The notion that Donald Trump's political rise was propelled by economic distress among working-class whites takes a hit in an enormous survey that the Gallup organization has released. As The Washington Post sums it up:

According to this new analysis, those who view Trump favorably have not been disproportionately affected by foreign trade or immigration, compared with people with unfavorable views of the Republican presidential nominee. The results suggest that his supporters, on average, do not have lower incomes than other Americans, nor are they more likely to be unemployed.

Yet while Trump's supporters might be comparatively well off themselves, they come from places where their neighbors endure other forms of hardship. In their communities, white residents are dying younger, and it is harder for young people who grow up poor to get ahead.

Based on a survey of some 87,000 people, Gallup analyst Jonathan Rothwell found that "Trump's supporters are significantly further to the right even of other Republicans" and that "The standard economic measures of income and employment status show that, if anything, more affluent Americans favor Trump, even among white non-Hispanics."

I've been suspicious about the "economic distress" explanation for Trump's triumph in the Republican primaries ever since noticing how popular he's been among Republicans in Nassau County, a well-to-do suburb of New York City.  It's more complex than that, and I think Trump's celebrity should not be ignored as an ingredient. His celebrity image allowed him to be more blunt in stirring up the resentment of his supporters toward foreigners and others deemed "losers." 

The latest outrages from Donald Trump, since last I wrote here a week ago, include 1) obliquely suggesting that gun rights absolutists assassinate Hillary Clinton should she be elected president and 2) insisting, more than once, that Clinton and President Obama founded ISIS and find honor within it. These are not merely “unprecedented” provocations from a major party’s candidate for the presidency; they are dangerous, corrosive violations of democratic norms. It’s amazing to have to say it: Presidential candidates of major parties do not suggest that other candidates be assassinated. Presidential candidates of major parties do not accuse sitting presidents and other candidates of treason without the gravest evidence.

Most of the comments on my post, “Voting One’s (Catholic) Conscience,” concerned whether the November election will be rigged, as Trump also outrageously claimed, and U.S. policy toward Syria (not sure why). The chairperson of the organization Concerned Catholics of Vermont, however, was “inspired” by my reflections on the limits of the USCCB’s Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship to draft a letter to the ordinary of Burlington, Vermont, Bishop Christopher Coyne.

I closed my post by asking whether the bishops might speak again. The steering committee of Concerned Catholics of Vermont, which includes two regular Commonweal contributors, Dennis O’Brien and Nicholas Clifford, asks Bishop Coyne both to urge the bishops to speak and to speak himself. I figure that, if the editors of the New York Times allow Maureen Dowd to give her right-wing brother Kevin space once per year on the paper’s op-ed page, the editors of Commonweal will not begrudge my giving CCOVT a little air time on dotCommonweal. The letter follows; its last several paragraphs concern the Trump campaign.

August 12, 2016

Dear Bishop Coyne,

            In your role as Chair of the Committee for the Communications Office of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, we urge you to press the bishops to speak out before the election in November about the negative character of the current presidential campaign.

            As you well know, during the November 2015 meeting of the USCCB, the assembled bishops formally approved Forming Conscience for Faithful Citizenship. Unlike previous years, there was significant controversy about the text. Bishop Robert McElroy from San Diego objected to the version offered because it “does not take into account the fact that Pope Francis...transformed the prioritization of Catholic Social Teaching...” (National Catholic Reporter, Nov. 19, 2015). At the June meeting of the USCCB you yourself noted a concern that the priorities gave the impression that the bishops were “doing the same thing we have always done” (NCR, June 11,2015).

            The Concerned Catholics of Vermont Steering Committee is in full agreement with your views and those of Bishop McElroy and other bishops who called for a new version of Faithful Citizenship that would reflect the directions Pope Francis suggested when he spoke to the United States bishops in September 2015 at the National Cathedral. 

