized Healthcare is ‘The Most Catholic’?

The Washington Post’s religion writer Anthony Stevens-Arroyo had a lot of praise for Teddy Kennedy’s funeral Mass but not because of its religious content. Stevens-Arroyo thought that the thing that made the Kennedy funeral “the most Catholic” was the constant allusions to things political.

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Stevens-Arroyo began his piece asking, “So, did Kennedy’s liberal politics interrupt a ritual meant to unite and not divide?” His answer seems to reveal his own liberal politics instead of any understanding of American Catholicism and he certainly comes down on the side of those that saw no reason not to impose political matters on a Mass. After several paragraphs that celebrated the fact that Kennedy’s Mass featured “political persuasion in ritual,” Stevens-Arroyo goes on to excuse Kennedy for his support of abortion by removing any religious meaning to the issue and claiming it was only political. This in itself shows that Stevens-Arroyo, the religious reporter, doesn’t want to address the actual religious principle behind the issue. But his view on what is and is not “Catholic” is what is most striking here.

The overt political statements came from the mouths of children who paraded before the microphones at the Prayer of the Faithful. Each petition was worded with quotes from a Kennedy speech. The most political asked us to pray that health care be recognized as a “right, not a privilege.” Yet that petition was also the most Catholic, echoing passionate statements from popes and bishops to “take back our government” and make it an instrument of Catholic obligations to make God’s Kingdom come.

This is odd. What pope or bishop is saying in America that we need to “take back our government”? Just who is Stevens-Arroyo quoting here, religious figures or denizens of MoveOn.org? And how is injecting healthcare into a funereal Mass “the most Catholic” thing? Further, what pope or bishop has intimated that enshrined in Catholicism is the command to take over American government? More specifically, what Catholic doctrine makes a socialized healthcare system “the most Catholic”? It would all be quite mystifying if it wasn’t so obvious that we are talking Stevens-Arroyo’s opinion of what he wants religion to do as opposed to what religions say they want to do.