Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life

The current state of the 2016 election has made for much rhetoric decrying American politics—and the nation itself. While perhaps merited—as this election cycle presents two disappointing candidates for the presidency—this manner of speaking and writing about the election and, consequently, our country, has cast something of a cloud across the land.

Kathryn Lopez, the editor at large for the National Review Online, who spoke on the panel, chose to describe the 2016 election in a radically different manner: “It’s been so liberating,” she said. It’s a huge opportunity—an opportunity to re-examine our two-party system and party politics, as well as “a real opportunity to start crafting what Catholic politics should look like.”

Crafting Catholic politics will necessarily have to take place outside of this presidential election, as neither candidate is Catholic nor seems to place much value on human life and dignity. Panelist Christopher Hale, executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, put it rather bluntly stating that Catholics have already lost this election—an election that had once been heralded as the most Catholic election ever.

Nevertheless, Lopez reminds us that this provides an opportunity to redefine what Catholic politics should look like. Though we effectively conceive of politics through parties, platforms, and labels, a truly Catholic vision of politics is more transcendent: Pope Francis envisages public service as “a lofty vocation and one of the highest forms of charity” and writes further on politics as a mechanism to implement God’s will and vision in the world, as a means of peace and love.

This is the vision that we need. We need to believe in the potential of politics to be something greater than what it currently is, and this election—as Kathryn Lopez pointed out—provides us a window, an opportunity to do so.

Julia Greenwood is a sophomore in the College.