            According to news reports of the November 2015 USCCB meeting, the bishops decided that, whatever the defects of the current version of Faithful Citizenship, it was unrealistic to seek a thorough revision given the fact that the political campaigns were already active. While it may have been practical and necessary at that time to issue Faithful Citizenship in its current form, we believe that the negative conduct of the current presidential campaign calls for a further statement from the USCCB.

            Faithful Citizenship is directed at policies and proposals offered by parties and candidates. The document notes that the political platforms and policy proposals of candidates will often deviate in one way or another from the goals of Catholic teaching. Accordingly, the Catholic voter will have to balance positives and negatives in determining candidates to support. Voters must also weigh the personal character of candidates. While these considerations are eminently sensible for voting in our pluralistic society, in our judgement they are inadequate for evaluating a candidate like Donald Trump and the character of his campaign.

            Donald Trump’s campaign has gone well beyond normal political controversy to become a threat to the political process of a democratic society. Democratic political process is grounded on civic respect, acceptance of the other party, the other candidate, the other voter as a legitimate participant in the affairs of state. Repeatedly Mr. Trump has by passed sharp political critique to demean and belittle opponents in both his own party and the opposition. The opponent is a suspect citizen, an “enemy.” Not only is this undemocratic, it is also un-Christian.

            It is no wonder that Mr. Trump’s supporters often resort to racial epithets and suggest disorder in the streets should his cause fail at the ballot box. Mr. Trump himself has reinforced this possibility by suggesting that the election system is “rigged.” The fact that Mr. Trump claims that he “alone” can fix “the system” only underlines the anti-democratic message of his campaign.

            While American law makes it impossible for the USCCB or any ecclesiastical institution to make a statement singling out a specific candidate, we believe that the bishops would be within their rights to offer a stern warning about a campaign strategy that undermines civic discourse. Legal expert Prof. Cathleen Kaveny of Boston College has just published a book titled Prophecy Without Contempt: Religious Discourse in the Public Square. As Kaveny’s title suggests, political indictment, even religious prophecy in the public square, must be without contempt. Donald Trump is campaigning on contempt and as such he is destroying the delicate fabric of democracy. 

            In an effort to instill a sense of civic decency in the 2016 presidential campaign we hope that you would urge the USCCB to speak out. In addition, we ask you to consider making an appropriate public statement on the issue either alone or with other Vermont religious leaders.

With prayerful regard,

For the CCOVT Steering Committee

Dennis O’Brien

CCOVT Steering Committee: 

Terese Black, Gary Chicoine, Nicholas Clifford, Frankie Dunleavy, Martha Hennessy, Ursula Hirschman, Diane Lanpher, Dennis O’Brien, Janice Ryan, RSM

Whatever you think the United States should do about the ongoing civil war in Syria, and whatever you think you know about the situation there, you should take a moment to read the open letter addressed to President Obama by twenty-nine of the remaining doctors in the besieged northern city of Aleppo. Below, the full text of that letter.

At a meeting of our neighborhood organization, a woman was discussing a real-estate conflict and recommended finding “a disinterested person” to help mediate. I hadn’t been listening closely, but now I snapped to attention. After years of hearing people use “disinterested” to mean “uninterested,” finally I had encountered someone who used it right. My syntax soul mate! It was as if we were members of a small, secret club.

Nothing reveals your politics more starkly than the problem of grammar. I’m not talking Democrat or Republican politics, but rather a deeper temperamental bearing on order, tradition, and change. There’s an abiding split in language politics, and people inevitably fall on one side or the other. If you feel joyous communion with the woman who uses “disinterested” correctly, you’re almost certainly a prescriptive grammarian. If you glory in the latest fillip in the language, enjoy each new carry-over from hip-hop or game theory, and don’t wince at solecisms and deviations, you’re clearly a descriptivist.

Regarding language, prescriptive grammarians tell us what is supposed to be; descriptive ones tell us what is. How much are you bothered by “Why don’t you lay down on the bed?” Do you wince, in a nails-on-chalkboard way, when someone says “She gave it to Jerry and I?” Grind your teeth at “irregardless?” Have to suppress an urge to crack wise at “I literally lost my mind”? Feel frustration when someone launches a sentence with “As far as watching a football game…”, then never supplies the cognate “is concerned”? 

