Catholic wins For the first time, a Catholic will represent Illinois in the U S Senate What Catholic teachings will influence him?
Beabout, Gregory R
Gregory R. Beabout CATHOLIC WINS The Illinois Senate race For the first time in its history, the state of Illinois is going to elect a Catholic to the United States Senate. Paul Simon's seat has...
...The principle of solidarity says that all humans are part of a common family, and that society has a responsibility to uphold the dignity of every human being...
...House where he has served seven terms representing what was once Abraham Lincoln's district...
...His victory caught many by surprise...
...Though both are Catholic, they disagree on almost all of the major policy questions of the day...
...Democratic candidate Dick Durbin grew up in East Saint Louis and is the product of nineteen years of Catholic education...
...The Illinois senate race is a textbook model of those tensions and divides...
...The candidates also differ on economic issues...
...Durbin insists that he privately agrees with the Catholic church on abortion, but he adds that "from a public policy viewpoint, I believe that this is a moral decision that should be made by individuals...
...The younger Salvi became a Republican while he was in law school at the University of Illinois...
...In this tension between solidarity and subsidiarity, Durbin's voting record has tended to emphasize solidarity...
...Salvi's campaign emphasizes parental and family responsibilities, church involvement, voluntary organizations, and local communities...
...When Ronald Reagan spoke on campus, Salvi realized he had much more in common with the Republicans than with the Democrats...
...He identifies himself as both a social and fiscal conservative...
...Then, after working for Paul Simon in Illinois, he eventually won a seat in the U.S...
...Though he ran an aggressive television campaign in Chicago that emphasized lower taxes, Salvi had surprisingly strong grassroots support outside the Chicago television market, especially downstate among church groups attracted to his prolife themes...
...Governor Robert Kustra, a pro-choice Catholic, and Salvi trailed by more than 20 points through most of the campaign...
...Senate does not have an articulate spokesperson who can publicly make the civil rights argument on behalf of the unborn...
...They clash not only on abortion but on the economy and the role of the federal government...
...he aspires to that role...
...In contrast to some fiscal conservatives, Salvi's conservatism moves beyond self-interested market individualism by emphasizing social justice through local communities...
...On abortion, Durbin and Salvi split along party lines...
...Some of his campaign speeches seem to be taken from John Paul's Centesimus annus: "Defects in the social-assistance state are the result of an inadequate understanding of the tasks proper to the state...
...In contrast, Salvi has been a defender of the right-to-life position, claiming that the U.S...
...The American political map has so changed that there are now more than twice as many Catholics in Congress as adherents of any other religion...
...From Durbin's Catholic, working-class neighborhood he developed political sympathies that were pro-worker, seeing himself as a defender of the poor and the working class, a protector of the weak and the elderly...
...Will it be filled by Dick Durbin, a fifty-one-year-old liberal from Springfield, or Al Salvi, a thirty-six-year-old conservative from Waucanda, north of Chicago...
...Durbin claims "the reason John Kennedy was able to become the first Catholic president was that he convinced enough American voters that he would make decisions independent of the doctrinal requirements of the Catholic church...
...This emphasis on personal independence is seen as a strength by some, but not a few of Durbin's constituents have been critical of his voting record on abortion...
...Salvi grew up in a family of Catholic Democrats, and Salvi's father always voted Democratic until 1996 when he registered Republican so that he could vote for his son in the primary...
...It remains to be seen how that plays in Peoria...
...Salvi was elected twice to the Illinois House, but he was a virtual unknown before the '96 spring primaries...
...Like Durbin, Salvi was educated at Catholic schools, graduating from Notre Dame in 1981...
...Durbin was influenced not only by Douglas and Simon, but also by the 1960 presidential race...
...Republican candidate Al Salvi is almost a generation younger than Durbin...
...Here, the disparity follows a tension within the two great principles of Catholic social teaching: solidarity and subsidiarity...
...In these matters he sounds more like John Rawls than John Paul II...
...The principle of subsidiarity places a strong emphasis on mediating social structures (family, neighborhood, voluntary associations, the church) rather than reducing politics to individual rights guaranteed by the state...
...Needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them and who act as neighbors to those in need...
...As the Democratic party moved to the left during the '70s and '80s, Salvi began to feel uncomfortable with the language of choice that dominated the political outlook of many of his fellow Democrats...
...Yet at the same time that Catholics are positioned to have a significant impact on political life, a tension has arisen within Catholicism that parallels the political divide in American politics...
...Paul Simon's seat has opened...
...He entered the world of Washington politics while a senior at Georgetown (two years ahead of Bill Clinton) as an aide in the office of Senator Paul Douglas (D—Ill...
...But Salvi was also developing sympathies with the Republicans on economic issues: lower taxes, a balanced budget, and reform of federal welfare programs...
...The Illinois Republican leaders backed Lt...
...Optimistic about government's ability to defend the weak and provide a safety net, Durbin moves from the principle of society's responsibility to help the poor to policy proposals for government intervention...
...It was primarily the social issues that attracted Salvi to Reagan: the emphasis on family, hard work, and Reagan's prolife stand...
...Salvi is more suspicious about government bureaucracy, fearing that in reaching beyond its appropriate task, the government creates dependency rather than dignity...
...Polls show a close Senate race, still too close to call, despite Clinton's lead in Illinois...
...A proponent of the partial-birth abortion procedure, he defends it with the language of choice...
...He worries that some Catholic voters now have a standard of orthodoxy that would have disqualified Kennedy...
...In Catholic social teaching, the balance between solidarity and subsidiarity is maintained through an ongoing tension: think globally, act locally...
...Social action is best carried out in local groups rather than through large bureaucracies...
...Gregory R. Beabout is an associate professor of philosophy at Saint Louis University and the author of Freedom and Its Misuses (Marquette University Press).ersity Press...
...Local pundits painted him as an unknown, conservative outsider...
...He and his wife have several times opened their home to unwed mothers facing crisis pregnancies, a response he claims is more responsible and more efficient than expecting a federal bureaucracy to respond to a social crisis...
...The principle of subsidiarity states that social action should always be carried out at the smallest level appropriate to the issue...
...When Durbin was first elected to Congress in 1982, he ran as a pro-life Democrat, but his position has changed over the years and he now identifies himself as prochoice...
...Durbin is the heir apparent to his mentors, Simon and Douglas...
Vol. 123 • October 1996 • No. 17
