Trump's Catholic Vote Problem

As a former Roman Catholic, I hold no love for the Church hierarchy composed largely of bitter old men who desperately cling to a 12th century understanding of science and human sexuality, often denying their own sexual orientation due to religious brainwashing or a hunger for power and position.  That said, many rank and file American Catholics differ greatly with the hierarchy's position on LGBT rights, contraception and a many other issues.  Likewise, other than extreme right wing Catholics, a majority of American Catholics reject the hate and fear based religious beliefs so loved by Christofascists and evangelical Christians.  With Donald Trump's self-prostitution of himself to the Christofascists and far right Protestants and his embrace of Catholic Church positions that are favored by a majority of Catholics, Trump has perhaps unintentionally alienated much of the Catholic vote.  Here are excerpts from a piece in Religion Dispatches that looks at the phenomenon:

Catholics now represent the latest demographic challenge for Donald Trump’s presidential ambitions. As the Washington Post recently reported, a poll from the Public Religion Research Institute found that Catholic voters preferred Hillary Clinton to Trump by a crushing 23 percent margin, 55-32. With less than a third of Catholics intending to vote for him, Trump has fallen well below the support GOP candidates typically enjoy from Catholic voters. George W. Bush won the Catholic vote in his 2004 reelection, 52-47. Although John McCain and Mitt Romney both lost among Catholic voters, they still managed to win 45 percent and 48 percent, respectively.

Why have Catholic voters rejected Trump? All year Catholic commentators and media outlets have provided their thoughts, but they have largely been overlooked by a mainstream media more fascinated by the story of evangelicals and Trump. As early as August 2015, the independent Catholic news site Crux noted that Trump’s aggressive anti-immigration stance put him at odds with Catholic bishops who were lobbying Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

Writing in National Review earlier this summer, the political scientist Michael J. New commented that Trump’s “Catholic problem” likely stemmed from Trump’s harsh rhetoric on Latino immigrants who many American Catholics see positively as the future of their church, but also because of Trump’s attacks on Pope Francis.

After Trump selected Mike Pence as his running mate, Christopher Hale, the executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, called the Trump-Pence ticket the “most anti-Catholic GOP presidential ticket in modern history” because of not only Trump’s many shortcomings but also Pence’s record of blocking the Catholic Church’s efforts to resettle Syrian refugees in Indiana.

Trump’s poor standing with Catholic voters resembles his “Mormon problem,” as I have written about. Taken together, the Catholic and Mormon rejection of Trump also further spotlights the embarrassment of evangelical support for the Donald.

Mark Rozell argued we were seeing a “splitting apart” of the coalition of evangelicals and conservative Catholics who have voted together for Republican candidates for nearly four decades. If polling patterns hold up in November, 2016 may yield the greatest difference between Catholic and evangelical voting since the 1960 election where at least 75 percent of evangelicals voted for Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy compared to only 18 percent of Catholics.

[A]s I’ve argued in my recent book We Gather Together, the evangelical-Catholic political alliance remained a fragile one, even when results from the ballot box made it appear more solid. Even as conservative Catholics drew to evangelicals on social issues, like abortion, their church often took political stances on matters like welfare and nuclear armament that put them in opposition to the Republican Party. 

Now Trump threatens to disrupt that parity, sending the bulk of Catholic voters to the side of his opponent. What this means for the future of the Republican Party remains uncertain. But for now, Catholic rejection of Trump at least surely offers another withering rebuke of evangelicals’ support of a candidate who is nothing short of unacceptable.

Growing up Catholic one looked down on fundamentalist evangelicals who rightly or wrongly were viewed as ignorant and not true Christians.  Now, with evangelicals flocking to Trump, perhaps that view of evangelicals as ignorant bigots was perhaps accurate after all.  

What Growing Up In An Anti-Gay Household Does to a Gay Person

I grew up in a relatively conservative Republican home where we regularly attended Roman Catholic Church services.  I was very Catholic and served as an altar boy fro age 8 to 17 (I had just turned 18 when I started college) and went on to become a 4th Degree Knight of Columbus as I desperately tried to "pray away the gay."  That said, while my religious upbringing was virulently anti-gay as was the norm back in those days - actually, it still is if one is raised Catholic - my parents were not homophobic.  Indeed, it was only in later years I figured out that one of my maternal great aunts by marriage had a gay brother who was partnered for roughly 40 years.  This gay couple were part of our extended family for all of my youth and first years of college.  Their relationship was never discussed around us children, but was totally accepted by my parents and aunts and uncles and grand parents.  

Despite this surprisingly enlightened mindset, my religious upbringing nonetheless wreaked havoc on me emotionally and psychologically.  In the wake of the horrific massacre in Orlando over the past weekend, there is much speculation over the mindset of the shooter who killed 49 innocent people. The facts as known to date suggest perhaps toxic influences from ISIS propaganda were a motivation for the bloodbath, yet on the other hand, given the emerging facts about the shooter's exposure to fundamentalist Muslim beliefs and his homophobic father, some believe that internalized homophobia might also have been in play.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the damage done to LGBT individuals raised in anti-gay homes and the role that this might have played in the tragedy in Orlando.  Here are excerpts:

Imagine growing up hearing from those you love and trust that certain groups of people are evil. In fact, these people are so bad, so wrong, that God himself will punish them. Imagine absorbing this hatred deep into your bones. Imagine that you then discover, at some point in your adolescence, that you are one of these people. They are the hated. You are the hated.