Or do you find such stickler stances schoolmarmish? Maybe you made your peace long ago with “hopefully”—or never really worried about it in the first place. And far from viewing the occasional split infinitive with alarm, perhaps you favor it as an effective way to really, really emphasize your point.

When it comes to the ever-evolving nature of language, are you holding the fort or enjoying the ride?

In American politics, we pretty much know how to talk about Tim Kaine's brief-but-important youthful experience as a Jesuit Volunteer in Honduras.  We can---and do---argue vigorously about the many ways to interpret that experience: 1 - a transformative faith journey that led him to become a civil rights lawyer and care about the poor and oppressed, 2 - a typical do-gooding liberal who wants us all to give him an award because he spent a few months without air-conditioning, 3 - a radical gospel experience betrayed over the years as he's become part of the establishment, executing death row prisoners and protecting bankers. (You can come up with more.)

A young adult has a short (1-2 year), powerful, immersive, formative experience that changes the direction of their life?  We know that story. It's a narrative most Americans recognize because it's an experience many of us have had (or at least, someone we know has had).

For some it's a nephew who hung with the wrong crowd in high school, barely graduated, and then went into the service where he turned his life around. For others, it's an entrepreneurial daughter who planned to work on Wall Street, but joined the Peace Corps and ended up starting a string of socially responsible businesses.  Or a neighbor or classmate doing a stint with Job Corps, or Teach for America, or even a term in jail for a youthful indiscretion. Because we know the story, we can talk about it---and debate its meaning---when someone like Sen. Kaine suddenly emerges on the national stage.

But what about the formation that comes from 32 years of being a White parishioner in a Black Catholic church?

Kaine and his wife, Richmond native Anne Holton, were married at St. Elizabeth's in November 1984 and it's been their parish ever since. It's where they raised their children, and it's the first place they went after Kaine's initial campaign appearance with Hillary Clinton last month.

That's not a story we know well, because it's still true---56 years after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. went on Meet the Press and said it---that "...11:00 on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours, if not the most segregated hour, in Christian America".

So what do we make of that formation experience---the 32 year one, not the 9 month one?

The slow and patient building of relationships through common prayer, reflection and action. The thick layers of meaning acquired by the repeated singing of a beloved song, listening to the proclamation of scripture, exchanging of a sign of peace. Meals shared, small courtesies exchanged, accomplishments celebrated, losses mourned. The experience of watching your children---all of your children---grow up together in the same community. The drop-by-drop accretion of moments of grace, wearing away, like water on stone, unconscious (and for that reason, all the more hardened) assumptions and prejudices, first over years and then (where did the time go?) decades of life together.

And how does it affect our understanding of the man who may be the next vice-president of the United States?

It has been announced that a group of video game designers from Pittsburgh are going to release a "first person shooter" game that turns the player into a real-time torturer of Iraqi prisoners at Camp Bucca, which was an American detention facility used during the Iraq war. The makers of this game are reported to have paid scrupulous attention to modern American techniques of torture as drawn from the report released by the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2014; from an International Red Cross report released in 2004 on abuse in Guantanamo, and from a CIA counterintelligence manual called Kubark written in 1963.

The player has access to a number of difference types of tortures provided by a menu, plus the player can control the intensity of the torture, enabling the player to torture his prisoner to death.

A first person shooter game is one where the player himself controls the weapons and attacks people in real time.  Torture first began to appear in these games in about 2000.  In these games, as well as in the television programs whose cultural values they mirror, while the enemy may torture prisoners, torture is also considered an appropriate tool to be used by the hero to extract information (which it always does).

But the interesting thing about this new torture game is not that it's the first game on the market to be soley centered around torture; the game is specifically designed to be realistic enough that it forces the player to despise it and see it for the evil that it is.

Americans who watched with concern as state governments hurried to implement voting restrictions in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby decision should be heartened by the recent spate of rulings blocking such measures. In the last few weeks courts have sensibly declared the laws in six states overly burdensome, finding no merit in claims the restrictions were needed to combat voter ID fraud—a phantom problem, as is widely recognized.

