Chicago, Ill., Mar 4, 2020 / 02:45 pm (CNA).- Gazing at the Chicago skyline from his upper-floor hotel room, Brian Carroll is excited to be visiting the Windy City.
“I figured while the sun is shining, I might as well get out and see something,” the 70-year-old Californian told CNA, with the enthusiasm of a seasoned traveler eager to explore.
This is Brian Carroll’s first trip to Chicago, he said, other than changing planes at O’Hare. But he’s not here for tourism.
Carroll has the clear diction and the good nature of a teacher, which should come as no surprise— Carroll spent his 43-year career teaching in one capacity or another, before retiring last year.
Now, he’s running to become President of the United States.
Carroll, an evangelical Christian, is the presidential nominee of the American Solidarity Party, a small-but-growing political party based largely on Catholic social teaching.
Carroll has come to Chicago to meet, for the very first time, his running mate, Amar Patel— a high school teacher from the city’s suburbs.
He’ll also take part in a March 4 debate for third-party presidential candidates.
“There’s no way I can look ahead and see what God is doing. I feel very strongly that God told me to run, but he didn’t tell me what was going to happen,” Carroll told CNA.
Birth of a party
Though the American Solidarity Party is not explicitly religious, its platform rests on the principles of Catholic social teaching: solidarity, subsidiarity, and distributism.
The party began in 2011 as the Christian Democracy Party USA, and Mike Maturen, a Catholic, ran for president on the party ticket in the 2016 election.
Abortion is a key issue for members of the ASP. The party platform calls for an end to legal protection for abortion, and it supports social services for mothers in need. But the party says that pro-life convictions must also include opposition to euthanasia, assisted suicide, embryonic stem cell research and the death penalty.
The party’s beliefs on the definition of marriage and religious liberty could be considered conservative, while its views on the environment, health care and immigration could be considered liberal.
Distributism, the favored economic theory for the party platform, is a model championed by notable Catholics such as G.K. Chesterton and Hillair Belloc.
The party describes distributism as “an economic system which focuses on creating a society of wide-spread ownership…rather than having the effect of degrading the human person as a cog in the machine.”
“The core of distributism is to bring the economic engine closer to home,” then-presidential candidate Mike Maturen explained to CNA in 2016.
“Rather than having a huge portion of our economy wrapped up in the hands and control of a few major corporations, we believe that it is the small business – the mom and pop shops – that drive the economy best. We would propose to rewrite regulations to favor the small businesses and family farms, rather than the major corporations that also just so happen to be the major donors to our government officials. Regulations, taxes, etc all need to be re-thought and revamped.”
Carroll had never heard the word “distributism” until he joined the ASP, but as soon as he read the description, it clicked for him.
“It shares with scripture the importance of watching out for our brothers, and not letting any class of people become exploitative of others,” Carroll explained.
Amar Patel, the ASP’s 2020 vice presidential candidate, is also chair of the party. Patel said the ASP is working to break the narrative that if you’re pro-life, you have to be a Republican, and if you want to love for the poor, you have to be a Democrat.
Patel became involved in the pro-life movement after converting to Catholicism in 1993. His opposition to abortion was— and still is— a guiding principle for his politics, and for years, he said he would vote for whichever candidate he considered pro-life, which would almost invariably be the Republican candidate.
Over time, as Patel grew in faith, and became involved with the Knights of Columbus, he says he started to become disillusioned with Republican policies and attitudes.
For example, he says, the United States was constantly at war during the George W. Bush years, and looking at the Catholic Church’s just war theory, the wars in the Middle East, waged primarily in retaliation for the September 11th attacks, did not seem to Patel to be just.
Through a Facebook page called Catholic Geeks, and through conversations with fellow Catholics, Patel started to realize that he loved plumbing the depths of Catholic social teaching.
“One of the rules of the group was that everything you posted had to be from the Catechism, or encyclicals, or the Church Fathers, and just reading some of the things that people found about the richness of our faith, it made me [think]: neither party is addressing this,” Patel told CNA.
“Neither one comes close. They both just touch tips of icebergs…but the totality of the faith I felt was missing. And I felt like that should be an integral part of my life in the public square.”
“The long game for Christians in the public square is a big loss if more people don’t get out there and proclaim the Gospel message,” he said.
Faith journey
For presidential hopeful Carroll, getting out of his native California and exploring new places is nothing new. He’s lived abroad for more than a decade, altogether, most of that time spent in Colombia.
Carroll grew up in Los Angeles, and moved to California’s Central Valley in the late 1970s. His family was very active in the Methodist Church during his formative years.
