Thanks be to God, another election season is over and we will be spared being inundated with commercials, emails and robocalls for a few months until the next one (which like the start of the Christmas shopping season comes earlier all the time). They say this was the most expensive mid-term ever, with $4 billion spent by the two major parties. Perhaps a quarter of Americans are ecstatic over the results, almost as many are depressed, but the great majority are convinced it makes little difference to their lives or the leadership of this country. How much difference did it make to the poor who was elected? How much difference to the chances that we will address climate change and the threats to our planet before catastrophe strikes? How much difference to race relations, or the prospects for the people living on the Lower Brule reservation or the old "Sugar Ditch" neighborhood of Tunica, MS, or the inner cities of Chicago and Milwaukee? Granted, it may have made some difference to immigration reform, but Latinos themselves are growing more divided on which party will serve their interests better. The simple fact is that neither the Republican nor the Democratic party has for a long time served the interests of anyone but themselves and their biggest donors, and now the middle class is beginning to see what the poor have known all their lives: no one is looking out for "the little guy," at least not those with any power to really help.
Perhaps a quarter of Americans are ecstatic over the results, almost as many are depressed, but the great majority are convinced it makes little difference to their lives or the leadership of this country.
And for Catholics, the choices have always been very problematic. One party is "pro-life," at least in the sense that it is anti-abortion, but it is even more disappointing than the other party on other life issues from the death penalty to gun control to human rights to militarism. The other claims and is perceived by many to be more for the poor, more against racism (or at least acknowledging it exists), more in favor of environmental protections, and to have a more enlightened foreign policy, but it views abortion as a simple "right" and a fetus as a "lump of tissue." As Pope John Paul II asked, how can anyone who fails to see the primacy of this issue be trusted to understand how to deal what "justice" means in other contexts?
These are dark days for democracy, for the least and most vulnerable among us, and for Mother Earth herself. If we are lucky enough that Americans will one day be able to read the history of how we overcame our political, class, and racial divisions and became better world citizens, I wonder whether they will read that it was in large part because Catholics, a critical voting bloc, finally came to see the truth of Catholic social teaching, which condemns some of the major tenets of both major parties while challenging each's hypocrisy for claiming that they deserve the Catholic vote. Whether that is through support of a third party or the reform of one or both of the current ones, we desperately need some new options.
These are dark days for democracy, for the least and most vulnerable among us, and for Mother Earth herself. If we are lucky enough that Americans will one day be able to read the history of how we overcame our political, class, and racial divisions and became better world citizens, I wonder whether they will read that it was in large part because Catholics, a critical voting bloc, finally came to see the truth of Catholic social teaching, which condemns some of the major tenets of both major parties while challenging each's hypocrisy for claiming that they deserve the Catholic vote. Whether that is through support of a third party or the reform of one or both of the current ones, we desperately need some new options.
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