In a speech to a packed room at Villanova University, during the university’s three-day celebration of the legacy and work of St. Thomas of Villanova —a celebration that includes scholarly presentations, community gatherings, this keynote address and a day of service in which thousands fan out across the region to do charitable work—, E.J. Dionne called for a politics rooted in conscience and compassion for our fellow human beings. The acclaimed journalist, scholar and Washington Post columnist rooted his talk in Catholic Social Teaching and spoke of an historical drive, in the US, toward comprehensive social justice.

Dionne asked the problematic question: Is the Catholic political vocation to make everyone feel guilty about something? Villanova’s president, Father Peter Donohue, noted with good humor that his staff were worried about the topic, but seemed not at all worried himself: indeed, the university seemed very much tuned into Dionne’s message. And that message? Guilt, he said, is not a bad thing; in fact, “guilt actually contains the seeds of hope, because it contains the idea that we can do better, that we should do better.”

Dionne was raised Catholic and expressed a profound admiration for the work he has seen nuns doing throughout his life, women who have sacrificed so much in the personal realm and in many cases have “lived close to those in need”, tending to the least privileged and most desperate of people. He spoke of how “priests in the Congo, laboring in obscurity”, people of good-will facing sometimes shocking personal danger, but devoting themselves to making conditions better for others, motivated him to see a direct connection between Catholic Social Teaching and the realm of political action.

Dionne was passionate in his defense of religion as a moderating, not a radicalizing force, and noted that in the United States, religious conviction has tended, historically, to be a foundation for action to advance the cause of social justice. He said fashion of the last few decades, whereby a “conservative Christian” movement has tended to err on the side of fundamentalism and ideology, rejecting many acts of social conscience as leftist or socialist, is in fact “anachronistic”, an out of date hearkening back to 19th-century Europe, entrenched ideological camps and feudalistic extremism.

“Family values”, he pointed out, must be tied to a serious commitment to social justice: “Social justice requires family values, and family values require social justice.” How can one build a just society for one’s children, if the society is fraught with injustice, conflict and marginalization of the disempowered? How can a social unit as small and intimate as the family withstand the sweeping pressures of a society of normalized injustice and rule by the privileged?

Social justice, fundamental fairness, an honest system of checks and balances, where political freedom is everyone’s right and even families of humble beginnings can build any future they can dream: that is a society in which families can live in dignity and have some hope of keeping safe against the overwhelming force of mass culture.

The issue of how we think about Christian morality has come to distort our politics in important ways, so we are surprised to hear a little known Illinois state senator say with passion in the summer of 2004 that “We worship an awesome God in the blue states!” (He emphasized the word ‘awesome’, emphasizing the faith factor, or what Dionne speaks of in his book Souled Out as “radical amazement”. He quotes the Jewish thinker Heschel, who argued that “wonder rather than doubt is the root of knowledge.”)

How is our thinking about Christian morality distorting our politics? For one, it is shocking to hear a liberal politician express as the foundation of his politics a religious faith. Yet that is what Obama did so visibly in 2004, as so many others do every day, basing their actions in favor of social justice on their spiritual faith. And this surprise stems from the forced association of “Christian” with “Christian right”.

The exit polling after the 2004 election included as one of the “most important” options for why people cast their votes the choice “moral values”. Dionne points out that this distorts the entire picture of the electoral mindset of the voting public, for the very simple reason that no one ever votes in favor of what he or she considers to be “immoral values”. The question alone imposes an unfair choice on the respondent: should I say I’m for “moral values” or “economic issues”? Which sounds more selfish, which more noble?

But the comparison is illegitimate, because when people vote for “economic issues” or “national security” or “campaign finance reform” or “the environment”, they are voting for moral values they hold to be of fundamental importance to their worldview. The option being on the list as a separate interest distorts the response, by taking something that’s a factor for all voters, regardless of creed or party, and so taking those voters out of the response pool that favored the other issues.

This bias runs throughout our politics, and it has led to the distorted view that says Christians must be conservative and opposed to social programs and gun-control, while for many progressive Americans, it is the teachings of the Christian faith that drive them to fight for social justice and to seek any way possible to reduce violence or the threat of violence.

Dionne reminded the audience that one of the truly Christian declarations of modern times, one of the true statements of solidarity, was Martin Luther King’s resonant: “We are not satisfied and we shall not be satisfied, ‘until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.’”

Solidarity —a term that came to prominence in the Church partly due to Pope John Paul II’s sympathy for the Solidarity resistance movement in Poland— means, says Dionne, that we are “embedded in a network” that might call to mind a very ancient Catholic concept: “the mystical body of Christ”. That we should attempt to talk about justice and freedom, in any way associated with Christianity, and not see the connection to such a spiritual network of human relations seems a dangerous oversight, from Dionne’s point of view.

He notes that “self-satisfaction is not the call of faith”. This, he compared to Martin Luther King’s message: that people of conscience cannot be satisfied to live in a world full of injustice. Dionne also points out that there is an ancient dispute in some corners of the Christian tradition, between those who focus more on personal salvation and those who focus more on the need to do good works and to help others.

For anyone familiar with Christian teaching, it would seem apparent that the one necessitates the other: how could or why should one expect to come by something like salvation, in the Christian sense, unless one has been aware of and attentive to the needs of others? There is an inherently social message in Christianity, which Dionne points out, is part of why guilt can be a positive force and something that mobilizes the better instincts in us.

An obsession with “self-esteem” has in some ways undermined our ability to deal honestly with guilt, because we have come to reject, as a society, the notion that one should be self-critical and strive to be better. This distortion has filtered through our politics and has led to the entrenchment of views held by people who believe they and their camp are fundamentally right and that their doctrines cannot be overturned by anyone or any circumstance.

There is something dangerous about this, because it causes us to act with hubris, while remaining insensitive to our own shortcomings. Instead of learning from argument, we grow apart by presuming the hostility and intractability of our adversaries. Argument, says Dione, means “putting your own ideas at risk”, which means you learn about your own limitations for making true statements, and so both sides can learn and grow and moderate their ideas and become more precise, through a shared experience of legitimate argument.

Paraphrasing Dewey, Dionne said that “Democracy may not always be the most efficient form of government, but it should be the most educational.” We can learn from what plays out in the process of making a democratic society work to shape a legitimate system of laws that expand conditions of fairness and freedom, instead of allowing abuses that threaten our access to them. Even when the wrong views win, a democratic society allows for the messy but peaceful process of adversarial public argument, and eventually, the overturning of injustice.

Is the call to political action rooted in an understanding of our ties to those around us? Is guilt, as it plays out through traditional moral categories, the seed of hope, allowing ambition to merge with empathy in a way that yields a more vibrant, more humane political space? E.J. Dionne argues in Souled Out that “ideology is not enough”, and explains that the role of faith in public life must be to promote ideals of tolerance, compassion and human dignity, or it will fail to achieve what it claims as its mission: a moralizing power in the constellation of behavioral forces, a way to better what is flawed in human nature.

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