HCH photo

John Carr speaks of politics and the church in Chaminade University’s Mystical Rose Oratory on April 2.

“Politics is a good thing,” the executive director of the U.S. bishops’ Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development told a small group of academics, clergy and others in Chaminade University’s Mystical Rose Oratory, in the late afternoon of April 2.

He emphasized the word “good.”

John Carr wasn’t just saying this because his own life has been steeped in political affairs since his youth.

It’s what the church teaches, he said.

In fact, he said, it’s “the most counter-cultural thing the church teaches.”

“Politics is a worthy vocation,” he insisted. “Public service is truly a service.”

Carr was in Hawaii from Washington, D.C., a place that has given politics a “bad name,” a city he called “polarized and paralyzed,” to talk about the mission of the church in public life.

Wearing a close cropped beard, wire rim glasses and a D.C. “uniform” — a gray suit with subdued pinstripes and a mostly-red tie — he spoke for about an hour, making his case with quotes from Pope Benedict, the American bishops, his grandmother and Jesus, and a liberal sprinkling of his own droll mischievous humor.

Carr said that authentic religious involvement in politics is not what many people think it is — scrutinizing a candidate’s religious practices, or pastors telling their congregations how to vote.

Rather it is bringing religiously held values and beliefs to the public square for the common good.

“We have the same rights, no more, no less, than any other group in society” to participate in the political process, Carr said.

Being religious “doesn’t disqualify us from public discussion” as some would like to believe, he said.

On the contrary, the fundamental concerns of faith — “life and death, war and peace” — should be the same as those of politics.

“If it’s not … then it’s just about power and money,” he said.

Carr said the best “mission statement” he has heard is Jesus’ own, taken from Luke’s Gospel: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, new sight to the blind, and to set the downtrodden free.”

With a mission like that, the church “can’t stay on the sidelines” in a process as important as politics, Carr said.

The church must step forward to form public consciences and “open hearts and minds,” he said.

Drawing from Pope Benedict’s first encyclical, “Deus Caritas Est,” the speaker described the document as a “powerful direct call to love one another.”

The pope “calls for a formation of the heart,” he explained. “Charity must animate us.”

This era cries out for the church’s love-animated guidance, he said.

“We are demoralized,” he said. “Our moral values are gone. No one is talking about the unborn. The poor are missing from the discussion.”

Instead, he said, the political “right” is advocating for the “market” while the “left” votes to endorse “lifestyle choices.”

Unlike politicians who govern with a finger reading the prevailing wind, the “Catholic Church does not make it up as we go along,” Carr said.

Rather “our role is to change the wind,” he said, quoting evangelical activist Jim Wallis.

It’s not an impossible task, in Carr’s view. The Catholic Church not only has the proper principles, he said, but also the track record and the numbers.

“The question is, ‘How do we get our act together?’” he said.

“We teach human life and dignity, human rights and responsibilities, solidarity and subsidiarity,” Carr said, stressing the word “and” as a sign of the church’s inclusive embrace of the common good.

Besides, he said, the church practices what it preaches as “the largest supplier of education, health care, and human services in the world.”

In addition, “22 million of us in the United States go to church every week.”

The U.S. bishops, he said, urge Catholics to participate in the political process using the foundations of “conscience and prudence,” starting with the act of voting.

“In the end, the decision on how to use our vote is up to each of us,” he said.

“But we can’t wring our hands and go away” deterred by imperfect candidates, he said.

Just the opposite: “We need more Catholic Democrats; we need more Catholic Republicans; we need more Catholics running for office.”

Catholics won’t necessarily fit into such a polarized system, he said, “But we ought to be comfortable in our misfit.”

“No Catholic can say it is not my job to bring about justice and peace,” he said.

Because “How did you serve the poor?” will be the only question on the final exam, the last judgment, he said.

Sponsored by Chaminade University, Carr’s talk was attended by about 80 people. Invited were clergy, Hawaii Catholic Conference members, Chaminade University faculty and staff, and board of regents and governors, members of Honolulu’s business community, and friends and board members of the Chaminade’s Hogan Entrepreneurs program.

While in Hawaii Carr also visited with diocesan officials and spoke to Catholic school educators.