https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/distinctly-catholic/links-112818 MGB:
Until the Mueller Report is revealed, the future of Donald Trump is in doubt. The question is whether Pence is implicated or if the Senate allows Trump to be removed but lets Pence ascend as part of the deal. Impeachment is a political question, not a question of justice. Of course, if Pence is implicated then it is best for the GOP if he and Trump to resign and make Ryan President before Pelosi takes the Speakership. Neither Pence nor Ryan can win against any Democratic contender, provided that contender attacks the Pro-Life movement as a Republican fraud rather than defending abortion.
Christ the King is no longer counter-nationalistic in the same way that the Prayer for Peace in order to end World War I (it did not unless the US was the answer to their prayer) rather than having anything to do with St. Francis. Bosnia is not about nationalism anyway. It is about religious differences being inflamed by reactionary voices, although that is close enough to be nationalism not to matter.
Big money in politics helped the Democrats gain the House, while the lack thereof doomed the Republicans. The problem is not campaign finance or Democratic hypocrisy, it is Capitalism. Until Capitalism is occupied by workers demanding both democracy and economic security at all levels,which will start in employee owned firms, campaign finance will not change.
If memory serves from my ex-wife-s time in Catholic Charities USA, most of the social justice organizing at the parish and charitable levels are bi-national. It makes sense that the reactionaries will attack them in both countries.
The judicial and legal cultures in the United States is moderate conservative, including the Republican and Democratic appointees from the Supreme Court to the Districts. This is why Republican appointed judges ruled in favor of gay marriage and against efforts to outlaw abortion. They all stand on precedent and the Constitution. Only aberrations like Roy Moore depart from this culture. The problem is that because the law is capitalistic, so are judicial rulings regulating it. The one place where there is still partisan is over voting rights and affirmative action, although this is mostly a problem of bad legislation.
Voting Rights law was allowed to slide in mock consensus. It is past time to renew the prior clearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Any state that practiced voter suppression, which should include both Pennsylvania and North Dakota, must be included in that group. As for affirmative action, the only realistic solution is random selection of those on the wait list. All Stars should always be admitted or promoted and the unqualified referred to Community College (legacies and the boss' children included). If that were the culture of the workplace, we would never have had Donald Trump as President.
Because Trump, Ryan or Pence are such easy targets in 2020, everyone with an ego and pulse is running on the Democratic side, assuming that the Republican Party even survives its internal divisions and the Democrats hold together rather than splitting into Wall Street and Socialist camps. In that case, the question of where ethnic and female voters will go. I suspect Abortion and Gay Rights will be non-issues in this division. If this happens, an anti-Capitalist may win, especially one who successfully occupies Capitalism (see above).
I will not argue the point that there are many reactionaries in the pews and the donor class who keep the despots in the USCCB in power. The rest of us, however, have both the Holy Spirit and Francis on our sides. The Church will renew as it always has, this time rejecting Medievalism and going toward more democratic norms of governance. We will occupy the Church as well. This will forever silence reactionary voters on both homosexuality and legal abortion, though resistance to abortion using economic means will cleanse the Pro-Life movement in the Church.
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