Catholic Sensibility

Voting, the longest baseball games, and ice cream Archbishop Burke is at it again. He seemed like a reasonably smart guy for awhile, but he's been conned by the Republicans, who in reality, have no intention of budging substantially on abortion. Let me repeat it: there is no way the Republicans are going to press abortion beyond what the middle position in American society is, namely a wide application of abortion for almost any reason in the first trimester, and substantial (but not absolute) restrictions after week 9 to 12. Additionally, the Republicans risk a split of their party if they even try to move in that direction. They won't go there. No matter how much you might want them to. From what I can see, the 19 1/2 years of Republican presidential administrations since Roe v Wade have shown no willingness to cut deeply into abortion. They court voters, not justice. They pay lip service, not pipers. I didn't catch Bush's speech Friday night. Jcecil said it was just a cut and paste job from his campaign stumping, and since I didn't catch any of those, I don't think I missed much. I did read in the paper yesterday that Bush's reserving the right to wage preemptive war probably takes his stance outside the Just War sphere, despite those who hold the placards painted "prudential judgment." Um, this is serious, people. Saber-rattling makes our anger feel good about the injustice and tragedy of 9/11. But it is not the Christian way. My conscience informs me neither major party candidate may be voted for. Bush will not budge from the safe middle ground of party politics. And Kerry's lack of vision gives me no reason to hope he can substantially alter American foreign policy. For this Catholic, it looks like two losers. What I'd really like to do is suggest some serious reforms here that would net us two serious candidates who have something to offer in the way of leadership. Jimmy Carter was the last major party guy who had the gravitas for the job. And I thought we could have done better than him in 1976, so that doesn't say a whole lot about things, except that it's gone from bad to worse in 28 years. This campaign has gone on for too damn long. We knew it was going to be Kerry vs Bush by the end of February. Fine. If that's the best we can get, just hold the flippin' election a month after that. What? We have a constitution? O yeah. Then hold the conventions the first Tuesday in October after a few weeks of primaries, starting, say, around next week. Decision 2004 looks to me like that endless baseball game Kinsella wrote about in the Iowa Baseball Confederacy. Or like two little league teams matched up for about 5,000 innings. After an hour or two, who cares? Let's call the game a tie and go out for ice cream.