We don’t know the details of Omar Mateen’s sexuality. Perhaps he did not fully understand. But according to some, Mateen expressed romantic interest in men. A classmate from his 2006 police academy class told the “Palm Beach Post” that Mateen had asked him out. Sometimes, after class, Mateen would go with friends to gay nightclubs, the classmate said.

We will never understand what triggered Mateen. But there is abundant evidence that the prejudice we face is toxic. And when anti-gay prejudice comes from parents or religion, the effect is profound. According to University of Tennessee Knoxville psychology professor Dawn Szymanski, research shows that experiencing rejection from parents of your sexual identity is linked to traumatic internalized negativity – what psychologists call “internalized homonegativity” or “internalized stigma.” The same is true when a person belongs to a religion that rejects homosexuality.

One consequence of this internalized stigma is violence: Studies of same-sex couples show that internalized homophobia is significant predictor of violence within a relationship. Self-hatred also creates profound psychological distress: One meta-analysis found that higher levels of internalized anti-gay stigma were correlated with worse mental health. The psychological distress can include anxiety, depression, poor self-esteem and hyperarousal – a state of increased tension that includes irritability, anger and aggression.

Anti-gay prejudice is especially pernicious because it creeps into the intimacy of one’s own family. For other forms of bias – racism, for example, or prejudice based on one’s religion — the family can be a refuge against the hatred of the outside world. But anti-gay prejudice is different. The hatred comes from not outsiders, but from loved ones. Parents’ rejection of their children is the one of the biggest reasons as many as 40 percent of homeless youths are LGBT.

Politicians will continue to use “radical Islam” as a culprit. But it’s not clear that Mateen was motivated by ideology; indeed, he claimed to support a jumble of groups with conflicting points of view. On the other hand, his ex-wife told CNN, “It doesn’t surprise me that he was leading two totally different lives and was in such deep conflict within himself.” 

Imagine a young person sitting in his congregation, listening. Imagine this young person absorbing that certain people deserve to die because of who they are. Now imagine that child growing up to discover that he is gay. He, too, deserves to die. Imagine the chaos and self-hatred growing inside his heart.

The root cause, of course, of anti-gay beliefs is religion, especially Abrahamic religions.  The same religions that over the centuries have lead the the deaths and stigmatization of millions of people.  As I have said before, religion is a pernicious evil that needs to be eradicated.

Anti-Gay Marriage Screed Slammed by Readers and Critics

Heritage Foundation homophobe

If one wants serious writing and journalism, don't expect to find it from some of the favored anti-gay authors of the far right who pontificate as if they were experts - most have zero actual credentials - yet rarely do anything more than regurgitate the same tired arguments and go through numerous contortions trying to hide the reality that their anti-gay animus ultimately traces back to religion and religious based bigotry.  Such seemingly is the case with Heritage Foundation hack Ryan T. Anderson whose new book, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom is being slammed by critics and readers.  Nonetheless, Anderson will walk away with money from the members of the shrinking anti-gay right who by the book and then use the book to boost his supposed credentials.  Think Progress looks at the panning of Anderson and his book.  Here are highlights:

“Absolutely nothing new here.”
“Ryan T. Anderson’s Checklist of Failed Arguments”
“Nothing new. Not challenging. Not entertaining. Not enlightening.”
“Pointless debate of a settled issue”
“A Tired read full of dog whistles to Anti-Gay bigotry”
“read it if you already agree with the author and just want to read something supporting your view.”

These are all negative reviews of Ryan T. Anderson’s new book, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom, as found on Amazon. Anderson, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, has become one of the leading voices in the movement to oppose marriage equality and LGBT rights generally, and he marketed this new book to address what comes after Obergefell, the Supreme Court’s ruling bringing marriage equality to the country. 

Heritage has been concerned about all the negative reviews the book has received from what it dismissed as dishonest “activists and ideologues,” but the reality is that the reviews are right: the book has nothing new to offer, nor is it particularly convincing.

[W]hat is interesting about Truth Overruled is what happens when all of those arguments are juxtaposed so closely. The clear contradictions between them become so much more apparent that in many ways, they debunk themselves. They also reveal the systemic rejection of gay, lesbian, and bi people that persists — however sugarcoated — among social conservatives.

Rather than being an effective manifesto of all the arguments against recognizing same-sex relationships as marriages, it serves as a guide for just how weak this already-lost case is, and why continued fights — including the ongoing struggle over using “religious liberty” to justify anti-gay discrimination — will likely not prevail either.

Anderson constructs an artificial concept of what marriage is. Instead of the familiar religious and civil definitions of marriage, he develops his own hypothetical ideal of “marriage,” an abstract, philosophical notion that supposedly borrows from both the civil and religious definitions. Under the pretense of “natural law,” Anderson assumes that the traits he lays out in his ideal will be so common-sense as to be irrefutable. He makes a point of claiming he is not relying solely on religious tenets, but he simultaneously ignores much of how marriage is actually practiced in culture and the many different ways it is important to people and the government that recognizes it. He conveniently selects concepts that serve his purpose of rejecting same-sex marriage without explicitly sounding anti-gay, but in doing so presents a vision of marriage unrecognizable to just about anybody, and the anti-gay dog whistles prevalent throughout demonstrate just how conservatives constructed it.

