Right/Left: Pat Buchanan and Thomas Frank ponder the Dog Days of August’s fizzling Populism this American Summer

I had kind of forgotten about 77-year-old Pat Buchanan, who in some ways was America’s resident right-wing politico kook before 70-year-old Donald Trump, running unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in the 1992 and 1996 primaries. He also ran on the Reform Party ticket in the 2000 presidential election. And then I came across this opinion piece by him last week headlined, “Yes, the system is rigged: Pat Buchanan to establishment overlords: ‘When do we have our American Spring?’ (http://www.wnd.com/2016/08/yes-the-system-is-rigged/) in WND (formerly WorldNetDaily), a far-right website founded by publisher Joseph Farah in 1997, as a project of his Western Center for Journalism.

Then I remembered some of the things that Buchanan was saying about immigration 20 and 24 years ago, during the two-term Reign of Clinton I, eerily presaged what Trump is saying today. But truth be told, Pat Buchanan, a Roman Catholic co-religionist who graduated from Georgetown University, is a very bright guy. That’s what makes him different than Donald Trump, and arguably, if he had arrived for his presidential quests in a different, later political season – like right now for instance – even more dangerous than Trump. Buchanan is and was an ideological hard-liner who wouldn’t have to go the dictionary to look up the meaning of the word ideological.

Buchanan was an original host on CNN’s Crossfire. In his early 20s, he was assistant editorial page editor of the old St. Louis Globe-Democrat and was a White House advisor and speechwriter in Richard Nixon’s White House from 1969 through 1974.

In fact, Pat Buchanan, in this article, which if you can overlook the fact for just a minute he’s pumping and stumping for Trump, makes some valid points about the political establishment and “system.” Writes Buchanan: “If 2016 taught us anything, it is that if the establishment’s hegemony is imperiled, it will come together in ferocious solidarity – for the preservation of their perks, privileges and power.” Yes, Buchanan even uses the H-word “hegemony,” which I don’t recall hearing coming from the mouth – or pen – of a right-wing Republican before. That’s a word I’d associate more with neo-Marxist theorists such as Antonio Gramsci.

But I’d suggest the core of Buchanan’s argument is not so very different than the one Thomas Frank, the political analyst and founder of The Baffler, who defies easy political labelling, made Aug. 13 in The Guardian in an opinion piece headlined, “With Trump certain to lose, you can forget about a progressive Clinton” (https://www.theguardian.com/…/trump-clinton-election-chance…). Frank writes, “Today it looks as though his [New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s] elites are taking matters well in hand. ‘Jobs’ don’t really matter now in this election, nor does the debacle of ‘globalization,’ nor does anything else, really. Thanks to this imbecile Trump, all such issues have been momentarily swept off the table while Americans come together around Clinton, the wife of the man who envisaged the Davos dream in the first place … the political process bears a striking resemblance to dynastic succession.”

Meanwhile, back at WND, Pat Buchanan’s near-ending the piece with the John F. Kennedy quote, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable,” was a particularly deft touch.

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Vocations hotspot on the media map again: Welcome to Fowler and Westphalia in Clinton County, Michigan in the Diocese of Lansing

First it was the New York Times in June. Tomorrow it is CNN. Fowler and Westphalia, two small farming communities, eight miles apart in Clinton County in Central Michigan, have both produced 22 priests for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lansing. Fowler, the slightly larger village with a population of 1,224, had been trailing by two in the ordination derby until June 14 when 26-year-old identical twins Todd and Gary Koenigsknecht from Holy Trinity Parish were ordained as priests at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in East Lansing by Bishop Earl Boyea, Jr., the fifth bishop of Lansing.  Three other deacons –  Daniel Westermann, James Rolph and Vince Richardson – were ordained by Boyea at the same mass.

On Aug. 16, Santa, Monica, California broadcast journalist Lisa Ling, host of the original CNN documentary series, This is Life with Lisa Ling, arrived at Holy Family Parish in Grand Blanc where Father Gary Koenigsknecht is assigned and St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Ann Arbor where Father Todd Koenigsknecht is now based to begin filming “Called to the Collar” her last show this season for  This is Life with Lisa Ling, being broadcast on CNN Nov. 16 at 9 p.m. Central Standard Time and at 10 p.m. EST and PST. You can watch a 30-second YouTube trailer for the episode here at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeJlWpUHtuY

According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University there are 38,275 priests in the United States compared to 58,632 when the Second Vatican Council ended Dec. 7, 1965. Ordinations in the United States have fallen from 994 in 1965 to the 494 expected this year. Those figures and other Catholic data, statistics and research can be viewed on their website at: http://cara.georgetown.edu/caraservices/requestedchurchstats.html

While some have expressed concern about Ling’s revisiting the perennial hot-buttons issues of clergy sex abuse and celibacy, Father John Linden, the Diocese of Lansing’s director of vocations and seminarians, has said he’s optimistic about the CNN segment airing Sunday:  “The New York Times did a fantastic job… We thought this was a good opportunity and that Lisa Ling would do something along those lines,” he reportedly told Patti Murphy Dohn, recently retired campus minister and religion teacher at The John Carroll School in Bel Air, Maryland and a blogger for The Catholic Review, the newspaper of record for the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

The June 16 New York Times story, “In Two Michigan Villages, a Higher Calling Is Often Heard,” was written by Christina Capecchi, owner of Ries Media in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota, who is a Catholic syndicated columnist and journalist from just south of St. Paul, and who has written for MinnPost.com, the Chicago Tribune and Medill News Service, as well as the New York Times.  Capecchi has a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University and did her undergraduate degree at Mount Mercy University in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Her Times story can be found online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/17/us/in-two-michigan-villages-a-higher-calling-is-often-heard.html?_r=1

Linden told Dohn that during Ling’s filming questions surrounding clergy sex abuse kept coming up, and the priests and seminarians who were interviewed tried to eventually lead the conversation away from this topic, but found that they couldn’t get away from it.

Linden explained that though the topic of clergy abuse was brought up in each of the interviews done for “Called to the Collar,” it is his hope that Ling’s program will “open the door for people who are searching for answers and who might take another look to the Church and see why someone might seek out the Catholic faith.”