{"id":325,"date":"2008-12-10T15:53:36","date_gmt":"2008-12-10T15:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2008\/12\/the-future-of-catholic-politic-1.html"},"modified":"2008-12-10T15:53:36","modified_gmt":"2008-12-10T15:53:36","slug":"the-future-of-catholic-politic-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/12\/the-future-of-catholic-politic-1.html","title":{"rendered":"The future of Catholic politics? (Again)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I, among others, have posed the question (here<\/a> and here<\/a>) of what the future of Catholic politics might look like–if it has any future–in light of the great splits between and among Catholic voters and leaders during the recent presidential campaign. There seem to be few good answers, and clearly much will depend on the outcome of the current debate with the Republican Party as to whether it will cool down its rhetoric on abortion and gay marriage and other hot-button issues to draw in more voters.<\/p>\n

I thought one possible answer was indicated by the election of a dedicated social justice Catholic, Tom Perriello<\/a>, in Virginia’s generally conservative Fifth CD. While I was in New Orleans this past weekend (pure coincidence, I swear), there was another potential indication, as 41-year-old Anh Cao, a Vietnamese refugee and former Jesuit seminarian (now married with children) defeated the scandal-tainted incumbent, William J. Jefferson–that’d be the Rep. Jefferson who, in a flourish worthy of Illinois politics, allegedly skimmed hundreds of thousands of dollars, some of which was found wrapped in aluminium foil in the freezer of his Capitol Hill office. (Hey, you want to keep it fresh.)<\/p>\n

The election was delayed until now by Hurricane Gustav (poor New Orleans), but an equally big shock to the city was that A)<\/strong> Jefferson, an African-American, would lose in his predominantly black district and in a city inured to corruption (it was former governor Edwin Edwards–now serving time in a federal penitentiary–who said, “The only way I can lose this election is if I’m caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy”) and B)<\/strong> that the district would elect a Republican over a Democrat, and a soft-spoken fellow like Cao at that.<\/p>\n

But this is apparently a year for miracles. And Cao is a fascinating fellow, as this NYTimes profile<\/a> shows:<\/p>\n

\n

Mr. Cao was a refugee from Vietnam at age 8, a former Jesuit seminarian, a philosophy student with a penchant for Camus and Dostoyevsky<\/font><\/a>, an unknown activist lawyer for one of the least visible immigrant communities here and a Republican in a heavily Democratic district. [snip] He is only a recent convert to the Republican Party<\/font><\/a>, having been a registered independent for most of his adult life, and has no position — at least not one he cares to share yet — on President-elect Barack Obama<\/font><\/a>‘s agenda. His politics seem less a matter of ideology than of low-key temperament and a Jesuit-inspired desire to “help and serve people,” as he put it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Republican leaders are understandably touting Cao as the “Great GOP Hope,” though particular circumstances may have had as much to do with Cao’s win as anything. Moreover, Lousiana governor Bobby Jindal is supposed to be the New Hope. And as Mark Silk points out<\/a>, the men are both Asian, both Catholic, both Republican–but quite different.<\/p>\n

In a sense the pair are a case study in how and whether a new Catholic politics will emerge, and if the GOP can be the incubator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I, among others, have posed the question (here and here) of what the future of Catholic politics might look like–if it has any future–in light of the great splits between and among Catholic voters and leaders during the recent presidential campaign. There seem to be few good answers, and clearly much will depend on the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,12,36,1,9,26],"tags":[37,313,275,315,284,314],"class_list":["post-325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion","category-catholics","category-defining-progressive","category-election-08","category-religion-in-the-public-square","category-war","tag-abortion-2","tag-anh-cao","tag-catholic-vote","tag-new-orleans","tag-presidential-politics-2008","tag-william-j-jefferson"],"yoast_head":"\nThe future of Catholic politics? 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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\/progressiverevival\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}