Significantly, courts explicitly noted that the measures were in fact aimed at disenfranchising specific blocks of voters. In North Carolina, it was African Americans, whom the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said were targeted “with almost surgical precision.” In North Dakota, it was Native Americans. In Texas, it was African Americans and Latinos. In Wisconsin, it was African Americans in Milwaukee. It is not lost on anyone that these groups and others adversely affected, including college students, tend to vote Democratic, and that the measures were enacted by Republican legislatures with dispatch sufficient to take effect in time for the 2016 presidential election. This obviously goes beyond partisan gamesmanship, however, and even if the clearly discriminatory intent was not explicitly “racist,” a technicality some insist on pointing out, that any legislative body would strip certain groups of citizens of their constitutionally protected right to vote is a threat to the entire democratic system. Commonweal has said as much before, most recently in this May editorial.

Such schemes vindicate the concern of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her strong dissent on Shelby, in which she said that dismantling the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act “when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” It must again be remarked upon just how quickly these states and others moved upon the Shelby ruling to impose voting restrictions, this in spite of consistent bipartisan reauthorization of the complete provisions of the VRA since its 1965 enactment—most recently in 2006, when reauthorization was approved 390-33 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate and signed by President George W. Bush.

But while the recent rulings come as good news, restrictive measures remain on the books in other states.

NO ONE really wants to do it, but in this election, it's time to talk about class.

In general, there are two ways we look at class.  The first way is to call class "cultural".  This is when we talk about working class, or middle class, or upper class, etc. The second is when we talk about class in the way it was talked about until about the beginning of World War two, as a power relationship between capitalists and the proletariat.  When we talk about class either in a cultural sense or class in a structural sense, we are talking about real relations of power.  Intermixed in this are the questions of race and sex (and probably others that readers will bring up in the comments), which are are also relations of power.

In this presidential election, the personal integrity of the candidates is important. But I will argue that we need to understand what's going on with the classes underneath and whether there is a real class alignment with the candidates and their supporters.  It is also good to know what is making the voters angry, what they want (or think they want), and whether they know what they are talking about (in terms of class power).

If you have gotten to this point, you may be expecting to be either bored or pissed off by what follows.  So I am going to do something here that I don't like to do, and telegraph my ending.

Everyone is getting screwed.  The Trump people look stupid to Hillary's and vice versa. However, it turns out that we are all stupid.  If you like my analysis, you can decide if it really matters whether it's Hillary or Donald in the end, and why. 

[I updated the post on 8/5/16. Updates are in brackets.]

Today the Vatican announced the members of the commission to study the history of women deacons. There are twelve: six men and six women. I looked around the web to assemble a few preliminary notes concerning who is on the committee. The information shared here is a sketch of a few items that caught my eye, and some observations, not an in-depth analysis. The facts are subject to correction too, of course.

Overall, my impression is that this is a very interesting and diverse group of people. I wish I could be a fly on the wall for their meetings!

Let’s start with the women. Phyllis Zagano who teaches at Hofstra University in New York, is well known here in the United States as a scholar who has written and published extensively on the topic of women deacons. Most recently she edited an anthology published by Liturgical Press entitled Women Deacons?: Essays with Answers. She will be a strong advocate for reading the history objectively in favor of women deacons.

Sister Núria Calduch-Benages teaches at the Gregorian University in Rome and is a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission. She is Catalan. “The Bible is my passion” she says. From her writings on line it seems she has pastoral interests as well as impressive scholarly chops as a biblical scholar and philologist. Her area of special expertise is the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament. I could not find anything she has written about deacons, but she is eloquent on women in the Church. Check out this video (“The Role of Women in the Church Is a Pending Issue”) about ten frames down on the link (in Catalan; no subtitles, sorry) for a taste. [You can also get to it direct, here.]

