When author David Carlin was a young man, it was scandalous for a good Catholic to be anything but a good Democrat. In the pews, pubs, and union halls of America's cities, millions of poor European immigrants and their children pledged allegiance to the Church of Rome and the party of FDR. All that changed in the 1960s, with the rise of a new kind of Democrat: wealthy, secular, ideological. Even as Carlin served the party he loved - twelve yearsas a Rhode Island state senator and once a candidate for Congress - he could only watch in dismay as its national leaders abandoned their blue-collar, pro-life, and religious constituencies and took up with NOW, Hollywood, and the abortion lobby. So complete this transformation has been that we no longer speak of a natural alliance between Catholics and the Democratic Party. Indeed, Carlin here asks whether today it's even possible to be both a faithful Catholic and a Democratic true believer. A veteran sociologist, philosophy professor, and author of The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America, Carlin shows how his party and his religion have taken opposite sides in the Culture War. On issues of human life, sex, faith, morality, suffering - and the public policies that stem from them - the modern, secularist Democratic Party has become the enemy of Catholicism; indeed, of all traditional religions. Carlin shatters the excuses that Catholic Democratic politicians employ in a vain attempt to reconcile their faith and...
What's all this "agenda" business, by the way. Is "the secular agenda" anything like the well known gay agenda, a conspiracy by a few against true American values? Is it like the get-out-jail-free agenda for Wall Street bankers, or the make-it-difficult-for-minorities-and-the-poor-to-vote agenda? My goodness me. The next thing we'll find out is that Democrats originally landed on earth eons ago and really are working on the well known aliens-from-outer-space agenda.
Any church or religion that systematically tries to promote and enforce the power of men over women and to cover up generations of the abuse of children...just might be a poor leader for people in a democracy, or any other place. Thank goodness for all those Catholic men and women in America who choose birth control (using their own, free judgment) instead of the dictates of old men. Do they really risk their souls? I think Jesus would weep if they do.
One great danger to this country, as it has proven to be in others, is when religious leaders try to impose their specific moral beliefs on the citizens and on the government. Certitude is a sure formula for divisiveness and hate, not inclusion. Just look at today's Republican Party...or the Inquisition.
Full disclosure: I live in a continuity-of-care establishment run by an order of nuns. You might be surprised what some of the retired sisters have to say about the Vatican. End of full disclosure.
Will this stalemate resolve itself peacefully or through some Machiavellian struggle played out over decades? Only G-d knows for sure.