Denver Newsroom, Oct 30, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).-
For 26 years, Kimberly Hahn homeschooled her six children. But once her youngest reached high school, he said he did not want to be home without peers and lonely.
And so, just two weeks before the homeschool year would have started, Kimberly and her husband Scott found themselves driving their last child to a Catholic boarding school in Pennsylvania.
“When we dropped him off and got home, I said to my husband: ‘Two weeks earlier I thought I was schooling for the year…what do I do now?’”
“And all he said was, ‘Maybe it’s time for politics?’”
The Catholic faith of newly-confirmed Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett has been under intense scrutiny in the weeks leading up to her nomination, and even in years prior. In 2017, during her nomination hearing for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Barrett was told by Senator Dianne Feinstein that “the dogma lives loudly” within her, “and that’s of concern.”
But devout Catholic politicians exist at all levels of government, not just at the Supreme Court or in Congress.
CNA spoke with four Catholic politicians at the state or local level about why they chose to run, and how their faith has influenced their political careers.
Politics was a long-time interest of Hahn’s, one that was first piqued when she was 12 and served as an honorary page to her grandmother, who was a state representative in the state of Washington.
“I saw my grandmother in action. It was very inspiring,” she said. Hahn, a Catholic, is now serving her fifth year and second term as Councilwoman at Large for the city of Steubenville, Ohio, which her family has called home for 30 years. Hahn is the only council member elected by the city, while the other six members are elected by their ward.
“When it comes to Steubenville, I feel like there’s only so many times you can say, ‘Well, why doesn’t somebody do something about X, Y, or Z?’ Then I realized if I ran for council, I could do something about that.”
Steubenville is a small, rustbelt city with a population of roughly 18,000, located 33 miles south of Pittsburgh on the banks of the Ohio River. The city is home to Franciscan University of Steubenville, which tends to draw many faithful Catholic students. Hahn said she is hoping her work on the city council will convince more faithful Catholic families to stay in Steubenville.
“I really want to help build up our community in very practical ways, so that more faith filled people want to move there and build up the community of faith,” she said.
And to do that, she added, “you need good housing, you need good roads, you need reasonable bills for water and sewer. You need a good police force. You need an active firefighting force, an ambulance service, good schools so that everybody has the option. Public, Catholic, Christian, homeschooling – all of those are great options in Steubenville.”
The hours a Steubenville city council member puts in during any given week vary incredibly – Hahn said she works anywhere between 10-50 hours per week, depending on what is happening in the city. She gets $100 a week as a stipend; it is not otherwise a paid position.
The flexibility suits Hahn, who is also an author, speaker, podcaster, mother to six and grandmother to 19.
As she spoke with CNA, she was on her way to help care for one of her newborn grandchildren. In a way, she said, she sees her role as a councilwoman as an extension of her motherhood.
“It’s all about public service. It is not about fame and it’s not about money,” she said.
“Really, for me, it’s an extension of my motherhood, not in the sense of coddling, not in the sense of taking people’s responsibility on myself, but in how I communicate the love of Christ in a practical way by helping people with their water bills and their sewer bills and having their streets be cleaner and that kind of thing.”
During her campaign, she knocked on 7,000 doors. She talked to everyone she could across the aisle. “And some people said ‘Well, I’m a lifelong Democrat.’ And I said, ‘That’s okay, because if I get elected, I’m still going to represent you. What are your concerns?’”
One of the primary functions of a city council is to manage the city’s finances.
“Two years ago, for the first time in probably more than 20 years, we balanced the budget in the black,” Hahn said. They balanced in the black last year as well, and seem to be on track to do so this year, “even with all the COVID stress.”
“I love it,” she said of serving on the city council. “I find all of it fascinating. I really do. Reading about cathodic systems, about how often you should paint the inside of your water towers and what it takes to clean a digester or a plant – I actually find all of it fascinating.”
Kevin Duffy is a Catholic husband, father and freelance writer running for reelection for a second four-year term as a trustee of the Williamstown Township in Williamstown, Michigan.
“We’re the legislative arm of the townships. We don’t have day-to-day responsibilities, in terms of operation of township government, but we serve as a voice for constituents and a representative of the constituents. It’s like a smaller version of state legislature or Congress,” he told CNA.