Wolfson explained, “with the ruling in the Lawrence v. Texas case, that moral objection or moral disapproval of gay people because of who they are is not a basis for making laws to disadvantage people.” States could no longer say of gay people, “they’re icky,” “they’re scary,” “we don’t like them,” or “we don’t approve of them.” Instead, “They actually had to come up with a neutral-sounding rationale for why states were denying marriage.  . . . . The contrast was evident in the 2013 Windsor case, when opponents of marriage equality were forced to reconcile the “moral disapproval of homosexuality” lawmakers cited as their reasoning for passing the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996.

Anderson relies on slippery slope warnings about polyamory, “monogamish” and open relationships, and short-termed “wedlease” marriages to show the deterioration of his marriage ideal. Of course, none of those are uniquely relevant to the issue of same-sex marriage. They may indeed be growing in popularity, and there may even be legal questions to consider in the future concerning these other kinds of relationships, but they are entirely different issues not informed by sexual orientation.

He fails to mention that Dutch researchers have clarified, “Neither the legalization of same-sex marriage nor the introduction of registered partnership have had significant negative effects on the Dutch different-sex marriage rate in the aggregate.” He makes the same claim about marriage rates dipping in early marriage equality states like Iowa, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire, but leaves out the part about how those states’ marriage rates were declining at virtually the exact same rates before marriage equality arrived as after. Marriage equality actually had no effect.

[C]onservatives have had to find a way to talk about the issue of same-sex marriage without saying much about homosexuality. Try as he might not to, Anderson reveals several assumptions he holds about the inferiority of same-sex relationships — assumptions that might not be apparent at first glance but that are essential to his case against marriage equality. Inherent in his definition of marriage is a concept Anderson refers to at times as the “comprehensive act,” his euphemism for when a man inserts his penis into a woman’s vagina and releases sperm to fertilize her egg. . . . This suggests Anderson knows very little about sex, why anybody has it, how anybody has it, or just how deep, intimate, and meaningful it can be for any couple regardless of their chance of fertilizing an egg and regardless of their gender pairing.

Anderson is not particularly effective at hiding his irrational animus either. He dedicates a whole chapter to “why sexual orientation is not like race.” Taking existing racial and religious discrimination protections for granted, he decries adding sexual orientation and gender identity protections — what he calls “special privileges” — because he believes they will undermine the freedoms of speech and religion for those who oppose LGBT equality. He essentially believes that religious people, which apparently only includes conservatives who share his position and none of the people motivated by faith to support LGBT rights, should have a hecklers’ veto that overrides LGBT people’s basic right to not be fired, evicted, or denied service for who they are. He’s pointing that “special privileges” accusation in the wrong direction. . . . .

Apparently, falling in love with someone and wanting to commit to that person for life and build a family with them is a “selfish desire” — if you’re gay. . . Gays and lesbians should instead be content with “deep friendships,” which he calls “liberating.” . . . chastity is the only option he offers to people with same-sex orientations.

Anderson is insistent that discrimination against LGBT people be allowed to continue. Just this week he railed against the new Equality Act, a comprehensive LGBT nondiscrimination bill just introduced in Congress. These protections “threaten the freedom of citizens, individually and in associations, to affirm their religious or moral convictions — convictions such as that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.”

There's more, but as I said, in the end ALL of Anderson's attacks on equality and non-discrimination trace back to his religious belief that same sex love is a "sin" and his inability to admit that the Catholic Church is wrong on the issue - just as throughout history it has been wrong on many, many issues.   The only thing in Anderson's defense I can say is that, having been raised Catholic, I know too well how badly it f*cks up one's mind.  But a time comes when we all need to grow up and accept logic, reason and modern knowledge over the Church's 13th century "natural law."  Anderson unfortunately refuses to grow up due I can only assume to his own psychological/sexual hang ups.

Rick Santorum and Catholic Extremism

Even as we see new daily stories on sexual abuse horrors - and now forced castrations of youths - involving the Roman Catholic Church, we learn more and more about Rick "Frothy Mix" Santorum's slavish embrace of the most extreme aspects of the batshitery within the Catholic Church. Santorum's embrace of Opus Dei - considered something scary even by many Catholics - is but one example of this alignment with reactionary and extremist elements. While Santorum rants about gays, contraception and abortion, one never hears a word from him about feeding out the members of the Church hierarchy who aided and abetted sexual predator priests. Or accountability for members of the hierarchy who participated in the worldwide conspiracy to cover up crimes against children and youths. True, Santorum has the right to hold his own personal religious beliefs no matter how crazy they may seems to rational, thinking individuals. What he doesn't have the right to do is inflict his religious extremism on others and I do not believe that Santorum, given his extremism - almost mental illness in my view - has the ability to separate his personal beliefs from what he would try to enforce as a matter of public policy. The Washington Post has coverage on Santorum and the most disturbing aspects of Catholicism. Here are highlights:

In January 2002, prominent Catholics from around the world gathered in Rome to celebrate the Spanish priest who founded one of the church’s most conservative and devout groups, Opus Dei. The event drew cardinals, bishops and other powerful Vatican officials. And among those invited to speak was a future presidential candidate: Rick Santorum . . .

In a speech at the gathering, Santorum embraced the ideas of Opus Dei founder Josemaria Escriva . . .

Within the story of how Santorum grew up and decided to run for president, there is the story of a boy who grew up to become ever more devoutly Catholic, a journey all the more relevant as Santorum has vigorously asserted a role for religious conviction in the realm of governance.

