My wife and I are blessed by having loving friendships with faithful Catholics. My sister-in-law is devout Catholic and when we visit her, we usually attend Sunday Mass at her parish church. When Catholic friends visit us, we go with them to a Catholic Church in our community. I find the Mass ritual spiritually moving, although I am not allowed to partake in the communion bread and wine since I am Protestant. Theologically, I disagree with withholding the elements from non-Catholic Christians as Christ shed his body and blood for all, not just for Christians who hold certain doctrinal beliefs. Communion should unite Christians, not divide them.
When I was young, my family watched the evening news together. Walter Cronkite, the CBS news anchor, would bring world news into our living room and was a trusted news source. His evening news was considered objective and non-partisan. The US government was trusted until the Vietnam War and Watergate destroyed the public’s trust. Investigative reporting revealed governmental falsities and illegal activities which led to consequential actions. Today, most Americans primarily choose their news sources based on their ideology. For example, one can turn on Fox News and see a story about illegal immigrants committing horrendous crimes and storming in-mass across the US border with Mexico. Change the channel to MSNBC and there is an immigration story about immigrants desperately seeking food, medicine, and safety. The US culture is divided with few in the middle.
I was born before the 1964 Civil Rights Bill and have sadly seen the destructive unjust treatment of racial minorities within the US. In a few days, the US will celebrate the 250th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. US history is filled with race inequality, although the march towards equality has proceeded steadily towards justice for all. During my lifetime, race relations have improved and while not perfected, I am hopeful (and pray) that my grandchildren will not witness the injustices I saw.
All these stories involved community groups within democracy. In Chapter 4, titled Democratic Toleration and the Groups of the Community, of Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr’s 1944 publication, The Children of Light and The Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of its Traditional Defense (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2011), Niebuhr examines “the three primary types of groups: religious, ethnic, and economic, by which the life of the community is both enriched and imperiled.” It is important to bear in mind that Niebuhr was writing his book during World War II, over 80 years ago. Yet, his writings can still be applied to contemporary times. “The children of darkness in this case set the false universal of the national community against all other particular expressions of vitality; but a genuine universalism must seek to establish harmony without destroying the richness and variety of life. One of the greatest problems of democratic civilization is how to integrate the life of its various subordinate, ethnic, religious and economic groups in the community in such a way that the richness and harmony of the whole community will be enhanced and not destroyed by them.” (page 124)
Niebuhr first examines religious groups and declares that there are three primary approaches. The first is the effort “to overcome religious diversity and restore the original unity of culture.” (page 126) He uses the example of Catholicism that attempts to corral all of Christianity into its fold. The second approach is pure secularism, which regards religion as “outmoded forms of culture which will gradually disappear with the general extension of enlightened good-will.” (page 129) Niebuhr forecasts this trend as the end of human existence. The third approach “requires a very high form of religious commitment. It demands that each religion, or each version of a single faith, seek to proclaim its highest insights while yet preserving an humble and contrite recognition of the fact that all actual expressions of religious faith are subject to historical contingency and relativity. … Religious faith ought therefore to be a constant fount of humility.” (page 134-5) I agree with his third approach and pray that the Catholic Church becomes humbler and more catholic by allowing all those professing faith in Jesus Christ to partake in their communion elements.
Niebuhr was an early advocate of racial equality. He also ties religious humility to race relations. “Racial prejudice, the contempt of the other group, is an inevitable concomitant of racial pride; and racial pride is an inevitable concomitant of the ethnic will to live.” (page 139) “The ideals of democracy do contradict this pride; but it is an illusion of idealistic children of light to imagine that we can destroy evil merely by avowing ideals. … No democratic society can afford to capitulate to the pride of dominant groups.” (pages 142-3) He admonishes “the foolish children of light” who seek to prove that minority groups “are not as bad as their detractors claim them to be.” (page 144) We all are biased and corrupted by pride.
His third group is the economic class struggle. “It is a tragic fact that the civil war which threatens democratic communities, has been created by two schools of foolish children of light, each of which failed to recognize the corruption of particular interest in ostensibly universal social ideals.” (page 149) Niebuhr sees no perfect solution as the two extremes, individualism and community, are partially contradictory and partially complementary. He again returns to humility. “Some of the greatest perils to democracy arise from the fanaticism of moral idealists who are not conscious of the corruption of self-interest in their professed ideals. Democracy therefore requires something more than a religious devotion to moral ideals. It requires religious humility.” (page 151)
Niebuhr closes with a warning to our present US situation: Democracy’s “internal peril lies in the conflict of various schools and classes of idealists, who profess different ideals but exhibit a common conviction that their own ideals are perfect.” (page 152) I will next discuss Chapter 5, Niebuhr’s final chapter, titled The World Community.
