Saints and Sinners Going Bump in the Night

Yesterday we attended Mass at my home parish as usual. The young curate was the celebrant and gave his homily. He noted the coincidence of this weekend being both that of the Marine Corps Marathon, and the final one before the presidential election.

He continued with a reference to a letter from our bishop on the moral responsibilities of Catholics with respect to the exercise of voting rights. The tone of the young priest became more tentative than usual, as he was careful not to say anything that could be construed as endorsing a particular candidate. He went so far as to hold up an IRS publication which outlined the limitations of religious bodies in political life with relation to their non-profit status.

Across this land, Catholic priests are biting their tongues to the point of drawing blood, while in other parts of town, Protestant ministers of predominantly African-American congregations openly endorse a political agenda, to the point of inviting the candidate himself to the pulpit -- invariably a Democrat.

This cannot possibly make any sense. In fact, it stinks. It is simply one more example of the latent anti-Catholicism in American life. (Then again, maybe it's not so latent.) What is the point of a candidate bragging about his faith playing a role in his life and his character, if he then turns around and eschews bearing witness to it in his public life?

It is already reported that President Bush has used questionable methods in fighting the war in Iraq, as a recent edition of The Wanderer reports on the use of chemical weapons, and the long-term effect on civilian populations, even American soldiers themselves. Meanwhile, Senator Kerry has said outright (when he's not on television telling us about how he was once an altar boy) that he will support legalized abortion from the first day he enters office.

I am downright sick and tired of having to choose between the lesser of two evils every four years. That is why, when C-SPAN did a re-broadcast of the alternate presidential debate among the four "third-party" candidates, I was more than impressed by the civility in tone among the men themselves. I voted for Pat Buchanan in the 2000 election. My family told me I was wasting my vote. But I'm supposed to vote the one whom I believe to be the best candidate. Since when is that a waste? Alas, he is not running this year, and so the most likely choice for me will be Michael Peroutka, of the Constitution Party. His chances of winning are admittedly not good. But that is not the point. His candidacy is not the problem; the fact that we must presume a two-party system to be carved in stone -- THAT is the problem.

For Halloween, "Sal" and I attended a party in Takoma Park, the local enclave for aging hippies living off Mummy and Daddy's trust funds. The event was touted as an "anti-Bush" affair, and the "donation" for admission was to go to some sort of cause. What cause? "Well, we're considering an AIDS education program for kids, but we haven't decided yet." So, I'm just supposed to hand over a twenty to these nimrods so they can go out and (for all I know) buy condoms for little kids? And they think they can tell us how to run the country?

We politely declined, in favor of something later on to honor our hostess.

In addition to such luminaries as the above, I wish to hell Hollywood would stay out of the business of politics, as if they had any more to add than organized religion. That goes ditto for the rock stars. Where were these geniuses when Clinton was barging into Bosnia, or bombing the Chinese embassy using outdated intel? That it's not on the front page now doesn't mean that various ethnic groups of what was once Jugoslavia won't keep killing one another for several more centuries. I didn't hear squat back then. I don't wanna hear it now.

I am damn sick and tired of all the rhetoric about Bush and Cheney being the "candidates of the rich." It is both overly simplistic, and terribly misleading. Whatever their family origins, both Bush and Cheney worked to make their own fortunes, the latter through manual labor during his early years. Kerry married an heiress to the Heinz fortune, and is descended in part from Boston's "Brahmin" establishment -- which is about as "old money" as you can get in this country.

We hear enough of what Bush may or may not have done to fulfill his military obligations, while serving stateside in the National Guard -- which most guys of his generation would have done if they had the chance. I should know; I was old enough to register during the last year of the Vietnam draft. What we do NOT hear enough of, is how Kerry's picture appears in a museum in Hanoi, visiting a North Vietnamese delegation in Paris in the early 1970s. If we are to assume the accuracy of any reports of Kerry's heroic acts while serving in Vietnam, it is nonetheless wise to remember, that the Vichy regime in Nazi-occupied France was led by a puppet French general, who was a hero from the previous Great War.

That's what some "political analyst" for Rolling Stone magazine would have us believe is the man for the job? Give me a break.

This will be another close election, one that even the major media outlets (in a rare display of public restraint) are giving up trying to call. After all, there's plenty to do with picking on Catholics. Like me, columnist and papal biographer George Weigel has had enough of it, and takes on The New York Times, among others:

"About the time the Times? story appeared, the National Catholic Reporter editorially accused Archbishop John Myers, Professor Robert George, Father Richard John Neuhaus, and me of 'a deliberate... attempt to delegitimize the Democratic Party in the eyes of American Catholic voters...' It?s not the Reporter?s Gang of Four who have misrepresented the Catholic position on the inalienable right to life as a sectarian quirk that cannot be 'imposed' on others; it?s the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate. Myers, George, Neuhaus, and I did not devise an approach to embryonic stem-cell research that plays on the fears of the sick and the elderly through misleading promises of medical silver bullets, and that dismisses the considered moral judgment of the pope and the bishops of the United States as 'extreme right-wing ideology'; the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate did that all by themselves... All we have done is to point out the obvious..."

Somebody had to.

This election has also been characterized by an abysmal lack of civility, of vicious personal attacks in the public square, of neighbor against neighbor, as a guest writer for the Washington Post observed yesterday:

"I used to know my neighbors. Now I only know how they are going to vote... One day I was talking with the man across the street, and he told me that when he and his wife moved in they had envisioned potluck dinners with the neighbors... 'Oh, this isn't that kind of neighborhood," I said. "I think they do that in Alexandria...'"

I know what I'd be thinking: why didn't the agent tell me that before I went to settlement?

If Bush wins, the ongoing attempts to outsource various Government operations will continue in ernest. I'm beginning to wonder if, rather than saving money, the result will be the evolution of Government operations as another form of profiteering, at the expense of the basic premise of civil service. Unlike yours truly twenty-four years ago, a contractor does not take an oath to uphold the public interest. They are not accountable to the American taxpayer; I am.

If Kerry wins, the aforementioned initiative will not be stopped, but will probably change course and buy time for more reasoned voices, irrespective of partisan affiliation or public service status. What's more (and I can only speak from general experience here, allowing for exceptions) a political leadership that is less aloof, more accessible, and gives the average civil servant credit for their consultative value, will be more likely. On the other hand, there will be the occasional weirdness in the name of "political correctness." The mandatory AIDS/HIV education program under Clinton was a case in point. In my agency, we didn't get some gay guy offering details of his sex life; others weren't so lucky.

Of the two, Bush is the lesser of two evils. Then again, if Kerry is elected, at least there's less of a chance that Hilary will run in '08.

That should give us enough time to talk Condi Rice into running. (You go, grrrl!)

The rest of you, until the dust settles at dawn on Wednesday, stay tuned...