Francesca Cocchini, an Italian, is a Professor at the University La Sapienza and at the Patristic Institute (the Augustinianum), in Rome. She is immersed in research on Origen and the Alexandrian tradition, but has also published books on the reception of the Pauline epistles and on Augustine. She has been associated with Sofia Cavaletti and the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. I enjoyed reading a brief article by her on the Sisters of Sion website (a religious community of women committed to Jewish-Christian dialogue) concerning “Some Aspects of the Typological Method Which Are Valid Today.” 

Sister Mary Melone, SFA, also an Italian, is an expert in the life and thought of St. Anthony of Padua. She is rector of the Pontifical University Antonianum, an institution of the Friars Minor, in Rome — the first woman to head a Pontifical University. Journalist Inés San Martín, writing in Crux, observed that although she has not openly advocated for women in the diaconate, she “has long spoken of the role of women in the Church, saying it’s unfair to dismiss the request for the diaconate because it might lead to female priesthood.” An article in Rome Reports at the time of her appointment as rector, said:

Although she believes in the important role that women can develop within the Church, she rejects the definition of a specific feminine theology and distrusts gender quotas, both in and out of the Church. She is convinced that whoever really deserves it, will move forward.

She also spoke about the debate over whether women can enter the priesthood. The question isn’t open now, she believes, but she respects those who are struggling to reconsider it.

Marianne Schlosser is Professor of Spiritual Theology at the University of Vienna and a member of the International Theological Commission. She has written about Bonaventure and Catherine of Siena. She has also written about Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, and has a recent volume on the theology of prayer. You can find a compendium of her formidable published work here. 

Michelina Tenace, an Italian, is Professor of Fundamental Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. She is an expert on Vladimir Solovyov, and teaches theological anthropology and the Christian East. She speaks on a wide range of subjects and is the author of a number of books, which you can find here.

And now, the men:

Rev. Msgr. Piero Coda, is Dean of the University Institute Sophia, Loppiano (near Florence), and he a member of the International Theological Commission. The Institute is a work of the Focolare movement. Coda has written about Chiara Lubich and he writes about the Trinity.

Rev. Robert Dodaro, O.S.A., an American, is dean of the Patristic Institute Augustinianum, in Rome. He is Professor of Patrology and an expert on Augustine. He is also known for his book on marriage: Remaining in the Truth of Christ: Marriage and Communion in the Catholic Church. 

Rev. Karl-Heinz Menke, is Emeritus Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the University of Bonn and member of the International Theological Commission. He specializes in the nineteenth century and writes about Christology.

Rev. Santiago Madrigal Terrazas, SJ, is professor of ecclesiology at the Pontifical University Comillas, in Madrid. He specializes in ecclesiology, especially the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council, reflected in the theological works of Rahner, Congar, De Lubac, and Ratzinger. He is also an authority on Ignatian spirituality.

Rev. Aimable Musoni, SDB, is professor of ecclesiology at the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome. (I believe he is Rwandan, although I could not confirm this.) [This has been confirmed.] He is an expert on the canonization process, and a consultor for the Congregation for Saints. You can see on line a paper he wrote on consecrated life in Africa: “Consecrated Life in Africa: Prophecy of Reconciliation, Justice, and Peace.”

Rev. Bernard Pottier SJ, born in Liège Belgium, is professor at the Institut d’Etudes Théologiques in Brussels, and a member of the International Theological Commission. His published work is in the fields of philosophy and psychology, and he also has an expertise in patristics (Gregory of Nyssa). 

[The commission will be presided over by the Mallorcan bishop and Jesuit Lluís Ladaria Ferrer, secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.]

A few weeks ago, Pope Francis joked that you start a commission to study an issue when you don't want to do anything about it. But this lineup doesn't sound like a rubber-stamp sort of commission to me. Certainly the women have strong personalities and points of view, as well as a considerable wealth of scholarly expertise among them. This alone -- the fact that half of the commission is female -- makes this effort an outstanding exercise for the Vatican. Although I am sure there will be differences of opinion, it will be interesting to see what they come up with. Stay tuned!