The Catholicism of Sister Campbell and Mr. Biden is a natural fit for Democrats. It is the faith of social justice activists like Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton, the church whose pope pleaded for relief of the “misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class” in an 1891 encyclical.
Now let me mention two excommunicated thinkers in the Catholic Church; Pelagius and Ockham. It was Pelagius, a British monk, who proclaimed that individuals can attain their salvation based upon the good acts they perform, that the individual has both the capacity and the ability to act in a way to do good deeds. Furthermore it was incumbent on the individual alone to do so, not through a group, it was the person's singular actions. Needless to say Pelagius lost and Augustine won. For Augustin was a classic Roman, one of the last, seeing man as a "subject" of the Church as they were "subjects" of the Roman Empire. The very concept of the individual was a heresy to Augustine. Furthermore he rejected individual deeds and introduced the concept of grace and divine selection, God gives grace, and no matter what you do unless God decides on you, that is the only metric, thus predestination.
Now for Ockham, the first modern individualist. He argued against the Pope, he saw the Pope as just another individual, not as some supreme worldly pontiff, whose views went beyond any question. Indeed he questioned, and John XXII was most likely less than any pope we can envision.
Then in the 19th century we have the rise of socialism and the like and Rome's counterattack to more loss in its authority was infallibility of the Pope and the construct of social justice. Frankly they also grew from the loss of Papal lands and the pushing by Garibaldi and the nationalists of the papacy back to a religious only institution. From this comes social justice, a clear loss of individualism and demand for the global community to follow the Pope en masse. Thus the strange movement of nuns using social justice as a template but at the same time denying Papal supremacy is the cornerstone of the Democrat thrust into Catholicism.
Is it not truly what each person does, individually and on their own, is not the New Testament a document freeing the individual and at the same time demanding from each, each person, their due. Social justice is a movement wherein the collection of a few put demands on the many. What benefit does that have, it glorifies the few and oppresses the many. It does not allow the individual to act, to demonstrate the essence of their faith.
The recent document from the Vatican, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, presents the Vatican's view, and in many ways it both denies individualism, and in turn individual responsibility, and sets forth a doctrine of societal duty as a group. One may ask what happens when we seek collusion with Caesar, in stead of individually giving God what is due, individual acts. Pelagius may very well have some kernels of truth, Augustine was clearly hanging on to the City of Rome, both man's and God's. Furthermore Ockham and his arguments have strong merit especially in light of the many mis-steps of the papacy over two millenia.
Thus we hear from some nun about what we as a group should do, whereas the Gospels speak to us as individuals, letting Caesar get his piece apart from our duties elsewhere. The Times continues:
Mr. Biden is not a “cafeteria Catholic” who chooses his beliefs according to convenience. He stands in the tradition of the Rev. John Courtney Murray, the Jesuit theologian who asserted that the foundation of modern pluralist society is not perfect agreement but continuing “public argument” based on shared values. The laws that frame this evolving conversation cannot always align with religious teachings. “It is not the function of civil law to prescribe everything that is morally right and to forbid everything that is morally wrong,” he wrote in a 1965 memo advising the church to support the decriminalization of artificial contraception.
Two quick points, Catholics have to accept the total bundle, but what one suspects is that what the bundle is, is bounded by the four walls of the Gospel. Second, Jesuits and Vatican 2 have a rather shaky record. I remember quite well that period, having spent pre-Vatican 2 in the Franciscan Seminary and Vatican 2 in a Catholic institution, and Murray is hardly the sine qua non expert to choose, nor Maritan.
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