Less well known is Santorum’s embrace of the Catholicism of Opus Dei, a relatively small yet influential group within the church that is defined by the intensity with which followers are urged to live out church doctrine . . . The group encourages “unity” between followers’ personal and public lives as Catholics, the rigorous practice of church sacraments and, to some degree, gestures of self-denial. Its most devoted members follow a daily two-hour ritual of wearing a spiked metal chain on their thighs to recall Christ’s suffering — a practice followed by Mother Teresa.

Opus Dei, whose name is Latin for “Work of God,” has become a significant presence in his life. Santorum has for years attended a church with a number of Opus Dei followers and other affiliations with the group, and he has sent two of his sons to a school run by Opus Dei members.

In his address, Santorum embraced Escriva’s view that it is “absurd” to leave one’s Catholicism aside in conducting politics. He said that “as an American, and as a public figure, I am deeply troubled by this turn away from God.” . . . . “Without a shared belief system that is held and enforced,” he said, “a culture disintegrates into moral chaos.” For guidance on these matters, Santorum said, he turns to “blessed Josemaria.”

About 70 percent of its members are “supernumeraries,” who can marry, while about 20 percent are “numeraries,” who live in celibacy. Numeraries typically wear the spiked chain and perform “the discipline,” occasionally striking themselves with a braided cord as a reminder of Jesus’s suffering.

In 2002, the scandal over sexual abuse by priests was shaking the Catholic Church, including Santorum’s former parish in Butler, St. Paul, where one of the young, long-haired priests of the 1970s was accused of molesting three boys, including a classmate of Santorum’s, and placed on leave that April.

It is unclear whether Santorum knew that when he gave a speech in July, expressing “profound sympathy” for victims and blaming the abuse on the moral relativism he had just spoken of in Rome. Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture,” he said. “When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected.” What was needed, he said, was greater fidelity to church teachings instead of “watered-down versions of our faith.”

When two of Santorum’s sons were around the age he was when he met Father Alex, he sent them to the Heights, a private liberal arts boys school in Potomac run by Opus Dei members. Its headmaster, Alvaro de Vicente, is a numerary.

When Santorum is home in Virginia, he attends St. Catherine of Siena in Great Falls, one of the few churches in the diocese that host a monthly Opus Dei spiritual meeting. A priest from the group comes in to hear confessions. Santorum often attends the noon Mass in Latin.

He [Santorum] said that Satan has used “the great vices of pride, vanity and sensuality” to corrupt universities, politics and even most Christian churches, except one.

“You say, ‘The Catholic Church?’ No,” Santorum said, explaining that Satan aimed at the country’s Protestant roots. “. . . If you look at mainline Protestantism in this country, it is in shambles. It is gone from the world of Christianity.”

I'm sorry, but I find Santorum down right scary. Moreover, as one who threw myself into devout Catholicism in a futile attempt to escape my sexual orientation and inner demons, I cannot help but feel that something is not quite right with Santorum's mental/psychological state. I've known too many other Catholics who did as I did, and there's just something going on with Santorum that he isn't facing up to. And as he seeks to flee his demons through religious extremism, I cannot help by worry about the damage he'd do to the nation if he were to win the presidency.

Catholicism's Internal Culture War

As a former Roman Catholic I know the dark side of Catholicism which is predominated by guilt, self-loathing and almost a form of hatred towards women and, of course gays - even though the ranks of the priesthood and Vatican are likely filled with closeted gay men. Looking back more than a decade after leaving the Catholic Church, I feel with the benefit of hindsight that I had recover from almost a form of psychologically abused inflicted on me as a closeted gay teen and then later for many years as a closeted gay man. Fortunately, many within the Catholic laity have come to recognize the severe harm done to many by the intransigent Catholic Church leadership and the huge disconnect between the Christian message of love and compassion and the almost hateful and intolerant rigidity preached by conservatives appointed by the less than saintly John Paul II and the Emperor Palpatine like Benedict XVI. An article in the Washington Post looks at this internal culture war within the Church. A war which hopefully will ultimately won by the laity which increasingly ignores the dictates from Roman and Benedict XVI's henchmen in bishoprics around the world. Here are some highlights:

Barbara Johnson reached out to receive Holy Communion at her mother’s funeral Mass last month at St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Gaithersburg. The Rev. Marcel Guarnizo, standing before her, placed his hand over the offering bowl, denying her the sacrament.

Those mere seconds between Johnson, no ordinary Catholic, and Guarnizo, no ordinary priest, have touched off a heated controversy among Catholics across the country — another battle in the seemingly endless cultural wars that have invadednearly every corner of daily life, even funerals.

What’s clear, amid all the dissension, is that distinctly different beliefs about Catholicism turned a random meeting of a grieving woman and priest into a theological collision.

What’s next for Guarnizo is unclear. In his statement, he questioned the Washington archdiocese’s handling of the case and its allegations of his intimidation. Some Catholic commentators noted how unusual it is for a priest to publicly contradict and criticize his superiors. Doctrine dictates that priests are to be submissive to their bishops.

“If I was Cardinal [Donald W.] Wuerl, I’d buy him a one-way ticket to Moscow,” the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Washington Jesuit and former editor of liberal Catholic magazine America, said in reference to the archbishop of Washington. “These days, arch-conservative priests feel much more comfortable attacking their bishops than do liberals because they feel they’ll get support from conservative Catholic blogs and maybe some in the Vatican.”

While the priest has been fiercely attacked by liberal Catholics and non-Catholics, conservative Catholics have rushed to defend Guarnizo‘s decision to deny Johnson Communion. That Johnson ultimately received the sacrament from a lay minister that day hardly seems to matter at this point.

