Whistling “zippity doo da” as he stepped into the briefing room, House Speaker John Boehner announced that he would be vacating his position as speaker, and also his seat in the House, at the end of October.
The announcement followed the papal visit to Washington, D.C., including a powerful address to Congress that had a particularly profound effect on Boehner. Of course, Boehner is known to be a sentimental guy—but what was written on the speaker’s face at various points of the pope’s address was absolute anguish. And indeed, in his press conference, Boehner acknowledged that his time with the pope had been revelatory and cathartic—to the point where he considered resigning that very night. But he prayed on it, slept on it, and woke up even more resolute that his stepping down was “the right thing, and for the right reasons.”
So it’s worth considering what would have motivated him, not only to vacate his post as speaker (which he claims he is doing for the good of the House), but to also so immediately resign his seat as a Republican representative from Ohio—and the implications for the Republican National Committee.
A Betrayal of Conservativism
It was not lost on anyone that while the pope’s message affirmed the Church’s commitment to preserving the integrity of marriage, resisting abortion and protecting religious liberty—on balance the papal address seemed to be a thorough rebuke of the contemporary Republican platform.
However, the problem isn’t that the Church is moving away from the long-standing positions of the GOP, it’s that Republicans have been straying ever farther from the long-standing doctrines of the Church—even as the party has grown more overtly religious. Perhaps no topic is as emblematic of this shift as climate change:
When Pope Francis released his encyclical addressing climate change, Catholic Republican presidential candidates suggested he should “leave science to the scientists”—the irony being that, in contrast with these lawmakers, the pontiff has a degree in chemistry, worked as a chemist, and is part of a long tradition of Jesuit scientists. And of course, even (perhaps especially) outside the Church, “the scientists” overwhelmingly agree with the pope and were ecstatic to see the Vatican embrace this issue.
In a further irony, environmental conservation has long been a cornerstone of the Republican Party. The National Parks system was established by Republican President Teddy Roosevelt; the Environmental Protection Agency was created by Republican President Richard Nixon. More broadly, conservatives have long held that it is a Christian duty to be good stewards of the Earth, which was entrusted to the care of mankind by God; protecting and respecting the environment was an integral component of their political identity.
But now, it is the Republicans who are trying to privatize public lands, shutter the EPA, and deny the reality or significance of climate change (or the extent of human contributions thereto). This has nothing to do with Christianity or conservativism and everything to do with the fact that the GOP is the preferred recipient of lobbying money from the fossil fuel industry.
The Holy Father also made it a point to highlight how lawmakers who define themselves as “pro-life” support retributivist conceptions of justice over those that seek to rehabilitate and redeem criminals, even to the point of overwhelmingly supporting the death penalty–in contrast not just with Pope Francis (and his predecessors, beginning with Pope Paul VI), but with most of the rest of the world.
These same politicians vehemently resist calls to restrict the proliferation of armaments, to include military-grade weaponry, because they are beholden to the NRA. They have rarely met a war they didn’t enthusiastically embrace: be it in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen or Ukraine, their proposed solution to any geopolitical challenge seems to be direct violence, violence by proxy, or the threat of violence. And although all of the aforementioned military interventions have been disasters, often spreading far more suffering than they ever stood to alleviate, the primary GOP critique of the current administration is that it should have intervened more forcefully and more often in the Middle East and around the world.
Finally, rather than seeking to empower and protect the most vulnerable in society, the tenor of the Republican Party has been increasingly suspicious or even contemptuous of the poor, minorities and immigrants. In short, Republicans have fetishized abortion, largely non-productively, and at the expense of appreciating the richness and fullness of what is entailed by being “pro-life” in the sense Jesus called us to.
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