How Suburbia Reshaped American Catholic Life

In the third grade, my teacher asked if we knew the difference between Democrats and Republicans. I immediately shot my hand up and recited what my parents had taught me: “Democrats care about poor people and Republicans don’t.” Growing up in a moderately liberal, upper-middle-class suburban family, I took certain simplistic platitudes about the “benevolent” Democrats and “curmudgeonly” Republicans for granted. After having a religious awakening in college, I briefly toyed with the prospect of “switching sides.” Republicans were known for defending the role of religion in public life from the secularist Democrats. But thanks to my classmates who introduced me to the social thought of Dorothy Day, G. K. Chesterton, and Leo XIII, I began to realize that my Catholic faith required me to think—and live—beyond the simplistic left vs. right paradigm.