The vitriol the incident has unleashed online has unnerved Johnson and her family.

Personally, I cannot understand how anyone LGBT remains involved in any manner with the Roman Catholic Church. To me, it's like someone who is Jewish joining a Nazi party or someone black belonging to the KKK. With viable alternatives like the Episcopal Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America that offer nearly identical services available to LGBT Catholics, there truly is no reason to remain affiliated with an institution that denigrates one's very existence. Especially when the worldwide sex abuse scandal has clearly revealed the moral bankruptcy of the Church hierarchy. And what I find equally telling is the number of members of the younger generations who have walked away from the Church both because of the sex abuse scandal and the Church's anti-gay jihad. All three of my own children have abandoned the Catholic Church and, to the extent they give any credence to institutional religion, only consider fealty to gay friendly denominations.

These conclusions are not just my own. The Seattle Times has a piece on the disconnect between everyday Catholics and Rick Santorum who markets himself as uber-Catholic and a darling of the Church hierarchy:

Across all states where Republican primary voters were asked their religion in exit polls, Mitt Romney, a Mormon, trounced Santorum among Catholics, with an average margin of victory above 20 percentage points. Even in Southern states, where Romney has struggled, Catholics broke his way.

On Sunday, overwhelmingly Catholic Puerto Rico was holding its primary. Catholics haven't voted as a bloc in decades, leading analysts to declare "the Catholic vote" as such doesn't exist. Still, the results are surprising given that the former Pennsylvania senator puts Catholicism at the center of his public service and personal life.

Santorum underscored his distance from other Catholics by saying recently that he "almost threw up" when he read Kennedy's famous 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association addressing anti-Catholic bias.

Catholic primary voters were less likely than Protestants to see Santorum as their best ideological match. The polls found that 52 percent of Protestant voters described Santorum's positions as just right, compared with 42 percent of Catholics, while 28 percent of Catholics called Santorum too conservative.

The other thing that is noteworthy is that the current far right form of Catholicism is unable to attract seminarians in America. A New York Times article that looks at the retirement of the Archbishop of Canterbury notes that both the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church the inability to attract seminarians in educated, developed countries is striking compared to what is happening in ignorant, uneducated nations in the third world:

Roman Catholicism’s decline in the West has likewise been accompanied by striking growth in the developing world. (As the number of Catholic seminarians has dropped in the United States and Europe, for instance, it has risen by 86 percent globally since 1978.) In both churches, this geographic and demographic shift is putting a strain on institutional structures that evolved in a more Eurocentric age.

This is probably the last era in which the public face of the world’s major Christian bodies will look the way it did in 1780, or even 1950. The next pope could well be Latin American or African; if not in the next election, then it’s only a matter of time.

A hundred years ago, the idea that one of Western Europe’s most ancient religious offices could be occupied by a black man born in Africa would have seemed like something out of science fiction. By the end of this century, in a globalized Anglicanism and Catholicism alike, it will probably seem like the most normal and necessary thing in the world.

With its refusal to accept modernity and modern medical and mental health knowledge on sexual orientation, the Catholic Church is slowly but steadily condemning itself to a future where it will flourish - at least until education levels increase - only as a third world religion where ignorance and a lack of education predominate. Benedict XVI may want to save Catholicism in the developed world and Europe, but instead his efforts to restore a 13th century mindset in the Church is accelerating the death of Catholicism.

Former Newt Campaign Staff - Callista Gingrich, "It's All About Her"

As noted before, Newt Gingrich is a thoroughly self-centered and egotistical man. And based on a story in The New Yorker, he may be perfectly matched with his former mistress, now wife Callista Gingrich, who according to a former Gingrich staffer is "the single most self-centered person I’ve run into in politics — it’s all about her." Bizarrely, Callista Gingrich makes quite a show of her Catholicism which is surprising given the fact that per the official Catholic Church teaching, she's an adulterer. Some might think me bitchy for looking at Ms. Gingrich, but given the far right's penchant for maligning Michelle Obama, what's good for the goose ought to be good for the gander. Here are some excerpts from The New Yorker story:

As a couple, the Gingriches are a bit like Jack Sprat and his wife in reverse: he is pudgy and soft-featured, with droopy jowls and hooded eyes, while she is slender, with a sharply angled nose and bright-blue eyes that are always wide open. Her hair is platinum blond and very stiff, with one remarkable lock styled into an immobile, upward swoosh.

Though Callista is central to Gingrich’s life, her public role in his campaign has been largely ornamental. She accompanies him on the trail, smiling behind him at events; in December, she appeared with him in a Christmas video to ask, “Is there anything more inspiring than American towns and neighborhoods brightly lit for the holidays?” But she does not have a stump speech, and though she’s happy to exchange pleasantries with reporters, she has not been granting interviews, with the exception of a brief on-camera conversation with the Christian Broadcasting Network.

Callista Gingrich is a reminder of her husband’s wayward past, which may explain why she is the only one of the Republican candidates’ spouses to keep quiet.

According to current and previous staff members and friends, Mrs. Gingrich wields a great deal of decision-making power. Of the notorious Greek cruise, one former Gingrich strategist told me, “She said, ‘Either go on this vacation or we’re done.’ ” There were rules, he said, about “how many nights he could be away and what time he had to be home for dinner—which led to a huge abuse of private planes which we could not afford. There’s a sense that, I’m not gonna have a third failed marriage.”