His family’s commitment to education made an impression on Carroll. His aunt was the international president of Laubach Literacy, a program that began in the 1930s to address adult illiteracy. Carroll’s brother got involved in teaching English to immigrants.
Carroll’s family also left him with a sense of the struggles migrants and refugees face. For a time during his childhood, his parents used their spare bedroom to sponsor two Vietnamese refugees from Saigon.
“From a very young age we were involved in refugee resettlement, meeting the needs of immigrants, both to learn English and other training, so that was my upbringing,” he told CNA.
He remembers that the Gospel has long had a hold on his mind, and his imagation. When he was 10 or 12, a preacher mentioned a quote from the biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Protestant pastor.
“If you were put on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” Carroll recalls hearing.
“And I thought: ‘Boy, if that’s the question, that would be a horrible thing to live your life as a Christian without leaving enough evidence to be convicted for it,’”
At a certain point, Carroll says, he became disillusioned with the “social gospel,” that some members of his church seemed to hold.
“We were doing lots of good things, but it just seemed to me like they were treating the Bible as a convenient mythology to hold the social organizations together,” Carroll mused.
He said he failed to gain a sense that, in his church, there was a “sufficient belief that the Bible was true.”
“And I thought: I don’t really want to base my life on a mythology. I want something that’s firm and secure.”
He said he spent some time looking for truth in other faiths. He says he read the Koran, as well as Buddhist and Taoist literature. None spoke to him.
One thing he did learn with time, though— don’t judge a religion by the way people are living it.
“Judge a religion by what the original founder said,” he concluded.
Carroll resolved to try living by the words of Christ, and to lead his family that way.
As early as 1980, Carroll and his wife became concerned that, despite some legislative efforts to the contrary, federal money was funding abortions. They wanted no part of that. So, they decided to reduce their income— by drastically increasing their tithing— to the point where they weren’t paying any income tax. At one point, they were donating as much as 30% of their income to Christian causes.
“Then God said: I don’t want your money, I want you,” Carroll recalled.
Carroll and his family got involved with Wycliffe Bible Translators, a nondenominational mission that translates the bible into indigenous languages. He and his wife went to Colombia to teach, staying for 5 years, returned to the US for two years, then went back for another four.
Wycliffe had to leave Colombia in 1995 because of the country’s civil war. At that point, the Carrolls returned to California.
Trying to decide what was next, Carroll earned a Master’s degree in fine arts and creative writing, worked at a Pentecostal school for a while, and eventually settled into another teaching job, where he taught for 11 years before retiring.
At that same time, Carroll was involved in building a new congregation in the Evangelical Free Church. That community split four years ago, over doctrinal and leadership issues, Carroll says.
A group of 30 people, including Carroll, organized a house church. With little overhead, they mainly fund and support missionaries.
A new political home
Though Carroll had voted Republican ever since 1980, primarily because of his pro-life convictions, he told CNA he eventually began to feel that the Republican party was just “leading us on”— that the candidates needed votes to pass their economic agendas, but “could not afford to give us what we really wanted.”
He says the first crack from him came in the George W. Bush era, when Republicans had control of the House and Senate. Bush was asked in 1999 if he would push for a federal personhood amendment to outlaw abortion, and the president said no. Carroll says that shook him.
Then, in 2010, California Republicans ran a pro-choice candidate, Meg Whitman, for governor.
When Donald Trump burst on the scene as a presidential candidate, Carroll says it seemed that Trump “had a habit of sucking in everyone around him and corrupting them.”
“And I don’t want to see the pro-life movement sucked into that,” Carroll said.
“I don’t want it to be Trump’s pro-life movement; I want it to be Christ’s pro-life movement.”
Like Carroll, Patel cited the rise of Donald Trump as a tipping point, which caused him to question his party allegiances.
In 2016, Carroll resigned from his church and changed his voted registration at the same time, briefly joining the Democratic party. He liked Bernie Sanders’ idea of “getting money out of politics,” so he supported him while searching for a third party.
It only took a few weeks to find the American Solidarity Party.
Caroll helped to organize the solidarity party in California, and in 2018 decided to run for Congress against Devin Nunes, a Republican who has held his seat since 2003.
He did not have much time or money to devote to the campaign, as he was still teaching full-time. Still, he garnered 1.3% of the vote— more than the Libertarian candidate in the race.
After his run for office, Carroll realized that he had gained more campaign experience than nearly anyone else in the American Solidarity Party, and that the party would likely ask him to run for president.
“I saw that coming, and had a year to pray about it,” Carroll said.
Every time he came up with a reason not to run, God seemed to provide an answer, usually through preaching that Carroll heard on the radio.
