We twisted through the crowd of people walking toward the Supreme Court building as the sun was setting. We were late and had to make it to the other side of D.C. before 5 p.m. My friends and I were on our way to Catholic University to listen to a Catholic senator who had just announced his bid for the presidency. After rushing off of the metro, we walked breathlessly into an auditorium packed with students cheering and holding signs, on fire in their support of Sen. Sam Brownback.
I had only heard a little about Brownback before my trip to D.C. Senators from Kansas don't usually garner a lot of press out in Oregon. As I listened to him speak, however, I was increasingly impressed. In his speech, he quoted Mother Teresa and stressed the need for humility. I didn't know that politicians understood what humility was. In contrast to my experience of skepticism when I heard McCain speak here at Boston College, by the end of Brownback's speech, I was convinced of his sincerity.
Brownback holds amazingly similar views to most American Catholics. For the first time in our voting lives, we, as Catholics, might actually agree with everything that a candidate stands for. Brownback has opposed Bush's latest troop surge in Iraq, and in place of the current strategy, favors dividing the country under a federated government in order to allow the United States to remove itself from the Iraqi civil war.
He has also been consistently anti-abortion and led the push that stopped Bush from putting the unqualified Harriet Meyers on the Supreme Court. It was his leadership that led to the nomination of Justice Alito, another anti-abortion Catholic, to replace her.
He has spoken out strongly in favor of intervention in Northern Uganda, where children are being kidnapped and trained as child soldiers. He has also advocated intervention to stop the genocide in the Sudan.
In contrast to the oil tycoons that we currently have in the administration, Brownback is pushing hard for energy reform. He co-sponsored the Vehicle and Fuel Choices for America Security Act, which aims at reducing oil consumption by 2.5 million barrels a day in 10 years by pursuing alternative energy sources.
In addition, Brownback is a strong supporter of improved schooling for the underprivileged and cites in his platform the success that underrepresented minorities have had in D.C.'s Opportunity Scholarship program.
After hearing Brownback speak, I was convinced that Catholics all around the United States would support him: He is one of us. On returning to Boston, however, I heard almost nothing else about him in the most Catholic city in the country. Despite Brownback's obviously Catholic platform, he has been all but forgotten, overshadowed by names like Clinton, Obama, Giuliani, and McCain. This is absurd.
In the United States today, there are over 67 million Roman Catholics. This is about 25 percent of the total population of America. Yet, every primary season we seem incapable of electing someone who holds our values.
We haven't had a Catholic president in this country since John F. Kennedy ran almost half a century ago, and the Catholic candidates that we have seen since then have blatantly disregarded the church. Today when I speak to other young Catholics about potential presidential nominees, most don't even bother to ask what a candidate's positions are. Inevitably the first question is: "What are his chances of winning?" We have become so used to compromising what we believe when it comes to voting for presidential candidates that we now treat elections like the NCAA basketball tournament.
Our attitude only shows how poorly we paid attention when the nuns taught us how to count in kindergarten.
If we all voted together, we could ensure a candidate's success. But we are so divided among ourselves that it is now commonplace to ask whether someone is a liberal Catholic or a conservative Catholic. It's as if there is more than one Roman Catholic church. As Catholics, we need to decide what our religion is.
Is it one of the American political parties? Or is it the church that Christ founded? We are getting so swept away by the glitz, the name recognition, and stupid straw polls that we have forgotten who we are.
We are supporting candidates like Giuliani and Obama who hold values that are antithetical to our own. In this presidential primary season, there is finally an uncompromised Catholic man running for president and it's time that we as Catholics came together. Brownback deserves our support. We are Catholics - let's start voting like it.
Colm Willis is a Heights staff columnist. He welcomes comments at willisc@bcheights.com.
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