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.’”
[…]
She’s an abortion-loving fallen-away Catholic who needs a radical conversion. Until then, she’d be wise to keep her criticisms to herself.
At least Pelosi got the China situation right, though I do find that somewhat surprising. I guess we need to be thankful for small wonders.
ANDREW: The only wonder I’d be thankful for regarding Pelosi is a public confession of her sin against the millions of unborn babies whose murder she gave support to.
“Let me say it this way: ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church,’” Pelosi said. And then, ““My Catholic faith is: Christ is my savior. It has nothing to do with the bishops.”
This is the dragon lady who, after 2,000 years of Christianity, said that without first reading the 2,000-page Obamacare bill (2010) Congress had to pass it, because only then could they actually read it to find out what it contained.
Also, the very same Aztec mouthpiece who defended late-term abortions thusly: ““As a practicing and respectful Catholic, this is sacred ground…” (June 26, 2013).
But, she’s right about the Vatican’s provisional agreement with China. Even a broken watch is right twice a day.
I think I would take offense at that if I were an Aztec. They aren’t the only ethnicity to practice human sacrifice, and they do have their share of Saints, too — St. Juan Diego, for instance. But the main thing is that their worst sins were BEFORE they heard the Gospel, not after.
Which only serves to illustrate the iniquity of the China deal where even a moral lunatic can recognize it. But Francis proclaims it takes a thousand years to understand China, so maybe in another 900 years he’ll begin to come to his senses.
One could say that even Satan is “right” when he ab-uses portions of God’s Word to deceive us humans, but that does not make Satan “right” at all (and is why Jesus forbids demons to bear witness to Him when He casts them out). It is only because of the inherent truth and right-ness of the Word which Satan ab-uses, just it is with his own original nature from God creating him. Our Thrice-Holy God made no mistake in any of His creation, and so God’s original creating of Lucifer as top archangel at the start of creation was right, and the unfaithful-one only became evil by his own self-deceiving self-perverting. This is why Jesus calls him the “father of lies” (because he first lied to himself about God’s Own all-graciousness and will for all creation; so Lucifer coiled in on himself and twisted himself into “Satan” which translates as “Slanderer;” who first slandered God, and then God’s Image and Likeness in us, so he is “Accuser of the brethren”-Rev. 12:9-10). This is what condemns him all the more, and the same then goes for any of us humans when we behave like Satan and use truthful words only to make ourselves look good to gain trust from others only so that we can deceive and manipulate them for our own selfish ends, like Satan does. Pelosi is brazenly showing herself to be on such a path, and so we must pray for God’s humbling of her soul for her own salvation sake, just as we must pray for ourselves to be preserved from the same path each day. Incidentally, this is the mystery of the number of Anti-Christ in sacred numerology. 666 is “the number of man” -Rev 13:18- the number of our human nature self-contentedly coiled in on itself; exalting itself as if able to stand on our own dust and nothing symbolized by the “day” number of our created-ness (6) self-contentedly cut off from our Creator (which is why the 6 is tripled in a mockery of our Maker WHO Alone IS Self-Existing, Triune Divinity in Eternally Loving, Self-outpouring Community of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, blessed and glorified forever! Amen!). St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in this, our battle!
I guess we can add Nancy Pelosi to blind squirrels and broken clocks.
Twisted sister…and twisted Pontiff.
Would Pelosi care to name the priests who were involved in her defiance of the Archbishop? If not, should that tell her something?
There is a typo in the article. Pelosi was Speaker until 2022.
The heretic Pelosi has decreed: If anyone saith that the Pope is infallible as a politician, let him be anathema. 🤦🏼♂️
Ms Pelosi’s description of her Catholic faith sounds more Protestant than Catholic. Kudos though for her attitude to the Vatican’s attitude to China.
That’s unfair to many Protestants.
“Ms Pelosi’s description of her Catholic faith sounds more Protestant than Catholic.”
Not even remotely. Pelosi would be no more welcome in an evangelical church than Satan himself.
