How Should a Good Catholic Vote?

My latest Op-Ed, running in Newsday, the Sacramento Bee, and a dozen other papers.

President Trump? Joe Biden? What’s a good Catholic to do in November? | Opinion | Miami Herald

OP-ED

President Trump? Joe Biden? What’s a good Catholic to do in November? | Opinion

BY MARY JO MCCONAHAY

OCTOBER 08, 2020 03:23 PM, 

Many Catholics are facing a dilemma as they consider the presidential candidates. PATRICK BAZ GETTY IMAGES 

Catholics are being told not to vote Democratic because the party supports abortion. But we’re also told to oust President Trump because he violates a core Catholic teaching: respect for all life.

Trump, throughout his term, has restored federal capital punishment, put immigrant children in cages and reversed protections for the environment. Oh, and he lies.

So what’s a Catholic to do?

The dilemma throws a light on deep divisions in the U.S. branch of the Catholic Church, which has experienced a virtual schism since the elevation of Pope Francis in 2013. One side, like Francis, emphasizes social justice, a bigger role for women and an openness toward LGBTQ+, divorced and remarried Catholics. The other side stresses personal piety, long-established devotions and an unquestioning obedience to clergy.

Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, a Catholic reportedly associated with a secretive, authoritarian group outside the Catholic mainstream known as People of Praise, draws support from the conservative side of the chasm. They hope Barrett will chip away at abortion rights.

This divide matters for anyone aiming to predict the “Catholic vote” in November. We are the country’s largest religious denomination (more than 51 million adults), we vote (more than 75 percent in 2016), and the majority of Catholic voters have picked the winning presidential candidate in nine out of the last 10 elections. Last time, most of us went for Trump.

This time, neither candidate can seem to get a firm grip on a Catholic bloc. We don’t align completely with either Joe Biden, a practicing Catholic who carries a rosary in his pocket and comfortably quotes Scripture or Trump, for whom opposition to abortion is a campaign centerpiece. The division in the pews has become too stark.

”We need you more than ever,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York told Trump in an April phone call concerning the plight of Catholic schools during the pandemic. With some 600 Catholics on the line, Trump turned the call into a campaign event, touted his stands against abortion and for “school choice,” calling himself the “best (president) in the history of the Catholic Church.”

The social-justice side of the divide was outraged. Why didn’t the bishops bring up white nationalism or immigration? As 1,500 Catholic leaders, priests and theologians wrote in an open letter to Dolan, “There is nothing ‘pro-life’ about Trump’s agenda.”

The Catholic far-right fringe, however, overlaps with the hardcore MAGA crowd. Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former papal ambassador to the United States, used the language of the QAnon conspiracy theory in a June letter to the president, committing himself and other “children of light” to the “Biblical” contest with the “children of darkness . . . offspring of the Serpent.”

Vigano compared the alleged “deep state” to the alleged existence of a heretical “deep church.” Trump gave Vigano’s followers a nudge toward the mainstream by tweeting his letter and appreciation.

Even COVID-19 causes disagreement. While many U.S. prelates and pastors are opting to follow public-health guidelines by televising or live-streaming masses, others decry restrictions on gatherings as violations of religious freedom. Milwaukee’s Archbishop Jerome Listecki, for example, told his flock that physically missing mass is a sin, and that “fear of getting sick, in and of itself, does not excuse someone from the obligation.”

Despite the severe divide in the church, it is ultimately up to individual Catholics to decide how to vote. But no matter how we mark our ballots, the November outcome won’t be a unified, predictable “Catholic vote.”

As key Catholic thinkers have concluded over the centuries, “one’s own conscience must be obeyed before all else.”

Mary Jo McConahay is an Alicia Patterson Fellow. She is the author of “The Tango War: The Struggle for the Hearts, Minds, and Riches of Latin America during World War II.” 

Tribune News Service

Genocide Trial Most Tumultuous Week Yet

Survivors

Daughter supports mother, a widow whose husband was killed  in  the violence.

Witnesses for the defense of Gen. Efraín Rios Montt testified that life improved for indigenous Maya when he came into office in March, 1982, in the mountainous Ixil region.

Left, Ricardo Mendez Ruiz, president of the Foundation Against Terrorism, which published a 20-page newspaper insert on Sunday calling the genocide charge a "farce" and blamed a "Marxist" Catholic Church for sowing the seeds of violence with "revolutionary" theology.  Second from left, Zulema Paz de Rodriguez, wife of Rios co-defendant, former military intelligence chief Mauricio Rodriguez.  Third from left,  Zury Rios Sosa, former Guatemalan congress member and the strongman's daughter who married former Congressman Jerry Weller (R-IL) in 2004.  Right, unidentified companion of Zury Rios.

Spectators listened with stony faces in the packed courtroom. 

