John Carr, founder of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University, in a recent interview with OSV News:

I grew up in South Minneapolis and I am heartbroken by the recent killings, the children shot at Annunciation Parish and the death of George Floyd so close to my neighborhood. And this is just a sign of the brokenness in our society and the failures of our leaders and politics. The Church should offer another way forward.

I think it’s true that a faithful Catholic — a Pope Leo Catholic, a Pope Francis Catholic, a John Paul II Catholic — could not be nominated by either political party. Catholics who refuse to embrace the abortion agenda of the Democratic Party are disqualified. Catholics who refuse to engage in demonizing immigrants would be disqualified from the Republican Party. So I think people ought to be more engaged in politics, not less. I’m not advocating washing our hands. If we’re politically homeless, we need to build a home, and we need to get more involved, but we need to have our faith shape our politics instead of the other way around. It will not be easy, because the partisanship and the ideological factions are so powerful right now.

There is a fear of speaking out if it violates the orthodoxy of your partisan tribe or your ecclesial faction. It can be very hard for Republicans to talk candidly about President Trump. It can be very hard for Democrats to resist that abortion for any reason, paid for by everyone, is absolutely a part of what it means to be a Democrat. People have learned that there is sometimes a price to be paid for candor and reflection. So frankly, it’s sometimes harder to get people to come out of their bunkers and talk to each other….

I think one of the things we ought to be doing now is to resist the worst elements in the current political arrangement. What if you had a “dignity caucus” in each party that would support the best of their party, but challenge the things that go against our teaching? What if our Church found new ways to come together across divisions of politics, theology and ideology to stand up for the dignity of every person, the unborn and their mothers, the undocumented and their families, the poor kids in our country, the hungry around the world, the person on death row, the victims of crime, all God’s children. no matter how they fit into the ideological frameworks of our time?