Catholic Values Prevailing

Victories by Casey, McCaskill, and Pelosi typified the success of Catholic Democrats Tuesday night.  

Catholic
Democrats were gleeful Tuesday night as their Party took control of the House
of Representatives for the first time since 1994. Catholic values appeared to
prevail in this most expensive ever mid-term election, as voters across the
country repudiated foreign and domestic policies characterized by war, expanded
rights for polluters, and increases in the national debt to support tax breaks
for the wealthy. Among the fallen was Senator Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania,
who had worn the conservative Catholic mantle while being a fierce pro-war
advocate and championing capital gains and estate tax cuts for the rich that
have sent the budget spiraling into debt.

The
victory of Catholic candidate Bob Casey in Pennsylvania represented
the new clout of true Catholic values in defeating a powerful incumbent. Mr
Casey had championed action over rhetoric in dealing with the abortion
question; conciliation over war in dealing with the problems of the Middle
East; and interdependence over self-interest in dealing with the health care
crisis in America. Democrats also picked up seats in Missouri, Rhode
Island and Ohio. Control of the
Senate hangs now on the outcome of races in Montana and Virginia, which are
headed for recounts in light of margins both less than 1%. With both races
nursing slim Democratic leads, the potential remains to swing control of the
Senate to the Democrats.

Victory
by another Catholic, Claire McCaskill, in deeply Catholic Missouri was a real
triumph for government accountability. Ms McCaskill is the Missouri State
Auditor, and she has significant experience rooting out the kind of graft that
has undermined reconstruction efforts on the Gulf Coast and in Iraq. She has
also indicated her determination to reverse the kind of influence that
lobbyists currently have in Washington, with
health insurance and pharmaceutical industry lobbyists having essentially
authored the costly and bewildering Medicare Part D drug benefit program, for
instance.

The
large swing in the House means that an Italian-American Catholic, Rep Nancy
Pelosi, has become the first woman to lead that body. Rep Pelosi has stated her
determination to hold the Administration accountable for misleading the
American people and the legislative branch in the run-up to the astoundingly
destructive war in Iraq, estimated in a new medical
study to have killed more than 650,000 people
since the invasion in 2003.

Ms
Pelosi has also been on the front lines in bringing the views of people of faith
into the deliberations of the Party leadership, advancing legislation that will
for the first time actually work to prevent unwanted pregnancies and abortions
across the country. The Bush Administration will again publish the annual CDC
abortion statistics under the cover of the Thanksgiving holidays, data that is
projected again this year to show increases in abortions nationally during the
Bush years despite all the Republican rhetoric to the contrary. The war in Iraq and the
Bush approach to abortion have many similarities: both are predicated on the
un-Christian notion that people can be punished into certain kinds of behavior.
The vast suffering in Iraq, and the rising
numbers of abortions in America, are testament to
the failure of a punitive approach in both cases.

Voters
in South Dakota weighed in similarly when they
rejected a legislative ban on abortions. South Dakotans
demonstrated the convictions shared by the majority of Catholics nationally,
that addressing the problem of abortion requires compassion and support for
women rather than threats and penalties. The Biblical imperative can never be
one of using the coercive power of the state to compel a certain moral vision
on the individual, but rather must be one of invitation to the moral life. With
the impending abortion case before the Supreme Court, Americans will become
increasingly aware of how much the advocacy of illegality for abortion
represents a simplistic do-nothing, feel-good strategy for politicians who want
to appear strong on the issue without actually doing anything about it.

All-in-all,
Catholics have found a voice again in Washington for issues
that advance Catholic Social Teaching: namely dealing with the rocketing disparity
of wealth in America, the climbing medical uninsurance
rates, escalating rates of poverty that are driving new increases in unwanted
pregnancies, the pointless war in Iraq, and ignorance of
the global warming threat.