Taking Congresswoman Pelosi’s comments with charity, I’m befuddled that she can approach Catholic authority with such sincere duplicity. How she can, in the same interview, both assert the authority of the Bishop of Rome with respect to the Vatican-China deal, to which I nod in agreement, and simultaneously flout the authority of her own bishop with respect to the reception of the Eucharist is a feat of logical gymnastics that I would have imagined to be unthinkable. May God bless her with greater lucidity.
Sometimes lucidity diminishes with advanced age. That’s a charitable view.
🙂
Nancy Pelosi comes from a lineage of devout Catholics. This should remind us all of the necessity to remain vigilant against the deceptions of the Evil One. As Matthew 24:24 warns us, even the elect may be deceived in the last days. It is imperative that we, as individuals, remain steadfastly united to and with Jesus Christ and the truths of His gospel.
We should pray fervently for those who have been led astray or have embraced heresy. It is crucial to minimize the attention given to such individuals and instead, focus on those who exemplify a life of virtue and faith. These are the ones who can inspire us and provide a worthy example for our children and grandchildren.
Her time is passed, and she obviously is in need of our prayers.
I think Matthew 12:43-45 fits better.
I think she is a “Spirit of VII Catholic”. Her time has passed, along with that “spirit”.
That spirit was around long before Vatican II, and it will remain active — with more success or less success — until the Last Judgement. I mean, just look around: Gnosticism and Arianism are still with us.
Cleo: I wish that were true. There are a sprinkling of Catholics who now know that dissenting from Humanae Vitae was a mistake. But the fact remains that the vast majority of Catholics rejected it and continue to do so. And it is debatable of whether a majority of Catholics hold any more opposition to abortion than Pelosi.
Well, up to now, the Pope has met all Nancy’s prerequisites for being her man in Rome. Now she pulls rank on him and let’s him know who, in her mind at least, is the real boss (clue: the real boss doesn’t dress in white). Perhaps Francis should take to heart the adage about lying with dogs gets one fleas. These two are actually perfect matches. She’s the absolute worst Speaker in US history and he’s the absolute worst pope in Catholic history.
I agree with those who say the Archbishop has to have a chat with the Bishops and priests who report to him. And not in a friendly way. If these priests pledge obedience when ordained, they are off the mark by a long-shot by helping Pelosi obtain Communion, and need to be spoken to. And then meaningful action needs to take place if they continue to shrug off the position Pelosi has put herself in regarding her outspoken support of no-holds-barred abortion. Failing to do this makes any church pronouncement on morals or anything else meaningless. An action, especially a sinful action, needs to have a consequence. The Eucharist is not a party favor and Pelosi is NOT entitled to it no matter her state of soul. It DOES matter. That goes for ALL of us, not just Pelosi. But she doesnt get to be exempt from holding to church standards just because she is a widely known politician.Further, in being OPENLY defiant of the Archbishop, she is further undermining the authority of the church.
This silly and very naive woman still believes that all is well between her and God, REALLY!!!!! This is what the sin against the Holy Ghost looks like!!! Repent!!
Not to judge Nancy Pelosi, I’ll refrain from saying that, based on her comments here and elsewhere she perceives moral issues as political matters. Good Archbishop Cordileone wasted a lot of roses. Only our prayers can help her.
She’d likely need to get knocked off her high horse to be helped, but you never know.
Unfortunately, with rare exceptions, almost all Catholics I meet outside my affinity groups of pro-life orthodox Catholic friends, hold beliefs little different than Pelosi. They seem to believe all Catholic doctrine and dogma is political.
for a woman who is a staunch abortioniist I would suggest that she keep her opinions to herself.
To quote either Dear Abby or Anne Landers (from many years back) – “Madame Congresswoman, you have a point, but if you keep your hat on maybe no one will notice.”
I LOVE it when I have an opportunity to say that. Admittedly in these times there is a plethora (another favorite word) of times when such a statement fits, so one must choose carefully, and this is surely one of those times.
Eph 6:10ff – “Brothers and Sisters, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day…”
Thank you for the article showing Pelosi standing up for her Catholic faith.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Pelosi might be correct about the Vatican-China deal, but her stance on abortion completely undermines her credibility as a Catholic. She needs serious spiritual reflection.