Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Catholic Democrats and the ‘Privatization of Faith.’

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend toured Omaha on March 11 speaking about her book, “Failing America’s Faithful” on the 40th anniversary of Robert Kennedy’s, her father’s, presidential campaign.

The book has two premises.

1. The first argues that conservative Catholics have ignored the Church’s history of social teaching on justice and have instead focused on less important themes. “The Church has shrunk God into three narrow issues: heterosexual marriage, stem-cell research and anti-abortion.” This shift from social justice to single-sided issues occurred during the sex abuse scandals when the Church needed to prove its holiness.
2. The second argues that the Democratic party has attempted disassociate itself from religion and has alienated Catholic Democrats. She believed that the Catholicism and the Democratic Party go together because that the Church has a long history politics (“You don’t remain a Church for 2,000 years unless you are good a politics,” she said) and because the party’s ideology reflects the Catholic social teaching. However, instead of emphasizing community, the Democratic Party has ineffectively chose emphasizing the individual because it is more politically successful.

While Townsend seemed to fit comfortably into the liberal Catholic niche her tone dramatically shift to the right when speaking to Omaha Catholic Democrats at the Firefighters’ Union Hall.

At Creighton she said, “The Catholic Church got the abortion issue wrong.” She went on to criticize the Church because of its sexism and close mindedness. Three hours later, she did not mention the word “abortion,” skipped women’s rights in the Church and offered hope for the possibility of “being on top next week.”

More importantly, she praised State Senator Tom White as a ideal leader for Nebraska Catholic Democrats. Sen. White’s record is a little less praiseworthy. He touted his stem-cell research bill in front of the audience, which included a priest. (In her speech after Sen. White’s, Townsend did not mention her disdain for the Church’s contempt for stem-cell research.)

More importantly, Sen. White said that he was a pro-life politician “beyond the fetus” since he supported the revitalization of Nebraska’s mental health hospitals. However, Sen. White said he would not be supporting the bill in the state senate that would abolish the death penalty. When I said, “Don’t you think the state should not be inolved in the killing of humans business,” he responded about some Catholic theologians in California, as if the state’s name justified his liberal tag.

This dissonance between Townsend’s speech at Creighton and her speech in the city echoes her sentiment that the Catholic Universities lead the way in the social gospel. I still contend that one should not have to scale back beliefs depending on its prediction reception. However, a journalism professor reminded me that she is still asking for a lot of change, but “she has to consider her audience.”