The duties of a township trustee are not too time-consuming, he said. “It’s one or two meetings a month, depending on what time of year it is,” he said. Sometimes it’s more, like during budget review. He receives a yearly stipend of about $5,000 for the position.
Before he ran for a township position, Duffy served in an appointed position on his county Parks and Recreation commission.
After an upbringing that “wasn’t great,” Duffy said he wanted to live a life of fulfillment and purpose for himself and for his family. His job pays the bills, he said, but he finds meaning and purpose in life outside of work – in spending time with his wife and children, in service to the Church, and in serving his community.
“It was…a desire to have an impact in my community. Your local government structure, like your school board or your city council, or in my case, our township board, has more of an impact on what happens in your everyday life than anything that happens beyond that,” he said.
A stark example of that in American life right now has been how each state has responded differently to the coronavirus pandemic, he noted.
“The decisions of our state government have a huge impact, at least here in Michigan, on how our everyday life is during this pandemic.”
Duffy said he is proud that as a township trustee, he helped bring back bus services to Northeast Ingham County.
“(O)ur local public transportation authority decided to cut service to those of us here (in) Northeast Ingham County,” he said.
“But there were people that did depend on it. There were folks that needed that to get downtown for jobs, or they needed that to get to their doctor’s appointments or whatever it may be,” he said.
“So, I wrote an op-ed and submitted to the Lansing State Journal and it got published.”
Within four or five months, transportation authorities had restored at least some of the bus services to the area.
“That was something I was proud of,” he said. “That was the one spot where I was able to help out a little bit.”
When it comes to Catholics being involved in civic life, Duffy said he would point them to Pope St. John Paul II’s oft-repeated phrase, “Be not afraid.”
“It can be a little scary, but we have a responsibility, and we as Catholics understand the idea of the common good, the need to serve everybody,” he said.
“We’re not called to be Republicans. We’re not called to be Democrats. We’re not called to be Libertarian. We’re called to be Christian, and we’re called to be servants of our fellow man, and to perpetuate the common good. I think that’s something that we need to get back to.”
Carlos Santamaria is a lifelong Catholic who is running for a state senate position for California’s 3rd district.
Santamaria had previously served as the vice chair for the Napa County Republican Party, but he said he felt called to do more after attending a leadership conference in Jerusalem last November.
“I spent over a week in the Holy City. And if that isn’t life changing, I don’t know what is,” he told CNA.
He decided to run for state senate, “especially when I came back and I found there were seven Democrats (in the state legislature) that were running unopposed.”
“I just wanted to represent my district. It was a calling. And I see so many anti-religious, anti-Catholic, anti-life (politicians),” he said, that he wanted to help bring about change.
One particular area of focus for Santamaria’s campaign is helping the homeless population. He plans “to use workforce development and career technical education to provide lifelong jobs and permanent housing” to people experiencing homelessness, and “to reintroduce these individuals into society before they go off the cliff into extreme, episodic homelessness, or chronic homelessness,” he said.
He also wants to bolster small businesses, particularly those that are experiencing significant losses due to coronavirus lockdowns and restrictions.
“The current unnecessary Lock Down of our economy and small businesses has devastated many businesses and the lives of families in California,” Santamaria’s website says. “We need leadership that understands and supports small business rather than destroy them.”
Santamaria said he is strongly pro-life and pro-family, and that he plans on standing up for those issues, should he be elected.
“God put me here for a reason. If I can’t express my feelings about life and about the sanctity and the value of life, then I’m not using my talents and this platform the way I should,” he said.
Senator Susan Wagle has been president of the Kansas State Senate for the past eight years, and she was the first woman to hold the post. She has served in positions in both the state house and senate for the past 30 years.
A Catholic convert, Wagle joined the Catholic Church the same year she was first elected to the Kansas House – in 1991.
Wagle said she had been a teacher and a business owner who had not considered running for political office, but both her business colleagues and her husband kept telling her that she would make a great legislator.
There were important issues at the time, Wagle said, including rapidly increasing property taxes. She said she actually tried to convince other people she knew to run for office at the time, but nobody wanted to sacrifice the time.