“Lord, you didn’t bring me out into the desert for me to die here,” Carroll remembers telling himself.
Faith and politics
The reasons Carroll joined the American Solidarity Party are not immediately obvious to his fellow evangelical Christians, he told CNA.
He says many of his fellow elders in the church he left behind “probably thought I was a heretic.”
For example, everybody else on the elder board felt that capital punishment was what the Bible demanded, but Carroll started to doubt that. After reading up on the subject, when capital punishment came up on the ballot in California, he decided to vote against it.
He says he has Christian friends on both the left and the right who tell him, often, why his positions are wrong.
But, he says joining the party has given him a chance to get to know many more Catholics than he had ever encountered in his life.
Recent polling conducted by EWTN News and RealClear Opinion suggests that some 52% of US Catholics are open to voting for a third party.
Some of those Catholics have made their way to the American Solidarity Party.
“99% of my Catholic friends are members of the party,” he said.
Carroll estimates that at least 80% of members of the party are Catholic, with some Orthodox Christians as well.
“It has very much changed the flavor of my Facebook friends list,” he chuckled.
Paths to victory
Neither Carroll nor Patel is sanguine about their chances of actually winning the presidency.
Though the ASP hopes to get on the ballot in Colorado, in many states ASP members are working hard just to earn the chance to be counted as write-in candidates.
In some states, such as Oregon, even achieving write-in status has been an uphill battle.
The ASP is “in the process of building a party,” Carroll explained.
He said California, New York, Ohio and Texas are increasing in activity in the party— though turnout remains small compared to major parties.
“If we get 5 people to a meeting, that’s a major rally,” he admitted, and the ASP is “not yet to the point where we’re going to be satirized in the Onion or the Babylon Bee.”
Still, the party has gained at least one high-profile member in the past few months: Charles Camosy, a leading pro-life Democrat, announcing in early February his departure from the Democratic Party in favor of the ASP.
“Who knows what’s coming this year,” Carroll said.
Both men said their presidential run is about raising the party’s national profile and getting people talking about the issues that are important to the ASP.
Even if they don’t win offices, Carroll said, their party can affect policy by influencing the national conversation or drawing attention to specific issues.
Carroll pointed to Ross Perot, who ran for president as an independent in the 1990s, while pushing for a balanced federal budget. Though Perot did not come close to winning, the major parties discussed a balanced budget for years after that, Carroll contended.
In Carroll’s mind, if enough pro-life Democrats switch to the ASP, then the Democratic Party may consider softening its position on abortion.
Also, he said, if enough Republicans who “don’t like to see kids in cages at the border,” or who support a more universalized healthcare system, switch to ASP, the Republican Party might also begin to rethink their positions.
“My personal goal is for everyone, whether they love us, they hate us, or are completely indifferent and think we’re a joke, at least will have heard of us by November 3, and that the people who want to vote their conscience have at least that opportunity,” Patel said.
He said he suspects that many Christians and Catholics end up voting for a candidate who they believe will defend one specific aspect of Christian morality, rather than looking for “ideal candidates who will actually defend the Christian message in total.”
“They can actually put in ‘Brian Carroll’ if they want a write-in vote that is significant, is meaningful, and counts specifically FOR something, as opposed to against something, which I think a lot of people are ending up doing.”
Patel said he hears a lot about “wasted votes” when it comes to third parties. But in states where a Republican or Democratic victory is all but assured, such as California, even if millions of voters switched to a third party, it would be unlikely to change the outcome, he said.
If that happened, however, the “entire face of American politics would have changed,” because people would be talking about the third-party candidate who garnered millions of votes.
“If you’re strongly pro-life and you vote for Trump in a state he’s going to lose, THAT’S a throwaway vote, because not everyone who votes for Trump is pro-life,” Patel argued.
“But if you change your pro-life vote to Brian Carroll, that will be a specifically pro-life vote that will be counted as such,” he added.
[…]
This incident should be properly investigated. But we must remember that not every accused priest is guilty, as we have seen with the case of Cardinal Pell.
Yes, and Father Gordon MacRae.
I wonder if Father Rulter was framed, the PI Gomez doesn’t have a squeaky clean record, and miss Gonzalez taped outside the office door. Why shouldn’t they get some money from the archdiocese, seems money can be a great motivator for schemers. Sounds like a set up and seems fishy.
How’s it a setup if it’s indeed him at the computer watching the gay porn? More like caught red handed.
You cannot tell who is at the computer, so you cannot accuse unless you know the facts beyond a doubt. I listened to the young woman’s account, it just doesn’t sound like her story adds up. She says she was in the office taping, and the taping is outside of the office because the door is in her filming shot. I think it’s a set up.