 Some 200,000, mostly unarmed indigenous, died during the armed internal conflict according to an estimate by a U.N.-sponsored truth commission. In a theatrical departure, defense attorneys abandoned the courtroom in protest at proceedings on the morning of April 18.

Alone at defense table, Gen. José Efraín Ríos Montt

Security was unable or unwilling to bring them back despite orders from the bench, or perhaps armed guards were unable to hear the order  in the ensuing hubbub.

Spectators and press in a crush to enter a separate, smaller courtroom where another judge "annulled" the trial going on in the Supreme Court Building

That afternoon a judge from another court ordered the trial halted. On the morning of April 19, however, the trial's presiding judge reiterated the tribunal's "independence," declared the previous day's order illegal and said the trial would continue.  Before exiting the court the three judges stood and acknowledged elated applause from the courtroom. "The tribunal appreciates your confidence in the justice system," said tribunal president, Jasmįn Barrios.

Survivors and others left the Supreme Court building for a demonstration and mile-long march to the Constitutional Court, where prosecutors filed a  formal request for review of the judge who ordered the trial annulled.

Here are two stories I've published in the last week about the genocide trial.

 National Catholic Reporter
New America Media

Pink Smoke Over the Vatican

CATHOLIC?  EX-CATHOLIC?  WANNABE?  ANTI-?  

     

                                 SEE THIS MOVIE!

            I always knew there was a place for a woman at the altar besides in a coffin.

                              --Newly ordained woman priest

             When I was a young girl, I used to help after school by banging erasers together to get the chalk dust out. One day the Catholic nun who was my teacher said, "Let's stop now.  I want to show you something."

           We walked across the empty schoolyard, she in black habit and veil, a long rosary swinging from her waist, I in a uniform blue jumper and white blouse, hurrying to keep up with Sister's long stride. We entered the parish church by a side door. 

            The simple stone chapel that had served the town for decades was being absorbed into a modern design. Inside, by the dusty half-light of a building under construction, I could see a brand new stepped altar that would be visible from three sides by the congregation. I followed Sister all the way to the front, walking around scaffolds. When she bid me mount the altar with her, I was astonished.

            This was before the momentous changes of Vatican II, a time when a young girl knew she had no place on the altar where mass was said.  I had memorized the Latin responses, but unlike my brothers, I would never serve mass.  I was not a boy.

              Inside the new parish church, I hesitated about stepping on the altar. "It's all right," Sister said. "It's not consecrated yet."

            Vatican II called on all members to participate more fully in the life of the Church, carving an opening for the voice of the laity and communities of the faithful to be heard, although women priests was not on the agenda.  Nevertheless, by showing how the Church might remain the same even as it changed, Vatican II opened the door to fresh thinking that even today's conservative hierarchy is finding hard to overcome.  And let's not forget the beauty of synergy: Vatican II's effects unfolded at the same time a wave of feminism was breaking over much of the world.

    Pink Smoke Over the Vatican, filmmaker Jules Hart's compelling new documentary, uncovers the history of women priests in the Catholic Church from its beginnings, showing how an increasingly patriarchal institution squeezed out women from formidable roles over the centuries.  Churchmen wrote laws that said an exclusively male priesthood was so central to doctrine that it was a given, a rule that could not be broken. Nevertheless, some clear-eyed bishops have begun again to ordain women, believing that the unmistakable interior call to the priesthood, a vocation, is not restricted to one gender.

            Where there is smoke, of course, there is fire. The bishops who ordain women -- they can be counted on one hand -- are considered renegades. As insistence grows, especially from the laity, to ordain women openly and with joy, the Church digs in its heels, lashing out at the new priests and their supporters.

           When she was ordained, a South African nun who went to jail under apartheid for quietly accepting all races into the school of which she was the principal, was kicked out of the Dominican community that had been her home for decades.

Fr. Roy Bougeois, awarded the Purple Heart for military service in Vietnam and a Maryknoll priest for almost forty years, is being excommunicated for his support of the women, the most severe punishment the Church can inflict.

            This is a strong film, although for me, using the stereotypical "Pink" in the title is a minus.  So is a brief section, too facile, I think, suggesting priests' sex abuse crimes would have been fewer or non-existent had women priests been accepted in the Church.   I believe more gender balance in the priesthood would obviate many difficulties, enabling it to minister to, and with, the faithful better. The sex abuse crimes are not about "men," however, but about the arrogant, hurtful behavior of some priests and a hierarchical system riddled with corruption and impunity.

            You will learn from Pink Smoke and even laugh with it. No matter what you bring to the movie from your own history, it's difficult not to admire the women aspiring to ordination, to answering their call, and their Catholic brothers who support them.


Pink Smoke Over the Vatican - Eye Goddess Film
eyegoddess.com/pink_smoke.php