[A] former strategist had a different assessment. “She’s the single most self-centered person I’ve run into in politics—it’s all about her. . . . The strategist allowed that the marriage has been good for Newt: “This is the most adult relationship the guy’s ever had.” But he suggested that it hasn’t been good for his campaign. “The core problem was that he was not willing to do the things he’d have to do to run for President. And Callista did not want him to run for President. That’s why he had to buy her so much damn jewelry.”

She does not seem like a forty-five-year-old, or at least not like a forty-five-year-old of this era. She has the style and smile of an astronaut’s wife, even in her downtime. Once, in Cedar Rapids, I happened to run into her in the women’s bathroom at the airport. In her suit and pearls, with her stiff coiffure, she looked as if she had just exited a beauty parlor in 1962.

Callista met Newt Gingrich while she was working for Gunderson, and, after she took a job as a clerk with the House Agriculture Committee, they began their affair. Her parents learned about it only when they returned from a camping trip and found dozens of messages from reporters on their answering machine. . . . At that time, Gingrich was leading the charge against Bill Clinton for his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, an intern more than twenty years his junior. As it happened, Callista was a congressional staffer twenty-three years Gingrich’s junior, the same age as his daughter Jackie.

Many conservative voters, particularly evangelicals, do not want to see just evolution or mellowing, though; they want to see repentance for what they view as profound transgressions. “Initially, my reaction to Newt Gingrich and to Callista is that the third wife doesn’t get to be the First Lady,” Penny Nance, the president of Concerned Women for America, told me.

Jason (Molotov) Mitchell, a Christian television producer who has linked Obama to Nazism, released a video in which he accused Gingrich—“the Kim Kardashian of the G.O.P.”—of being “the walking, talking definition of untrustworthy,” sneered at Callista for being “quite the missionary,” and asserted that “Newt and Callista are the last role models we want our sons and daughters looking up to.”

Callista was at his side, wearing a bright-red skirt suit and pearls, nodding in approval as her husband said the same things he’d been saying all week: That he wanted to give Americans “paychecks, not food stamps.” That he would be the second coming of Ronald Reagan. That he would change “the entire pattern of how Washington operates.” Callista watched and smiled and listened, the things she has to do the most these days. On the campaign bus, asked if her mind ever wanders at these events, she had replied, “No,” with a cheeky smile. “I hang on his every word.”

Newt Gingrich's War on Poor Children

Serial adulterer and GOP presidential candidate claims to have changed his ways and is wearing his new found Catholicism on his sleeve almost wherever he goes. Of course, Gingrich can easily be called a cafeteria Catholic inasmuch as he happily ignores just about all of the Church's social justice teachings. You know, things like assisting the poor, the homeless, the sick and caring for children. For Newt, its all about trying to look good and pander to the vilest elements of the GOP base. The folks who cheer at letting someone uninsured die of medical maladies, jeer a gay soldier serving the nation in combat, and who preach hate and intolerance against gays, Hispanics, Muslims, liberals - the list is nearly endless - on a daily basis. A column in the New York Times looks at Gingrich's utter hypocrisy when it comes to protecting children. It's pretty disgusting, but then disgusting ought to be Newt's middle name. Here are some highlights:

Newt Gingrich has reached a new low, and that is hard for him to do. Nearly two weeks after claiming that child labor laws are “truly stupid” and implying that poor children should be put to work as janitors in their schools, he now claims that poor children don’t understand work unless they’re doing something illegal.

On Thursday, at a campaign stop in Iowa, the former House speaker said, “Start with the following two facts: Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’ unless it’s illegal.”

This statement isn’t only cruel and, broadly speaking, incorrect, it’s mind-numbingly tone-deaf at a time when poverty is rising in this country. He comes across as a callous Dickensian character in his attitude toward America’s most vulnerable — our poor children. This is the kind of statement that shines light on the soul of a man and shows how dark it is.

Gingrich wants to start with the facts? O.K. First, as I’ve pointed out before, three out of four poor working-aged adults — ages 18 to 64 — work. Half of them have full-time jobs and a quarter work part time.

Furthermore, according to an analysis of census data by Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College, most poor children live in a household where at least one parent is employed. And even among children who live in extreme poverty — defined here as a household with income less than 50 percent of the poverty level — a third have at least one working parent. And even among extremely poor children who live in extremely poor areas — those in which 30 percent or more of the population is poor — nearly a third live with at least one working parent.

You’d have to slice the definition of neighborhoods rather thinly to find a few areas that support Gingrich’s position. Lastly, Gingrich vastly overreaches by suggesting that a lack of money universally correlates to a lack of morals. Yes, poverty presents increased risk factors for crime. But, encouragingly, data show that even as more Americans have fallen into poverty in recent years, the crime rate over all — and, specifically, among juveniles — has dropped.

“Facts” are not Gingrich’s forte. Yet he is now the Republican front-runner. It just goes to show how bankrupt of compassion and allergic to accuracy that party is becoming.

The Republican Party has truly become something very ugly. Click on the image below for details on the children of the working poor.