The thing that kept Wagle up at night was not property taxes, but the late-term abortion clinic in her hometown of Wichita.
“When I’d lay my head down on that pillow at night, I could actually hear those babies cry from the Tiller clinic down the street,” she said.
“I could just hear the slaughter down the street in my mind, and I thought, ‘that has to stop.’”
George Tiller was the abortion doctor at the clinic, and it was one of the only clinics in the world at the time that was performing third trimester, post-viability abortions.
Wagle said she had unwittingly walked into the clinic years prior, earlier in her marriage when she thought she was pregnant. The clinic advertised free pregnancy tests, and these were the days before over-the-counter tests.
As she waited for her test results, she was counseled to get an abortion. Wagle said she noticed a world map on the wall that had yellow pins all over it. When she asked what the pins were for, she was told that they represented the women from all over the world that the clinic had come to the clinic.
“And as years later, I learned that the reason people were traveling here from around the world was because other countries didn’t allow third trimester abortion,” Wagle said.
Wagle was elected to the Kansas House of Representatives in 1991. By 1997, Wagle had helped to pass the Women’s Right to Know Act, which was the first law regulating abortion in the state.
“I carried it. We had a pro-choice house and pro-choice Senate. So I was able to advocate that we need informed consent for a late term abortion, that women should be informed about fetal development, about the procedure. And so I passed the first pro-life bill in the state of Kansas,” she said.
“And since then, we’ve passed more regulations. But when I went into the legislature, the money from the abortion industry financed most of the legislators. So it was a challenge.”
Looking back on her years of service, Wagle said she believes it was a calling from God, and that she has learned much about how to get along with many different people of all backgrounds.
“I’ve learned our faith is based on our relationship with God, and then we bring it to those who surround us,” she said.
“I’ve learned how to work with people who are very different than me, who have different experiences, different perspectives. And you learn how to be very relational and very kind and very optimistic about the founding principles that we’re based on and combined with the faith that we are a people created by God,” she said.
“And there’s no better founding documents in all the world that have allowed the progress and the development of the human spirit than America,” she added.
Wagle, like Justice Barrett, is the mother of seven children – four of her own, and three of her husbands from a previous marriage. She said she sees Barrett as a woman of faith who is living up to her full potential.
“Amy is reaching her full potential. She’s a mom, she’s adopted children, she’s pursued a career, and she has made it very clear that she will interpret the law and not write new laws. And she’s the perfect advocate and voice for this moment in history,” she said, “…and we’ve seen where her faith is not a conflict, but that her faith makes her a very strong, successful woman.”
Wagle said she continuously relied on her own faith throughout her time in office. She said while she set aside specific times for prayer, she would also pray silently during meetings or legislative sessions. Prayers like “Lord, I need you right now” or “Please speak through me” or “Please help me to articulate this thought.”
“It was a constant reaching out for assistance,” she said.
Wagle encouraged Catholics who feel called to serve in public office to pursue that path, if they see changes that need to be made and if the right doors are being opened.
“Don’t hide from public office. We need people who have our values in public office as our advocates. So I would say pursue the path and listen to that still, small voice that says, ‘Go fix those problems.’”
[…]
When Haley gets trounced in South Carolina- the State where she was governor – she will finally be consigned to the dustbin of history and seen as the fraud she was and the tool of the Wokes in the Republican Party.
But she will have served the unintended purpose of making Donald Trump a hero in the eyes of that many more voters who hadn’t totally lost their minds.
Trump owns the GOP. The religious right regards him as some sort of messianic figure, which is laughable but strangely true. The Republican Party has become a cult, much like the Peoples Temple with their very own Rev. Jim Jones.
The old guard Republicans like Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney are gone, replaced by sycophants who are almost robotic in their devotion to Trump. It’s bizarre how the GOP has become a personality cult like North Korea.
I don’t disagree. But the exact same thing could be said, say, for the Democrats and Obama, who was undeniably viewed as a sort of messianic figure (“which is laughable but strangely true”). Further, it could be argued, I think, that this messianic aspect has long been more pronounced in the Democrat party (FDR, anyone? JFK, anyone? Bill Clinton, anyone?). Meanwhile, that same party is surely controlled and populated by sycophants who are entirely robotic in their devotion to abortion, homosexuality, and transgenderism. So, certainly, keep on beating on the “Trump is X, Y, Z” drum, but bear in mind that the real problem is not This Party or That Party, but what has become the basic American approach to politics.
