Distinctly Catholic

My colleague Eugene Cullen Kennedy has strong words to offer in opposition to Pope John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” and, specifically, against Cardinal Justin Rigali’s embrace of it.

John McCain won big and ugly last night. He trounced J. D. Hayworth by a margin of 57 to 32 percent. But, McCain’s path to victory was an ugly one.

In the past few months, facing a challenge from his right, McCain “the Maverick” morphed into just another ranter on the right. Gone was the man who had negotiated campaign finance reform with liberal Senator Russ Feingold. Gone was the man who had promoted comprehensive immigration reform with liberal giant Sen. Ted Kennedy. Instead, McCain tacked so far to the right that he lost sight of the truth, asserting that Phoenix had become the “#2 kidnapping capital in the world,” even though it wasn’t, and that his flip-flop on immigration was caused, in part, by rising violence along the border, even though crime has fallen in each of the past four years along the border. McCain even denied that he had once been a Maverick.

Over at American Catholic, they have a video ad for a woman running for Congress in Minnesota.

America magazine has published a book review of Jonathan Alter's book about President Obama "The Promise" that I recently wrote for them You can read it when your print edition arrives or on their website here.

Money and politics function like pasta and olive oil: They cling to each other. The making of money today is accompanied by elaborate lobbying efforts to get special provisions into the tax code, or special regulatory standing, or some governmental special treatment. And campaigns can’t run if you can’t pay the staff, can’t run the ads, can’t send out the mailings.

Candidates for political office spend hours upon hours “dialing for dollars.” The candidate sits in a room, calling people on the phone and asking for donations. Sitting opposite the candidate is a staffer who feeds them the name, number and personal information about the person they are calling. As they wind down one call, the staffer begins dialing the next number. This is all opaque to the public: You never, ever let the press see the candidate dialing for dollars. It would appear so humiliating. This has given rise to a number of self-funding candidates, super-rich people who wish to share their capacity for “success” with the public.