Fr. Rutler exonerated May 2021. The judge dismissed the case. The video was obviously a con job. She’s the security guard. She easily brings in a bald guy after hours and they fake a video. It never shows the guy’s face, much less him coming at her. According to LifeSiteNews, the lady security guard has been implicated as working for NY gangs in similar cons. I know, con artists in NYC, who would imagine? Not the first con artists to make fake sex assault charges against our Church, it’s easy money these days.
Time to give Fr. Rutler the David Haas treatment. Persona non grata now.
Praying for Fr. Rutler. A certain section hate him. I love him.
I am a parishioner & I feel this was a set-up. Father Rutler is the holiest & most devout priest I have ever met. May Our Lord Jesus Christ, protect him from this satanic attack
Check her political views firstly and then her past.
Story makes me sick. I hope it is not true.
A very well-known, respected cleric is unabashedly watching gay porn after inviting a female security guard to come in from the cold and then attempts to attack her though he was allegedly watching men engaged in sex acts. Doesn’t add up. They all smell money.
There are quite a few aspects of this accusation/story that just don’t seem plausible or believable.
Only if you refuse to accept the rot and filth in the Church hasn’t been expunged yet.
There are too many holes in this story. The claim is that this happened to her during her 2nd day on the job. Why is a petite 22-year-old girl hired as a security guard to guard grown men against potential violent rioters, when she herself is vulnerable (and if we go by her claim, she wasn’t able to protect even herself against a 75-year-old, so who was she possibly hired to protect)? Security guards, especially against rioters should be big and intimidating, (take a look at the security guards with bloodhounds that Saks Fifth Avenue hired), and perhaps undergo training to actually be able protect people against violent criminals as this specific job would have required. How long was this 22-year-old girl working as a security guard? Was she placed here merely for this job?
Not to mention that this same company also describes itself as a “high profile” private investigation firm. Also, why did this 22 year old girl call the founder of a separate “Emmy Award-winning documentary maker” and private investigation firm at 2:45am just over an hour after she claims he supposedly grabbed her? I grew up in the Bronx. What 22 year old from the Bronx can afford to hire a top “counter-terrorism who worked on high-profile murder cases” as a private investigator? People are capable of making authentic looking crime reinnacments for TV and this firm won an Emmy award for a crime documentary. We know this girl and the security firm she worked for had access to the building. It is undeniable that it is possible for someone to stage this whole thing to create that 18-second video clip only showing the back of a bald man’s head. This could be just a slightly more sophisticated smear then what happened to the good Cardinal George Pell who was proven to be innocent after being imprisoned for almost a year. What we need is security camera evidence of who went in and out of the office and buidling. And don’t tell us that the cameras spontaneously shut off that night.
Smells like someone who knows there are millions of dollars that can be made from an Archdiocesean abuse payout.
Well researched and thought through. Forget the money aspect and realise his views anger a particular vote group. I stand with Fr. Rutler
May 2021 update: Looks like you called it, probably. Our man, Father Rutler, exonerated. Case against him: thrown-out. God be praised. Hope he’s back at pulpit asap. Glad to see our Church not robbed or extorted by false accusations.
Just hold on. Don’t be so rash. This case doesn’t make any sense. He watched gay porno while she was in the office sitting behind him? What? How do you go from watching gay porn to then sexually attacking a woman? This is crazy. The woman sounds nuts.
Exactly. Arthur or Martha means something. Not being flippant.
She does not sound reasonable
The incident reminds me of Jussie Smollett. He watches the stuff knowing she is in the room? His proclivities go both ways? She texts her mother instead of just running away outside? She hires a PI to submit a police report rather than calling 911? It could be true, but those questions need good answers. If he’s guilty, then punish him. If she made it up, punish her.
I was thinking the exact same thing! He knows she is behind him and he is still going to begin watching homosexual porn?? This was the accuser’s second day on the job and he felt comfortable enough with her that he would let her see him, a celebrated priest, watcing porn? In addition, if Fr. Rutler is into men, why would he want to sexually assault a woman? It just doesn’t add up, in my humble opinion!
Even If the pc wasn’t wiped clean, it spoils be easy to subpoena the IP history, if he was habitually watching gay porn, should be Easy to prove, if there is only one instance, or none… then it spoils be easy to prove it is a false accusation.
“The alleged incident took place during Gonzalez’s second night on the job, Gomez said.”
Her second night? There’s a lot about this story that doesn’t add up, but this detail in particular suggests a frame job.
May justice prevail.
