Is Tim Kaine a ‘Pope Francis’ Catholic? Wrong Question to Ask.
Hillary Clinton’s pick of Tim Kaine as her running mate has not only exposed raw tensions between Bernie Sanders’ style progressives and mainstream liberal Democrats. Her choice also puts the Virginia senator’s Catholic faith in the spotlight, and underscores the jagged terrain Catholic politicians must navigate as they strive to reconcile faith teachings with an array of complex issues in a diverse public square.
A graduate of a Jesuit high school in Kansas City who took a break from Harvard Law School to volunteer with Jesuit priests in Honduras, Kaine speaks authentically (in English or Spanish) about the way faith inspires his public service. He is a parishioner at a majority African-American Catholic church in a working-class section of Richmond. As a Catholic progressive educated by Jesuits and nuns, I’ve always admired Kaine’s commitment to his faith and the common good. His spirituality clearly isn’t a symbolic lapel pin he wears for show on the stump. He understands the preferential option for the poor, discernment, and finding God in all things, all hallmarks of the Catholic, Jesuit tradition. “All right some Jesuits in the house?” Kaine joked to applause that greeted him during his first campaign event with Hillary Clinton.
Given his background, it’s inevitable that Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pope, comes up when Kaine’s faith is under the microscope. ‘A Pope Francis Catholic’: Now that Tim Kaine is Clinton’s VP pick, will his faith matter?” a Washington Post article asks in a solid analysis that includes quotes from a Catholic University researcher who draws comparisons between the pope and the senator’s social justice commitments. “6 Ways that Hillary Clinton’s Vice President Pick Resembles Pope Francis,” the liberal ThinkProgress wrote, breathlessly describing Kaine as “the closest thing to an American Pope Francis.”
My fellow progressives, it’s time to take a long, deep breath.
I’m a Kaine fan and also wrote a book called “The Francis Effect,” so I feel ya here. The senator’s fight for living wages, comprehensive immigration reform, and his commitment to address climate change and inequality are all positions supported by the Catholic Church. Pope Francis not only applauds those efforts, but he has elevated traditional church teaching about economic and environmental justice to the forefront of his papacy. Plenty of conservative Catholics, including a few cardinals, are angry and anxious about the direction Francis is steering the global church. But let’s clarify a few things. When it comes to Catholic teaching and politics, the left and the right often oversimplify what is — and should be — a complicated nexus.
If we Catholics are honest with ourselves, most of us belly up to the cafeteria with our favorite dishes pre-ordered. “Cafeteria Catholicism,” a charge most frequently hurled by conservative Catholics at their liberal Catholic counterparts with no small dose of self-righteousness, is a brand that defines many. For all the ways Sen. Kaine embodies the values of the Catholic social justice tradition in his life and work, he also supports abortion rights, endorses gay marriage, and put aside his deep personal opposition to the death penalty to oversee the execution of 11 death row inmates during his time as governor. Those positions reflect the popular views of many Catholics, and Catholics of goodwill should debate them with civility and candor. But progressive Catholics should be honest enough to acknowledge that church teaching and Pope Francis strongly reject those positions. Stating that fact isn’t done to single out Kaine, but to help see more clearly through the ideological fog that has a funny way of growing thicker every four years.
Catholic and other religious conservatives also get it wrong by reducing the fullness of church teaching to litmus tests on abortion and marriage. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush won the White House in large part because of the unlikely marriage of convenience between Catholic and evangelical political activists who weaponized those issues for electoral ends. Being “pro-life” became defined almost exclusively as “anti-abortion,” allowing GOP Catholic elected officials who supported war, torture and draconian budget cuts that devastated the poor to get a free pass if they checked a single box. This political distortion of church teaching, often with the overt or tacit approval of some vocal bishops, at times left the impression that the Catholic Church was the Republican Party at Prayer. Sen. John Kerry, a social justice Catholic similar to Tim Kaine, crashed on the rocks of abortion politics during the 2004 presidential election, when Catholic activists on the right and some bishops made the case that his view on that issue disqualified him for president.
Pope Francis, without changing a comma in the Catechism, has started to reshape the Catholic narrative in public life. While some progressives prefer tuning out his strong condemnation of abortion and read his softer tone on LGBT issues as a blessing for same-sex marriage, the pope clearly does want a different approach.
“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods,” Francis said in one of his first blockbuster interviews. The pope called for a “new balance” to define the church’s public voice. Over the past three years, he has made poverty, inequality, climate change and a “globalization of indifference” that allows migrants to die in horrifying numbers with minimal response central to his priorities. Several U.S. Catholic bishops appointed by Pope Francis in recent years and those emboldened by his papacy have insisted that immigration, climate change and gun violence are, along with abortion, central “pro-life” issues that can’t be dismissed as peripheral concerns.
Catholics now battling about Tim Kaine on Twitter, Facebook and over family dinners should call a ceasefire, or at least resist the temptation to simply use Pope Francis and church teaching to justify our own politics. Instead, let’s allow the pope and our centuries-old Catholic social tradition to challenge us. This won’t make us as comfortable or as self-assured in our arguments, but maybe that is a good place to start.
