‘I do not speak for my Church on public matters — nor does my Church speak for me.” So spoke Sen. John F. Kennedy during the 1960 presidential campaign, when anti-Catholicism among ordinary Americans was nearly as widespread and intense as it remains among the chattering classes today.

Kennedy’s statement still makes good theological and political sense as far as it goes, which isn’t very far at all. In the Roman Catholic tradition, the bishops have always spoken for the Church in matters of faith and morals, based on their three-fold ecclesial mandate to teach, govern, and sanctify. What’s problematic, then as now, is Kennedy’s overall argument in his celebrated Houston speech that religious faith is a wholly private and compartmentalized matter, completely separate and distinct from the exercise of citizenship and the vocation of public service.

Nearly a half-century later, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi claims to speak for the Church as an “ardent, practicing Catholic” — a self-description and role Kennedy expressly disclaimed — by presuming to state what the Church teaches on particular matters of faith and morals. That’s a far cry from the necessarily contingent “public matters” of practical application and prudential judgment — like whether to raise the minimum wage, for instance — that Kennedy alluded to.

So far more than two dozen Catholic bishops have rightly taken Pelosi to task for badly misstating the content of authentic Church teaching on matters of exceptional clarity and gravity, as expressed during her August 24 interview on Meet the Press, conducted in Denver on the eve of the Democratic convention. Pelosi’s remarks and some initial responses — notably those of Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput — are amply detailed on NRO (see, for instance, here, here, here, and here).

The ensuing controversy involves a host of internal Church issues mainly of concern to the Catholic community. These include the proper formation and exercise of conscience; the maintenance, transmission, and development of Church teaching; the exercise of legitimate dissent (ideally rare, respectful, and reluctant, according to Cardinal Avery Dulles); the need to learn how to “think with the Church” (sentire cum ecclesia); and the autonomy of the Church itself — and that of all other religious groups — as a matter of religious freedom under the First Amendment.

But what’s chiefly at stake is whether American Catholics have — or ought to have — a distinctive understanding of citizenship informed by faith that shapes their participation in public life, whether as private citizens or public servants.

If that’s the case, then Catholics can make a distinctive contribution to American political life, based on respect for life, respect for human dignity, and respect for the natural moral law (“we hold these truths to be self-evident”) shared by the Founding Fathers. What’s more, Catholics can supply a healthy perspective on political conflict through their understanding that politics at best serves proximate rather than ultimate ends. To cite St. Augustine, Pelosi’s favorite theologian, we have no permanent City here. But if that’s not the case, then Kennedy was right to maintain that what one shares on Sunday mornings has nothing at all to do with what one does during the rest of the week.

These considerations may supply some useful context for the upcoming “conversation” between Pelosi and her local bishop, the Most Reverend George Niederauer, archbishop of San Francisco. The two of them reached this agreement with an exchange of letters this past Friday (see here and here).

It’s entirely possible that their conversation — ideally, more than one — will result in a polite and perfunctory agreement to disagree. But it would be a mistake — amounting to a lack of charity — to prejudge the outcome of this encounter as merely an opportunity for the exercise of authority or the assertion of independence. It is above all a pastoral matter — though one with inescapably public dimensions — involving the care of souls, the basic ministry of priests and bishops.

How this discussion will proceed is anyone’s guess, but there’s some personal history between Pelosi and Niederauer, beginning in 1962, that may serve as a useful backdrop and point of departure. It was in 1962 that Nancy D’Alesandro graduated from Washington’s Trinity College (then staffed by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur) while George Niederauer was completing his basic studies at Catholic University, just a few blocks away, prior to his priestly ordination the same year.

The following year saw the second session of the Second Vatican Council and, more to the point, the publication of Blessed John XXIII’s final encyclical, Pacem in Terris. This encyclical is chiefly remembered for John’s earnest hopes for a more just and peaceful world based on international law and international institutions. These hopes have been dashed by events, leaving the encyclical’s most enduring contribution a little-noticed Apostolic Exhortation that appears to be tacked on at the very end.

John’s valedictory message — he died within weeks of its release — has to do with the perceived gap between levels of religious formation and secular training among individual Catholics in the modern world. There’s “a certain cleavage between faith and practice,” John wrote, that leaves otherwise accomplished individuals to face adult challenges sustained only by an adolescent faith, with predictable consequences for them and for the wider society:

In traditionally Christian States at the present time, civil institutions evince a high degree of scientific and technical progress and possess abundant machinery for the attainment of every kind of objective. And yet it must be owned that these institutions are often but slightly affected by Christian motives and a Christian spirit (no. 151).

John’s quaint turn of phrase and dry wit should not obscure the contemporary relevance for individuals who feel cast adrift in a world of perfected means and forgotten or mistaken ends.

John’s observation of course applies more widely than to the political class alone. For Catholics generally, searching for answers and deepening one’s faith necessarily mean learning to think with the Church, since Catholicism does not rely primarily on sola scriptura and private judgment. And an essential element of a mature faith is the willingness to change one’s mind, which in turn flows from the deeper conversion of heart that the Gospels call metanoia.

More concretely, what’s a reasonable outcome for the dialogue between Speaker Pelosi and Archbishop Niederauer? At a minimum, a clear acknowledgment that abortion is an evil, not a matter of moral indifference, or worse yet, a public good. Here’s what a priest friend of mine suggests as a starting point: “What one looks for in Catholic politicians is signs that they have thought about ways to minimize this evil, to deny it full public legitimacy, and to make clear that that the teaching of their Church makes a difference in their own thinking.”

There’s no dishonor in changing one’s mind, if only by degrees, provided others do not insist on a humiliating public climb-down. That’s an especially salient consideration for elected officials in the age of Google, YouTube, and pervasive gotcha journalism. But in very similar circumstances, Cardinal Newman observed that “in another world it may be otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”

– John F. Cullinan, a regular NRO contributor, formerly served as a senior foreign-policy adviser to the U.S. Catholic bishops.