Reconciliation

The Presidential primaries are upon us. Circumstances have whittled down the large field of Republican candidates a little. And yet another non-Romney hopeful, Newt Gingrich, has risen to the top of the most-popular-by-poll list. (The pushback on Romney, I maintain, is his staunch Mormon identity. But that’s a topic for another time.)

I started this blog in 2007 during the last Presidential campaign cycle with special focus on religious, politics and the American Experience. It’s time for me to once again pick up that thread.

It’s not that the campaigns and debates to date have been free of religious discourse. Indeed, several of the debates have focused on the candidate’s religious perspectives. Once again, the self-proclaimed socially conservative candidates are generally against same sex marriage and abortion. This was expected.

Something of a surprise is the impact on public opinion of sexual morality in the candidates’ lives. Herman Cain dropped out of the pack of candidates when accused of work place sexual harrasment, plus an accusation of a long standing adulterous relationship.

Gingrich, now on his third marriage, has confessed to committing adultery during his previous marriages, including an affair while he was leading the impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton, who was being held up to scruntiny, in part, for his sexual indiscretions. Curiously, Gingrich first explained his own past behavior  hinged on loving his country too much and working too hard.

He had an adulterous affair with current wife. But she also led him to convert to Catholicism, an identity that Gingrich is using in a very clever way.

In the most recent debate, fellow debaters challenged Gingrich directly or indirectly about his behavior relative to his marriages. He responded to one accusation, saying, “I said up-front, openly, I’ve made mistakes at times. I’ve had to go to God for forgiveness; I’ve had to seek reconciliation. I’m also a 68-year-old grandfather.”  (The latter has faint echoes of Henry Hyde's excuse of "youthful indiscretion.")

In the Catholic tradition confession (before a priest) and reconciliation (through the Eucharist) converge in a sacrament of forgiveness. In two sentences Gingrich invoked the notion that God had forgiven him for his misdeeds. And I add, by implication, if God has forgiven, shouldn’t mere mortals forgive him and move on, too?

It’s perilous to take to task such a fundamental and long-standing doctrine of the Roman church, now known as the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Many of us have a more visceral sense of moral justice, somewhere along the spectrum of penance and punishment.

My 95 year old mother, a lifelong Roman Catholic has come to question plastic grace. When I asked her what she thought about Gingrich’s pronouncement regarding reconciliation, she said, “So he can be a sinner all his life, become a Catholic late in life, confess, and be forgiven. He gets to start all over?”

In the Protestant, as well as the Catholic, tradition in America, the notion of forgiveness--either by being born again or by confession--is a religious center and has seeped out to marble the popular culture. It is often said that Americans quickly forgive public individuals who have been sinners, in one fashion for another, to a lesser or greater degree. (Sin is a theme for another day, too.)

As I noted earlier, Gingrich is very clever in his phrasing. Implicitly, he challenges us to argue, not against his character, but against a doctrine at the center of the Roman Catholic tradition that he has recently adopted. Remember, Gingrich implies that he has been forgiven according to Catholic doctrine.

He has deftly shifted the focus from himself to an institution and its theology.  He is clever.