Catholic Political Divide Over Obama at Notre Dame

Also involving religious insanity is the debate over President Obama's invitation to give the commencement address at Notre Dame University, a Catholic university that seems to attract Catholic extremists who see the world solely through the lens of abortion issues. For the record, I am not one who favors abortion and I have a low view of women who use abortion as a method of birth control rather than properly using other birth control methods. However, I do not believe I have the right to dictate to others that they can never have the right to an abortion regardless of the circumstances. Not so the Catholic Church or the Notre Dame fanatics many of whom I have known believe that popping out baby after baby every 15-18 months is proper family planning. Fortunately, not all Catholics fall into this extreme category as highlighted in this Washington Post story:

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A campaign by outraged Roman Catholics to keep President Barack Obama from delivering the commencement address at Notre Dame shows that the gulf between the church and backers of abortion rights remains deep. Yet the effort to get the school to rescind its invitation to Obama also highlights a political disconnect between the conservative Catholic hierarchy and millions of U.S. Catholic voters.

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One Catholic leader, Archbishop Raymond Burke, accused Obama of pushing an anti-life, anti-family agenda. Burke, the first American to lead the Vatican supreme court, said Friday it was "a scandal" that Notre Dame had invited Obama to speak.

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Yet polling and other evidence shows that Catholic voters have a largely positive view of the president, closely tracking other national polling. Obama's standing is more evidence that U.S. Catholics don't always follow the Church hierarchy, whether on issues such as abortion and contraception or political preferences. Also, the president's community service background and his opposition to the Iraq war appeal to some Catholics. . . . Obama is also widely popular among Hispanics, a fast-growing growing Catholic population in the U.S.

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Patrick Whelan, a physician at Harvard Medical School and president of Catholic Democrats, said that by taking such a hard line against Obama, bishops and other conservative leaders risked driving Catholics away from the church rather than cool their support for the president. "There are unintended consequences to this kind of angry, vituperative language about their opponents," Whelan said. "By making themselves pawns of the conservative right, the bishops are playing into a cycle of decline for our church."

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Increasingly, the Roman Catholicism is becoming a third world religion with observance in modern, educated counties declining. Only uneducated and extremist followers tend to still blindly follow a corrupt and out of touch hierarchy that continues to act as if we were living in the 13th century.

A Kennedy Plumbs Life as a Catholic - and Revives My Childhood Memories

Robert F. Kennedy's daughter, Kerry Kennedy (pictured at left), has a new book out in which she strives to reconcile her Catholic faith with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Growing up, I strongly identified with the Kennedys both because of our shared Catholic faith and also because on my mother's side of the family there were some parallels of Irish Catholic immigrants who had done well, albeit on a much more down to earth financial level. My mother's father was a wealthy doctor and in the area where he lived after moving to New York after nearly two decades in Central America as a hospital administrator and surgeon, he was a big deal in terms of respect and influence. In the area where the family summer compound on Brantingham Lake was located - only 17 miles from Lowville where he was the head of the regional hospital and also county coroner - he was very prominent and his family name carried clout for long after he died when I was 11 in 1963. As teenagers, for my oldest sisters and me being his grandchildren opened doors and let us get away with all kinds of things.

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Like Kerry Kennedy, growing up being Catholic was for me a central part of my identity. Indeed, we were raissed to believe that we would die before we disavowed are Catholicsm. On Sundays during the summer we all - including aunts and cousins and assorted guests staying at the lake compound - attended mass in the small Catholic Church in the nearby town as a family enmass. Thus, between finally admitting to myself that I was gay and the sex abuse scandal which blew wide open in 2002, and disclosed the moral bankruptcy of the Church hierarchy from the Pope on down, I was faced with a huge identity crisis. Unlike Kerry Kennedy, confronted with the Church's horrific attitude towards gay and clear proof that the hierarchy had knowingly closed it eyes and/or covered up vile cases of the sexual abuse of children, I chose to leave the Church. As a matter of conscience I simply could not remain a part of an institution with such a corrupt and - in my opinion - evil leadership. Fortunately, I have found a home in the ELCA, but I still think of what the Roman Catholic Church could be if the hierarchy could be purged of the sanctimonious hypocrites who now lead the Church. I know that I am one of many "recovering Catholics" who have been harmed not so much by Catholiscm per se, but rather by a group of self-centered, fallible men who are all consumed by power and wealth. Here are some highlights from the Boston Globe about Kerry Kennedy's book:

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HYANNIS PORT - Catholicism ran deep at the home of Bobby and Ethel Kennedy. "It was central to my upbringing - But today, like many Catholics, Kennedy has a hard time reconciling her own views with some of the teachings and actions of her church; in fact, she often can't. So Kennedy decided to talk with well-known Americans about their often complicated relationships with the Catholic faith; the result is a revealing book being released tomorrow.

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The book, "Being Catholic Now," offers an unusually intimate view of how much being raised Catholic shapes the identity of many prominent Americans, but also how much tension many feel with the institutional church.

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"Don't even let me go into Cardinal [Bernard F.] Law and that he has been rewarded with a princely title in Rome," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Kennedy, referring to the former archbishop of Boston, who resigned over the sex abuse scandal and now oversees a prominent basilica in Rome. "It is just appalling. I cannot deal with that, so I don't."

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And Anne Burke, an Illinois Supreme Court justice who was appointed by the American bishops to a board overseeing the church's response to the clergy abuse scandal, was clearly infuriated by her up-close view of the church's upper management. "It's the culture of the administration of the Catholic Church in the United States that permitted a climate of cover-up to go on for the past 50 years; it's the same culture and it's still out there today," Burke said. "Things have hit rock bottom in the Catholic Church, and it's going to get worse."

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Kennedy said she is at odds with the church hierarchy over many issues - abortion rights and women's ordination among them. Her views do not make her extraordinary; polls suggest that an overwhelming majority of American Catholics support women's ordination and that American Catholics reflect the general public's split over abortion.

