Catholic Leaders: Don’t Mistake an Invitation to the Ball for a Seat at the Table

We all could name a dozen Catholics in prominent public positions. But how many of them are “alpha” Catholics – men and women we can count on to stand up to power and to confront insults and injuries against our faith in meaningful ways, even at the risk of losing all they’ve gained? If we’re honest, there are almost no such Catholics.

Instead, we have lots of “beta” Catholics in public life. Catholics who mistake an invitation to the ball for a seat at the table. They forget their whole purpose, and they forget that just being in the room and wearing a bowtie and a name tag doesn’t even make you a guest at the party at all.

They’re not guests. They’re not hosts. They’re servants. And not servants of the Church, but of godless power.

It’s time for faithful Catholics to let these “leaders” in on the joke they’ve made themselves the butt of – to hold up a mirror to how ridiculous they look, these little nobodies carrying trays around at the banquet of the powerful, blushing, flattered just to be near even the most corrupt of secular leaders.

Because proximity to power is not influence. And flattery is not honor.

And the beta Catholics themselves have been making that clear lately.

The Beta Catholics

Protestant Trump Ambassador Mike Huckabee recently hurled bigoted insults, accusing the Irish of being drunk after the Catholic nation moved to hold radical Israeli thugs accountable for violently attacking Catholics in the Holy Land. “Sober up!” he barked.

Did any prominent Catholics close to power speak up against that insult? No, not one of them came to the defense of our faith.

Or worse, what about Catholic Secretary of State Marco Rubio, arguably the most highly-placed Catholic in the U.S. government? Our Church’s teachings on the dignity of the human person, the witness of our clergy in Jerusalem and Gaza, and the authority of our pope have all cried out in unison for a ceasefire in Gaza. Rubio, meanwhile, repeatedly rejects that call – opting instead to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for smiling photo-ops. This even after an Israeli tank shell struck Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza, killing three and wounding the priest.

And again, it’s not just a question of Rubio’s dereliction as a Catholic. Has a single prominent fellow Catholic called Rubio out for that injustice against our Church? Again, not one.

And of course we have at this point become so used to the denigration of South American immigrants in mainstream rhetoric from officials in the current administration that we’ve almost forgotten completely who those immigrants are: almost all baptized sons and daughters of the Catholic Church.

Alpha Catholics

Perhaps we’ve also forgotten this: that the history of our Church is riddled with true examples of Catholic leadership. Alpha Catholics who turned political tides and shaped nations by their courageous witness and their unhesitating defenses of the faith.

These were men and women who spoke up for the timeless truths of the faith when it counted most – especially when those truths and the vulnerable people who rely on them came under threat. That meant not only risking their livelihoods but their lives, and it often meant directly speaking out against their “betters” – even when confronting the powerful could mean bringing down all the wrath of worldly power on themselves.

Ironically, these were Catholics who succeeded in becoming guests of honor. And how did they get their “seat at the table” before the throne? More often than not, by being dragged in chains before emperors and kings. But there, in the presence of power, these Catholics didn’t blush and offer to serve at the table. No, they took the occasion of proximity to power to say their piece on behalf of our Church. They spoke with unmistakable authority and irresistible charity. And they inspired and converted hardened and corrupted politicians – and ultimately whole peoples – to the truth of the Gospel.

And who were these saints? These masters of ceremony in the ballrooms of their times, who brought the truth and beauty of our Catholic beliefs to the center of the stage?

They were servants. Slaves even. Not of the powerful, but of the widow and the orphan. The hated. The ignored. The Crucified.

They served in the gutters, on the battlefield, and in the prison cells – where the forgotten, the wounded, and the persecuted waited for someone to see them and to treat them as Our Lord commands us to: as if they were Himself.

Let’s pray for God to raise up for Himself more alpha Catholics like that, who are willing to approach power as if it were a lion’s den in need of the taming discipline of God and His true Kingship – not just an invitation to the ball.

And let’s pray that Catholics already close to power recall what it is to serve God and not man, the poor and powerless and not the smug and the corrupt.

Because it is in the places where our correligionists are farthest from worldly power – the prisons, the refugee camps, and the bombed-out churches – that alpha Catholics get their calling.

That is where Christ waits, and where we receive our orders.