Let’s not assume that because a voter supports Trump that he’s looking for a messianic figure. I have but one Messiah. He alone is the Christ. I have no illusions about the foibles of candidate Trump or anyone else for that matter. If a candidate promises to go after Deep State and dismantle it, he or she will get my vote every time. The same goes for those political pundits online who call out Deep State. They get the most traffic on their sites. The problem as I see it is out of control bureaucracies that conspire to tred on the inalienable rights of the citizenry.
I have voted for both Democrats and Republicans. I do not regard either of them as messiahs. Indeed, the best thing that can be said about Joe Biden is perhaps (not certain) he might be the classic “lesser of two evils.”
Perhaps we need to be a little cynical about politicians, you are correct,the Democratic Party is too beholden to gays, transgenders, abortion, etc. unfortunately, that is where they get much of their funding. The Republicans have been a little too welcoming to white supremacists, Neo fascists and others who do not deserve respect.
I wish that I had an answer, but our politics are a mess and neither party really represents the vast majority of the people. So, we are forced to hold our nose and vote for the lesser of two evils.
Name a single white supremacist or neo-fascist for whom the Republican Party has ever “welcomed”. Just one single individual in any town, state, or public forum. Just one. Are you even aware of the hard core left-wing reality of fascism, or do you simply accept left-wing projections of their own evil, reinforced by a subservient media and academia?
Will, go forward and vote once more for your abortion-loving Biden.
“The republican party has become a cult”???? LOLOLOL!!!Thats just hysterical. Meanwhile, by my observation, it is the democrats and the left who are attempting to impose DEI, have tacitly approved anti-semitism in our colleges to witless students,have tried to eliminate the use of gas stoves and gasoline cars by average citizens, and allowed open borders to a flow of burdensome illegals who threaten to collapse our cities one by one under the financial burden they represent. In Bidens US, illegals come first. To the point of recently forcing NYC high school students to vacate their school so it could be used to house illegals who dont belong here in the first place. What about those crickets you hear from the Dems about the problem of more than 100,000 annual American fentanyl deaths and the sex trafficking which accompanies the wide open border? What about the needs of veterans and American poor in Chicago who are forced to the end of the line for services being prioritized for illegals. The bogus ploy of blaming republicans for this problem of illegals is an outright lie, since Trump managed to greatly reduce the problem while in office and in the face of DEM opposition who refused to fund the wall. BIDEN rescinded those rules and STOPPED building the wall on his FIRST DAY IN OFFICE. Every fentanyl death, every sex trafficked child, every homeless American denied services, every poor American aced out of a job in favor of an illegal has Biden and the dem party to thank. The blood is on their hands. It is a FACT that life was better when Republicans were in charge. Trump put AMERICANS first, as should every US President who is not bought and sold to the globalists or on a chinese payroll. And finally, it is always LEFTISTS Who feel a need to delete history and tear down statues and change history to suit their own new narrative. And to destroy those who refuse to go along. Think Hitler, Stalin, Mao. And , under WHOSE influence was the statue of Teddy Roosevelt removed from the Museum of Natural History for being “offensive”??? Average Dem voters should think long and hard about how their personal vote has damaged the country, our history and our national security and suppressed the freedoms we have been able to have—until now. Oh honey, if you think the Republicans are a cult, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
I seem to have hit a nerve. Quite a parade of right wing claptrap.
Log. Splinter. Eye. Etc.
Most of the posters seem to think that Trump should be canonized. Really?
The polarization and extremism on both ends of the political spectrum predates Trump by decades. Trump, in many ways, is only possible because of what the radical Dems (known now simply as “Democrats”) were doing for many, many years. That’s not a pro-Trump statement, but simply a fact. If Trump didn’t exist, he would have to be created, because the Bushes, Doles, and Romneys of the world proved that they were not going to ever doing anything to push back in any real sense.
