GOD AND CAESAR: SELECTED ESSAYS ON RELIGION, POLITICS & SOCIETY

by Cardinal George Pell

edited by M.S. Casey

The Catholic University of America Press, 2007

189 pages, $29.95

To order: cuapress.cua.edu

1-800-537-5487

WHY THE DEMOCRATS ARE BLUE: SECULAR LIBERALISM AND THE DECLINE OF THE PEOPLE’S PARTY

by Mark Stricherz

Encounter Books, 2007

315 pages, $29.95

To order: encounterbooks.com

1-212-871-6310

WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH CALIFORNIA?

Cultural Rumbles from the Golden State and Why the Rest of Us Should be Shaking

by Jack Cashill

Simon & Schuster, 2007

354 pages, $25

To order: simonsays.com

It’s been the longest presidential campaign in American history, and now that the presumptive nominees of the Republican and Democratic parties have emerged, more Americans are forming opinions on the candidates and the issues. The Register this week presents three books that may help voters better understand some of the issues underlying the race.

An Aussie’s View

BY ELIZABETH YANK

If you are familiar with what’s happening in the Church around the world, at some point you have heard of Australian Cardinal George Pell.

And with good reason. The cardinal is a scholarly thinker, but he does not speak from an ivory tower. This former soccer player, now archbishop of Sydney, is fully aware of contemporary issues and the problems they entail, and he speaks to his flock in terms they can relate to and understand.

In God and Caesar, Cardinal Pell addresses a wide range of topics, covering the role of the Church in politics, law and morality, Catholicism and democracy, the case for God in science, and much more.

The cardinal’s familiarity with sociopolitical thoughts and their philosophical underpinnings is remarkable. He quotes from a variety of sources, including historians, philosophers, biologists, astrophysicists and others, and at the same time intertwines the writings of Pope John Paul II.

Although his commentary is couched in terms of how these controversial issues affect the people and Church in Australia, many of his thoughts apply to the rest of the world.

In one essay he discusses the pro-life situation in Australia, in another the existence of God. On freedom, he asks: “What contribution might the Catholic intellectual tradition make to the debate on freedom and the closely related question of human rights? How might the Catholic communities throughout the world work to maintain or develop and change the notion of freedom? Is the Christian concept of freedom much different from the freedom admired by Westerners, if there is any such single concept?”

Throughout these essays, his questions lead the reader to think deeper and to recognize that as Catholics, we have a valid contribution to make to society and the world.

When discussing the Church’s role in “harm-minimizing programs,” he says, “Christ did not go around urging people to be careful if they cannot manage to be good. He had a stronger belief in the human potential. Nor did he go around handing out condoms and syringes, literally or metaphorically. He had greater confidence in weak and foolish humanity.”

He adds: “We need to recall also that God loves us personally. To understand this we need to ponder just what real love means.” In describing God, the cardinal calls him “One for whom no one is unlovable.”

Because you will be introduced to a wide range of people (he does like to drop names) and ideas, if you are not familiar with history, politics or other areas of learning, you may feel at a loss (especially when he is referring to Australia). What are the Eleusinian mysteries or primacy of conscience?

If you have ever felt at a loss for words when someone questions you about the existence of God, the role of the Church in politics, the voice of the Church in a secular society and many other issues facing modern men and women, God and Caesar will give you the tools you need to argue in an informative, convincing manner the truth about your faith.

Hope for the Party

BY ELIZABETH YANK

As we count down to the presidential election, what factors will contribute to the winning ticket?

Catholic political scientist Mark Stricherz believes “‘the social issues’ have played a major role in keeping a Democrat out of the White House in six of the last nine elections,” because the Democratic Party no longer holds middle-class American values on cultural issues.

In Why the Democrats are Blue, Stricherz provides a fascinating account of how elites hijacked the Democratic Party, disenfranchising the working class and Catholics. He traces the demise to the McGovern Commission and the New Politics activists of that time, who sought to destroy the party boss system, but in effect created their own system.

As the new power brokers took control, quotas eventually created even more havoc.

Stricherz reveals who the real power brokers were back then and who they are today. He also explores the problems and the benefits of the party boss system.

At one time, “voters did not choose the presidential delegates; state and local party leaders chose them. These bosses — usually governors, mayors and state party chairmen — held the power. In 1952 and 1968, the voters chose a different candidate than the bosses. Nonetheless, the bosses’ candidate prevailed.”

