{"id":518,"date":"2009-06-02T22:58:11","date_gmt":"2009-06-02T22:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/will-obama-resurrect-the-catho.html"},"modified":"2009-06-02T22:58:11","modified_gmt":"2009-06-02T22:58:11","slug":"will-obama-resurrect-the-catho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/will-obama-resurrect-the-catho.html","title":{"rendered":"Will Obama resurrect the Catholic left?"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Liberal Catholicism is an exhausted project,” Chicago Cardinal Francis George famously said more than a decade ago. As noted earlier<\/a>, the eminent church historian John O’Malley argues that Barack Obama could be reviving the “spirit of Vatican II” that is associated with a “progressive” Catholicism currently out of favor in Rome. <\/p>\n

At PoliticsDaily<\/strong><\/a>, the much less eminent journalism hack, David Gibson, coincidentally argues that Obama–an African-American Protestant–may also be reviving a progressive, social justice Catholicism in political life that has been out of favor inside the Beltway for as long as it has been inside the Vatican walls–say the last three or four decades: <\/p>\n

\n
But times are changing, and for conservative Catholics, not for the better. The theocon chaplain, Father Richard John Neuhaus, has passed away.<\/strong> Michael Novak<\/strong><\/font><\/a> and <\/strong>Deal Hudson<\/strong><\/font><\/a> are so angry at the Vatican daily, L’Osservatore Romano<\/em>, for being nice to Obama that some worry for the editor’s job security (as if the media industry needs more layoffs). And<\/strong> Weigel<\/strong><\/font><\/a> is accusing Obama of using politics to divide Catholics. That’s rich. One leading conservative Catholic legal scholar, Mary Ann Glendon, refuses to appear on the same Notre Dame platform as Obama, and another leading conservative Catholic legal scholar, Doug Kmiec, actually went over to the Democratic Dark Side during last year’s campaign, causing virtual apoplexy on the right.<\/strong><\/div>\n
<\/strong> <\/div>\n
On the other side of the aisle, it’s a different story. Fifty-four percent of Catholic voters backed Obama last November — despite his strong pro-choice bona fides — and his support is even higher today as those voters agree with his agenda far more than they do that of the GOP. Joe Biden is the first Catholic vice president in American history, Nancy Pelosi is next in the succession line, and the 2008 Obama Tide brought some remarkable new Catholic talent to Capitol Hill, such as Tom Perriello of Virginia, while pre-existing talents, including Sen. Bob Casey, Jr., of Pennsylvania — who crushed Santorum in 2006 — are emerging as players.<\/strong><\/div>\n
<\/strong> <\/div>\n
Fully one-third of Obama’s cabinet is comprised of Catholics, also a historic high, and now we have not only Sonia Sotomayor but also Miguel Diaz, a progressive Catholic theologian who Obama named ambassador to the Vatican in a surprise move. Sotomayor herself is arguably the first progressive Catholic nominated to the Supreme Court since William Brennan in 1956, and she is shaping up as a cinch to share the bench with the likes of Antonin Scalia. Does anything else say “New Catholicism” more than a divorced Latina with strong opinions?<\/strong><\/div>\n
<\/strong> <\/div>\n
<\/strong> <\/div>\n
These progressive, social-justice Catholic politicians are not a new phenomenon. Rather, they hark back to an American Catholicism that was historically on the side of the working man, the poor, the immigrant, the marginalized. Only back then, both church and political leaders were on that same side. As recently as the 1960s, and even up to the 1980s, the likes of Robert F. Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, Sargent Shriver, Joseph Califano, Mario Cuomo, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Geraldine Ferraro could count themselves part of a coherent Catholic social-justice cohort.<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
So is this the liberal Catholic moment? Thanks to Obama? And what role will the church leadership play? Read it all here<\/strong><\/a>…<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Liberal Catholicism is an exhausted project,” Chicago Cardinal Francis George famously said more than a decade ago. As noted earlier, the eminent church historian John O’Malley argues that Barack Obama could be reviving the “spirit of Vatican II” that is associated with a “progressive” Catholicism currently out of favor in Rome. At PoliticsDaily, the much less eminent journalism hack, David…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,6,7,3,4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bishops","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-politics","category-pop-culture","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\nWill Obama resurrect the Catholic left? - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/will-obama-resurrect-the-catho.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Will Obama resurrect the Catholic left? - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"“Liberal Catholicism is an exhausted project,” Chicago Cardinal Francis George famously said more than a decade ago. As noted earlier, the eminent church historian John O’Malley argues that Barack Obama could be reviving the “spirit of Vatican II” that is associated with a “progressive” Catholicism currently out of favor in Rome. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}