Clap trap?? REALLY? Please provide any facts or proof of which item I mentioned is untrue. I won’t hold my breath. Leftists always limit their bomb-throwing to accusations or innuendo. They never HAVE any facts. Its too bad that so many Americans are gullible enough that they are sucked in by such tactics.
Will,
Is it that all “claptrap” is equal, but that some claptrap is more equal than others?
My own view of broad-band claptrap is shaped by the Spring of 2020 in Seattle when protesters seized several blocks of central Seattle for several weeks, even occupying a police precinct station. Fire and emergency aid trucks were unable to break through and there was at least one shooting, and a few deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest
During the first morning in Seattle, the ultra-liberal mayor was heard over the radio likening the insurrection to a “block party” and appealing to the mobbed client group: “We gave you free college education; what more do you want?!” (a reference to free junior college in Seattle for all high school graduates, except those from Catholic schools).
Our Entitlements culture? And worse? A microcosm of the Liberal mindset as at least half of our national polarization?
In several liberal-mayor cities all hell broke loose in the Spring and Summer prior to January 6, 2021 in DC. My QUESTION is this: without these media-splashed precedents in liberal-mayor America, would January 6 even have been thinkable? As Congress then began its investigation of meltdown America, Speaker Pelosi ruled-out a broad-angle vision on the big picture and, instead, isolated January 6 for deserved but narrow-band attention.
Regarding candidate personalities, however, I do largely agree that what’s left of our Nation is faced with the choice—as Russell Crowe explained in “Master and Commander”—between “the lesser of two weevils.”
So you don’t like claptrap? Why not take the trapdoor out? Cannot find it? Try glasses. Watch for the twinkle of sense and glimmer from God above. Read Aquinas and grow.
Will, please. The anti-religious left embodies a robotic cult-like faith in inevitable progress and demands that every depraved idiocy they present as a “new idea”, leading to a greater liberations of humanity, for their betterment, thanks to their presumed superior insights. So presumptuously superior they believe themselves to be, every opponent to their elitist conceits becomes a target of unrelenting mendacious propaganda until all domains of human culture are forced into submissiveness, a tyrannical drama that has demonstrated original sin on a large scale for thousands of years. Trump, an anti-elitist and threat to their conceits, is currently a convenient target. For the religious left, evil is not personal. It is not sin. Leftists cannot conceive of the thought of their own sins. So they demand that everyone accept schemes of eliminating evil from the human condition through social engineering, not through religion. And many religious pretenders there are, who are robotically willing to side with them and join their cult.
The old GOP was not a really party of the working class and that’s what’s changed. The Establishment GOP is trying to hold on with a death grip but voters just aren’t buying it.
Party of the working class? They still push for more tax cuts for the rich. Oh, they beat up immigrants and gays to placate the populist right, but the primary goal is tax cuts for the rich.
The populist right gets bamboozled again and again by the GOP. The GOP is clever. Rant about transgenders, gays and immigrants, but be sure to cut taxes for the rich before anything else.
The culture wars are a bright, shiney object meant to distract the working class from the fact that their pockets are getting picked by the billionaires. So go ahead, rant about transgenders and Confederate statues and other distractions, but see how wages have stagnated fir 40 years and billionaires continue to get richer and richer. You fell for the big con.
“You fell for the big con.” And you have not?!?!? How do you not see both sides of a bigger picture? How old are you? Are you a Catholic?, Pro-life?, Believer in the Real Presence??
In three paragraphs you repeat the propaganda, five times, contrived to exploit hatred and¬ economic illiteracy regarding roll backs of unconstitutional confiscatory government taxation of employers and investors as “tax cuts for the rich” whenever those who already pay most of the taxes are not excluded from tax cuts for everyone.
Those who the willfully ignorant malign and slander as “the rich” ignore that they pay most of the taxes, but in the thought of amoral Marxist banditry this is never enough, even while it forces numerous businesses into bankruptcy. The slothful always conceive of employers as among “the rich”, even when the middle class and lower middle class who are employed by business and invest in them, along side “the rich”, are economically damaged as well by ever expanding economically crippling government tyranny.
Yawn. Nice DNC talking points. At least Republicans aren’t the ones grooming kids in our public schools, for one example.
