'Playing God' traces the history of Catholic conservatism gone extreme May 19, 2023 Part I
A disturbing symbiosis exists between the disruptive, norm-trashing far right in our national politics and a similar force that has become prominent within the Catholic hierarchy in the United States.
The relationship is alarming, given the established wisdom of church-state separation, but hardly surprising.
As Mary Jo McConahay illustrates in Playing God: American Catholic Bishops and The Far Right, the two entities have become, over decades, increasingly dependent on and subservient to each other in a mutual pursuit of cultural influence.
Neither the political nor religious — in this case Catholic — right has gained its impressively disruptive power overnight. The evolution has occurred over decades.
Scholars and journalists have established in detail the arc of development in the political realm.
Such works as Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America by Duke University historian Nancy MacLean; How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, both professors of government at Harvard University;
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by investigative reporter Jane Mayer; and, earlier,
Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent by Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr., are several that come immediately to mind.
McConahay has provided an ecclesial and episcopal version of that same history, showing the development of a brand of Catholic conservatism gone extreme. It is a corner of the U.S. Catholic community deeply aligned with and influenced by wealth.
As such, it is willing to sideline the bulk of the Catholic social justice tradition in favor of a few "hot-button" issues that have distorted our national political discourse for decades.
Playing God is an important book, especially valuable in the detailed research guiding McConahay as she connects the dots along history's trail.
Unlike the inanities of conspiracy theories that have infected both our political and religious cultures, McConahay finds abundant evidence in the words, writings and associations of bishops and influential Catholics to make a convincing and compelling case.
The author is no stranger to the demands of the craft. A distinguished Catholic journalist, she initially established her reputation under far more difficult circumstances, reporting on the insurrections in Central America.
She knows the church well and has chronicled the institution at its best and worst.
What she documents in Playing God is a church embarrassingly malleable to those prevailing cultural and political forces, often destructive of healthy democracy, that have taken shape through movements and institutions larded with Catholics on the far right of the political and ecclesial spectrums.
https://www.ncronline.org/culture/book-reviews/playing-god-traces-history-catholic-conservatism-gone-extreme