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But Kennedy also said that in her travels around the world as a human rights advocate, she concluded that in "virtually every country I've gone to, the Catholic church is on the cutting edge of social change."

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"I was witnessing the mighty spirit, and the tremendous capacity of this institution which was so much a part of my history, and my family, and my sense of spirituality, and my vision of social justice . . . and then coming back and hearing bishops who were protecting their turf instead of protecting children and playing Three-card Monte with the pedophile priests and blaming it on people who are gay," she said. "So it was important to me to resolve that."

Coming Out in Mid-Life: Early Morning Relections

At times I suspect that some readers feel I talk about religion too much and/or treat certain denominations extremely harshly. Each of us can only speak from our own perceptions and experiences and in my own case, so much of my past unhappiness tracks back directly to the religious indoctrination - perhaps brainwashing is a better word - that planted the seeds for so much of my self-hate, suffering in silence and isolation, and striving to change my unchangeable sexual orientation. Catholicism instills so much guilt, much of it ridiculous to an outside observer. Take the case of a ten year old child worried about going to Hell because they forgot and ate meat on a Friday (when I was a child, meat was banned on every Friday). Thus, imagine what the realization that one is attracted to other boys has the power to do to one's psyche. It was utterly devastating and set the stage for unending feels of unworthiness and a sense of being cursed. I viewed myself as vile and worse. I see better now and understand that I am not and that I never was.

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One of my goals that motivated me starting this blog was to share my experiences in the hope that someone would benefit and perhaps avoid some of the unhappiness and self-hate that I endured for nearly fifty years. Having left the Catholic Church, if anything I believe that I am a now a better Christian. I'm less judgmental and I am certainly more loving towards my children and others because I am a less miserable person. One cannot really love others fully if you cannot find it in you to love yourself at least a little bit. In fact, I know now that I was never a bad person, just one who was deeply damaged by a flawed faith construct. A construct that in my view is aimed at keeping a small clique of dour, sexually fixated old men in power and in control of millions of lives. A faith construct which has perverted the message of the Gospels into something often quite horrible. Many of these old men I suspect are afflicted with the same baggage I once carried and rather than accept who they are they make life miserable for everyone else especially in matters sexual since they are so dysfunctional themselves. The rage I express at religion and Catholicism in particular is that this mindset is still ruining the lives of gays (and many others) everyday. How many gay lives must be ruined or damaged before it ceases?

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I have come to believe that self-acceptance and the ability to find some inherent worth in one's self are keys to happiness. Too often religion - certainly the Catholicism of Benedict XVI or Lady Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited does - makes achieving that goal impossible. Had I remained a Catholic, for myself, I doubt I'd have been able to succeed in finding spiritual peace and the realization that I am NOT a bad person. As I have mentioned, I frequently receive communications from married men in the closet who are trying to decide what to do with their lives. Many come across severely damaged by their faith communities which like the Catholic Church barely recognize the humanity of gays and give out constant messages of condemnation. Faced with all of that do they remain closeted? Do they come out and try to navigate their way through all of the nightmare that may be involved? Only they can make that decision ultimately. If my shared experiences and reflections can help any of them in some small way find an easier path, avoid my mistakes, and/or achieve a happier life, then I've accomplished something positive.

Brideshead Revisited - Reflections on Roman Catholicism

I went and saw the new movie version of Brideshead Revisited last night and found it fairly good, although not a movie that will leave one feeling bubbly afterwards. Perhaps my idea of the main characters was a influenced by the 1981 mini-series version where Anthony Andrews and Jeremy Irons - yes, I thought they were HOT - played Sebastian and Charles respectively. As cute as Ben Whishaw is, I kept thinking of Andrews. I enjoyed the acting and Matthew Goode as Charles and he was definitely easy on the eyes (he has a whimsical little smile much like my current roommate's).

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I will not discuss the story line with any particularity detail for those unfamiliar with the story. However, I will say that what struck me perhaps the most of anything about the movie was the manner in which the Flyte family's Roman Catholicism (at least to me) served as an evil influence on the characters in so many ways. If Evelyn Waugh intended to depict Catholicism in a favorable light in his book, Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder, the 2008 movie version sends a whole different (and in my view a far more accurate) message. In fact, the image of Catholicism is one that comes across very negatively. In fact, leaving the theater I remarked to a friend that the movie helped reminded me of all the reason I left the Catholic Church.

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While the movie storyline ends perhaps 12-15 years before I was born, I identified with much of the pre-Vatican II form of Catholic ritual and life which puts so much emphasis on strict conformity with legalistic rules and regulations - few of which are found in the Bible - and the indoctrination of a constant sense of guilt and unworthiness. It is a faith often devoid of love of any form, either from God except in lip service or from its dour and strict adherents. As I and I suspect many other former Catholics will testify, it's a religion that truly fucks up one's mind and sense any innate value. True, some of the Church's institutions did and continue to do good works assisting the poor and others. But overall, it is not a kind and loving religion and gays are seen as inherently disordered. What perhaps is most frightening to me is that this is exactly the form of Catholicism that Benedict XVI seems Hell bent to restore with all its overpowering guilt, foreboding and cold-hearted aspects.

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As I have commented before, I personally cannot see how anyone who is LGBT can remain a Catholic. The emotional and psychological costs are just too high. It's no wonder that Sebastian meets the fate that he does. But, I guess ultimately each of us must decide for ourselvees.