Working class people understand there are more important things than money. And they understand disrespect and spin whether it comes from Democrats or the Establishment GOP.
With Trump one need separate the narcissism, bluster, insults from the incredible effectiveness in getting the job done as it should be. Our alternative is the continued corruption of America’s morals, life under antiChristian fascist despotism, death of a constitutional republic.
Furthermore while the incumbent is a disjointed bore, Trump is at least entertaining.
St. Donald of Mar A Lago, pray for us….Amen. “Incredible effectiveness?” In your own words you confirm the cult like status of the GOP.
Obviously, you’re a pro-abort. Were you not, you would not have allowed your thought to be so willfully ignorant of the simple reality that it does not require a deification of a personality to recognize the indisputable facts that the actions of Donald Trump, in court appointments, and fiscal appropriations, both domestic and foreign, including extensive reapportionments of existing expenditures, had the effect of saving more lives than the actions of any individual in human history. It requires moral cowardice to allow one’s self to be manipulated by the constant drumbeat of disinformation that characterizes Marxist pro-abortion legislation as child welfare legislation and moral opposition to them as “attacks against the poor.”
Trump is entertaining for a fact. So is Boris Johnson.
US politics are very changeable but some objective perspectives, from a non-US friendly observer, that will sustainably lend some balance, can be offered and be put in order.
The Democrat party has become one thing very exclusive and fixed; change here is for all practical purposes, not happening in time for the election or any time soon thereafter.
They feel both justified and adamant about this because it “represents” what they would say is “the great majority” and “the nation’s best interests”. Maybe they mean “the best majority”.
An earlier vision the Democrats would have had in its most ideal form, would have many laudable just aspects; however, these do not stand any chance with the party the way it is now.
Overlaying and inter-penetrating everything with the Democrats is the entrenched socialized policy of death-dealing in general along with abortion in particular; and inculturating of anarchism.
They are shielding death activists and anarchists.
Change-ups are possible in the Republican circuits and this party offers possibilities for representing many sides effectively. Can it make this into an good reality?
Trump’s public presentations set up instability. He conciliates homosexualitas privately at Mar-a-Lago but he can throw away Haley and dump on McEnany, at the drop of a hat, in public.
Trump had earlier ruled out Christie and got Pence as VP. Pence brought down the House in one fell swoop. Christie has now decided that homosexualistas are his group buds, just like Trump’s.
Some will thus always have an advantage with Trump knowing when to bow in or act and others will always be suffering slights and setbacks still not seeing where the blows will come next.
He wants to be credited with vanishing the Roe bogeyman but the result so far is that States rights have been confirmed yet still with no criminality on abortion -not even mentioned in Dobbs.
Not normal.
Kellyanne Conway is a formidable politician yet Trump has only ONE like her -her. What does he do? He attacks her husband.
There are many formidable politicians like her, men and women; but they are dumbed down among the Republicans. So it seems as very obvious. Glaring.
Conway is not pro-life but she excelled under Trump. If there is to be a true pro-life agenda these types of men and women must be pro-life and they must populate everything.
The ones I am talking about are pro-life and they come in great numbers. Where are they?
It’s true that it might not be possible to codify abortion into a federal law. At least not right now. But so what? What are you waiting for, for them to codify abortion!
In general, huge chunks of US policy are how they go because of a for-profit military complex, enormous debts, a monopolistic federal reserve structure, an established abortion complex. Etc.
Abortionistas.
And according to President Biden, because everyone should be Zionists. Zionistas.
Republican consensus of the recent past hasn’t proven to be CONSISTENT, even under President Trump. Or, there is some formidable consensus but even Trump ends up squandering it.
It could be he gets into such a dizzy centrifuging everything off from his place of conditioning, that he can’t identify the strong and weak points he has to capture from the real threats.
This morning I discovered that the REPUBLICANS in the South Carolina General Assembly were seeking to appoint James Smith, a Democrat and a friend of Biden, as circuit judge. You read that right, Republicans. At one time in South Carolina Republican meant prolife. No more. Mr. Trump made the Dobbs decision, which reversed Roe v. Wade, possible and for that reason I will vote for him in the SC primary and in the general election.