The whole story sounds like that of a stereotypical movie plot to smear a good priest. Yes, there have been evil men who committed sexual abuse after being ordained to the priesthood. These ase are evil acts. For now I cannot at all believe that Fr. Rutler has done any such evil acts that he was accused of. The right to due process is in our Constitution. He is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty. Anyone questioning Fr. Rutler’s innocence and taking the accusation of those living in a strictly secular society as fact should watch at least one video of Fr. Rutler speaking about any topic at all.
Fr. Rutler is, figuratively, not on the same plane of this modern and superficial world. I cannot imagine that he would concern himself with, and engage in, such perverted and diabolical acts and matters. He is not a priest who goes around wearing a t-shirt and jeans and taking goofy selfies with people he meets on the street. By this I mean that he is not trying hard to relate to secular society in an effort to better live in it, because my impression is that he has other, higher matters to concern himself with in his dedication to the priesthood. He’s written over thirty books for our edification; hosted countless EWTN shows (that any skeptics really must first watch any video of one of his shows before blindly accepting the new spoon-fed secularist belief of “guilty until proven innocent” wherein all hell immediately breaks loose for anyone who is accused); he created the Shrine to Persecuted Christians, and he has converted hundreds if not thousands of souls via his preaching about the lives of the saints and the unchanging philosophical and moral truths. Visiting his parish multiple times, one easily gets the impression that he is too committed to saving the souls of Catholics including himself to be doing absurd things. Absurd things, such as this false accusation that he was looking at homosexual pornography (on consecrated property…), while in front of a security guard, then grabbing her inappropriately. There are, without a doubt, diabolic forces behind this.
Sancte Míchael Archángele, defénde nos in proélio; contra nequítiam et insídias diáboli esto praesídium. Ímperet illi Deus, súpplices deprecámur, tuque, Princeps milítiae caeléstis, Sátanam aliósque spíritus malígnos, qui ad perditiónem animárum pervagántur in mundo, divína virtúte, in inférnum detrúde. Amen.
Be our protection Archangel Michael. Indeed.
Comments like yours make me question Jury Justice. Put your stones away.
Bottom line, this strong holy man is just plain not that stupid. This plan was put together by a stupid person.
S2E1 of “Throw Some Implausible Mud at a Catholic Priest”.
“No smoke without fire?”
Nobody innocent is ever falsely accused of something, because that false accusation is smoke so there must be a fire?
Is this the method you use to get out of jury duty, and it has taken over your life?
When I see the words ‘22-year-old female security guard’ I truly know the end for our civilisation is near.
Fr. Rutler is not a stupid man. He would have to be a complete imbecile to watch porn in the presence of a total stranger!!
I don’t know if the accusations are true or not, but several things don’t add up.
1. Why would a priest who has so conscientiously crafted and maintained his conservative/traditional priestly persona for years watch porn, knowing that someone was sitting behind him with a clear view?
2. IF he was watching gay porn, that’s an indication that he has a same sex orientation. Why then would he grab a female by her breasts?
3. Why would the guard bother to FILM him watching porn, as is alleged? He wasn’t breaking a civil law. What was her intent?
I do hope the allegations aren’t true. At this point, Fr. Rutler is innocent until proven otherwise.
A lot here is strange, but it’s unwise to comment. If it’s true, it’s quite demoralizing.
A setup and an attack on Fr. Rutler and our Church
1. All allegations must be taken seriously. 2. As frustrating and humiliating as investigations can be for all concerned, and as tempting as it is to remain engaged, Fr. Rutler is right to cooperate and to cease the public exercise of his ministry. 3. Ms. Gonzalez and Fr. Rutler will be grilled, hopefully with sensitivity and thoroughness applied in equal measure to both parties. 4. A thorough investigation of Ms Gonzalez’s phone and Fr. Rutler’s computer will clarify matters.
Let’s pray for the truth to prevail and for a speedy resolution to this unsettling story.
This thing stinks of setup, and that so many supposedly good Catholics respond immediately with a position of “neutrality” or an assumption that one of the great defenders of the faith for four decades might have committed such an act, shows how jaded and cowardly so many Catholics have become. One hopes, further, that Cardinal Dolan is not leaving this purely to the police, but is actively using his many resources to figure out who in his pastoral charge might be part of this outrage.
About fifteen years ago I attended a Mass at the Church of Our Savior on Lexington Avenue where Father Ruttler was pastor at that time. After Mass I greeted him and
commented” You need to be commended for not watering down the teachings of the Church.
In his characteristic self-effacing manner and with down cast eyes he simply said “Thank you very much, I don’t want to go to hell for preaching false doctorine.”
Has anyone else noticed that cheap latex bald cap the man in the chair is wearing? And since when did Father Rutler get arms that look like they could bench press 300 pounds?