Vita, Dulcedo, Spes

The death of Fr Ted Hesburgh CSC has put Notre Dame in the news.

The best story about there goes back to the days of Italian immigration. A local Klan leader came along and assured them that, "We have nothing against Irish Catholics, it's those Roman Catholics we can't stand."

George McGovern seriously considered Fr Hesburgh as his running mate, and Blessed Paul VI would probably have let him do it. In the end, both Thomas Eagleton and Sargent Shriver were pro-life Catholics.

"McGovernization" is the opposite of what has happened to the Democratic Party since 1972. Has it become more concerned with issues of social justice and of peace than it was when it nominated McGovern?

But the tide may be turning at last.

Disgust is deep and wide at the acceptance of donations from foreign states and governments by the Clintons' "Foundation" even while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. Is there not a word for that?

Alongside her record in Libya and especially in Benghazi, this may be enough to prevent the nomination of a person whose economic views are now on the Outer Right of the party and whose foreign policy views are simply outside it altogether.

She merely happens to support abortion in the way that the last two Republican Presidential nominees did. She merely happens to have undergone a very belated and half-hearted conversion to the same-sex marriage that Barack Obama opposed well into his time as President.

Eagleton and Shriver both lived long enough to have expressed views on same-sex marriage. We can guess, of course. But does anyone know of anything on the public record? The same goes for McGovern.

He, moreover, refused to have a pro-abortion plank in the 1972 platform, taking a "leave it to the states" view that is pro-life today, and which at least arguably would have been even then.

"Amnesty"? Yes. "Acid"? Possibly up to a point. But "abortion"? No, not really at all.