Even though Hubert Humphrey did not enter any primaries, he won the nomination.

While Stricherz cites anecdotal evidence of middle-class workers and Catholic voters who no longer have allegiance to the Democratic Party, I would contend many people still vote Democratic because they always have, regardless of where the candidate stands on cultural issues. People say they will vote for an anti-life and family candidate because “he is such a nice man.”

They may not care, they may not be informed, or they may be misinformed on where the candidate stands. A woman on the radio said she would vote for Hillary Clinton just because she was a woman.

All too often, candidates hold the views of the “liberal elite,” while creating the image that they do not and in the process win their votes anyway. Bill Clinton, whom Stricherz idolizes a bit too much, is a prime example.

Stricherz fails to address this issue, along with the other factors that influence the outcome of races such as third party candidates, powerful lobbyists, big money pro-abortion Democratic candidates, outrageous campaign spending, suspect campaign financing, biased media coverage, and other crucial or controversial factors.

The author also is a little too nostalgic and glowing about Democratic policies and programs of the past, instead of addressing whether they really did help others.

Hoping to revive the party, Stricherz proposes: “To create a new People’s Party, the Democratic nomination system should repose power, to the fullest extent possible, in the people.”

For this to come about, he suggests a series of changes. However, he overlooks the need to change language and attitudes as much as rules. While eliminating quotas and appointed delegates would be a refreshing start, eliminating caucuses is not a real solution.

Why the Democrats are Blue provides an enlightening read to anyone who thinks the party has not changed over time. It offers a behind the scenes look at the party as it stands today and how it became that way, creating a “You are There” drama.

Elizabeth Yank is based in

South Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Great Awakening

BY JOHN BURGER

Ah, California! The state Americans love to hate. Political conservatives like to call it the Left Coast. And with good reason.

How a place founded by a Spanish missionary came to be a haven for all kinds of aberrations and perversions, many enshrined in law, is the subject of a romp through history called “What’s the Matter With California?”

The subtitle, “Cultural Rumbles from the Golden State and Why the Rest of Us Should be Shaking,” offers a hint as to how author Jack Cashill organizes his study.

Cashill compares the state’s racial, political, economic and sexual interest groups to the tectonic plates whose constant movement threatens the kind of cataclysmic earthquake that destroyed much of San Francisco in 1906.

For Cashill, the cultural “plates” have become so hardened in their self-interest that clashes are inevitable. The book describes the kind of balkanization that many Americans rightly fear is happening to their country.

Along the way, Cashill paints portraits of the characters that have given California its colorful history.

Some of that history is sordid, and readers are cautioned that the book contains some pretty graphic details, such as the way a famous filmmaker liked to bed underage girls. And get away with it.

But if reading the book is more nightmare than California dreamin’, the author ends on a hopeful note. The state has a chance of finding redemption from its own imprisonment to politically-correct ways of thinking. This is because in the early 1970s, while others were embracing ideas and practices that would doom them, a small group of Catholics staked out a plot of land in a town named for Christianity’s most famous convert and planned a college named for one of the Church’s greatest thinkers.

After a house-of-horrors tour of the state, Cashill’s description of his stay at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula is like waking up on a sunny morning after a storm.

“The students spoke concisely and to the point,” he observes. “I saw none of the empty grandstanding that passes for student participation in too many college classrooms.

He muses about what might happen if the Thomas Aquinas model — not only the college but the students’ way of life and the culture of the surrounding town — were somehow replicated throughout the Golden State.

“Tattoo parlors would go out of business. … Pimps and pornographers would just about close up shop. … So would divorce lawyers.”

It’s a dream, but hey, California has always been a place for dreamers.

The author hints at some of the ways the college’s vision has clashed with the state’s PC-informed regulations on race. The reader is left wondering how the college “stared down” the state authorities and prevailed.

But he wraps up the book with a hopeful expectation of a “third great awakening” in the United States. Like the second great awakening, which saved the Scotch/Irish of Appalachia in the 19th century, it would be a return to Christian principles and the only way to save California and the nation.

He asserts, albeit without explanation, that this must start in the prisons.

Cashill is also clear that Hispanics will determine the state’s future. Christians had better catch up with the unions, merchants and multiculturalists who are vying for the Hispanic soul, he warns. Hispanics are naturally docile to the Christian message, so to fail to spread the “spirit of Santa Paula” among them would be a tremendous opportunity lost.

John Burger is the

Register’s news editor.