Speaking with the Register from his office on Capitol Hill about the lockdown, Fortenberry said the Catholic Church needs to take the lead in pushing back against the political tribalism that triggered today’s violence in Washington.
Chaotic and disturbing scenes ensued on Capitol Hill Wednesday afternoon, as the building was locked down when Trump supporters stormed it and halted the congressional vote to certify the presidential election results. Lawmakers were evacuated as rioters broke windows, an armed standoff occurred at the front door of the House floor, and one female protester was shot in a hallway and subsequently died.
Despite the unprecedented violence within the walls of the U.S. Congress, the process to certify the election results resumed late Wednesday evening after the building and grounds were secured.
Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., a Catholic lawmaker with a graduate degree in theology from Franciscan University of Steubenville, spoke with the Register Wednesday evening via telephone from his office on Capitol Hill amid the lockdown. He said that the storming of the Capitol was “undermining the very principle of democracy itself” and “tearing at the fabric of who we are as a nation.”
Fortenberry lamented the tribalism in politics that has led people to view violence as a solution and urged the Church to end its “passivity” in the face of cultural decline.
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I think today is the culmination of a feeling for a lot of people that there was so much election fraud, that it could have been stolen, combined with the right to peaceful protest and assembly in Washington. I think most people came here to simply hear the president and to demand redress from their government, and that is their right; but when you have a tyrannical mob that develops, some fools created these dangerous conditions in the United States Capitol, undermining the very principle of democracy itself, tearing at the fabric of who we are as a nation.
They’re acting hypocritically and inconsistently with the principles that they supposedly are standing for, and they have to be stopped, and so they put a lot of people in grave danger. They have disrupted democracy; they have potentially harmed other people who are here for peaceful protest and set back the very thing that they’re supposedly standing for. This is wrong on so many levels.
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NCR: Do you think violence and rioting has become too normalized in politics recently?
Yes, very much so, and there’s a deeper reason for that. If either I’m on the left or the right and I can label you on the left or you on the right, as we’ve seen throughout this year, as evil, therefore you are not worthy of respect; you are not worthy of rights. I can even conduct violence against you because you are the enemy: You are evil. That is what has happened in this country, and that is the deeper fracturing of culture and the loss of the deeper formative systems of faith life and family life and civic life that give us a trust in one another and move wisdom through the ages forward and create the interdependency in community so that if one of us is hurt or down or low, we’re picked back up by people who love us.
When all of that is fractured, it’s very easy to retreat into tribes and then to start to assign motive and ill will and evil intent toward “them.” That’s what’s going on here; that’s why you’re seeing this violence being justified.
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Politics is downstream from culture, and our Church manages decline. Our Church has to lean into this and understand that unless we are about a vision, a noble pursuit of family life and faith life and a healthy, robust civic life, instead of just confining ourselves behind the church’s four walls, we are going to lose everything that is precious in America. This sort of passivity as we manage decline in culture can no longer stand.
Politics can’t fix this. It is a deep, deep cultural problem for which the hierarchal Church and all of us as members of the body of Christ have to understand more deeply; it’s not just about an Electoral College vote. This is symptomatic of a deeper problem of the fracturing of the traditions of culture; that [should] give rise to right reason and protection and good formation so that people can be empowered to live happy lives.
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I’m upset because I’ve watched my country come under attack. I’ve watched a mob develop and take over a precious institution that I have been charged with guarding and guiding as a representative of 600,000 people who’ve invested their trust in me. I’m upset for a couple reasons — yes, the literal event of what happened, which is very dangerous and continues to be so, but also as a deeper sign of this degradation in our culture that we think violence is going to solve things.
Whatever one’s politics, nothing justifies what happened today. And we must remember that violence is based on a lie. Pope Saint John Paul II warned against “the violence which, under the illusion of fighting evil, only makes it worse.”
Today’s Events at the Capitol Had Nothing to Do With Truth or Justice
Ozymandias