Recommended Reading About Pro Life for Catholic
Life at the State Capitol this morn has that unhurried pace for which Louisianans are known: Something is definitely happening, but nothing definite is happening chop-chop.
This is the contrary of midtown Manhattan, but that is its charm. In Louisiana, events are measured on a truly human scale. How you get somewhere matters just as much equally where you lot are going, and any you are doing is never more than important than the people y'all might meet while doing information technology. A schedule is just a suggestion, and the clock is an unwelcome invitee at the party.
It is therefore incommunicable to say just when this interview will commencement. This gives me plenty of time to thank God and the late Huey P. Long for the building's cardinal air workout. Even by Baton Rouge standards, it is hot as hades this July morning, the kind of day when your sweat starts to sweat. For a New Englander, dressed in a blackness accommodate and a clerical shirt, this is an endurance test.
"I fundamentally believe that government has a function to play in improving people'due south lives."
I have just stopped perspiring when the 56th governor of Louisiana enters his office, dressed in a business adapt, but looking as cool equally seersucker. John Bel Edwards says something endearing about his never having been interviewed by a priest, then smiles broadly and shakes my mitt. His ramrod posture reveals his soldierly training. A graduate of the U.s.a. Armed services Academy at West Signal, Mr. Edwards served viii years in the U.Due south. Army and and then returned home to Louisiana, where he completed police school and won a seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives, all earlier the historic period of 43. In person, the governor does non look a 24-hour interval older—or younger—than his 52 years. If you passed him on the sidewalk and didn't know better, you would non call back he was someone extraordinary.
Yet in all of American politics there is no 1 quite like John Bel Edwards. A devout Roman Catholic in a state with a devout Protestant bulk, Mr. Edwards talks openly nigh his faith and the primal role information technology plays in his life and work. What's more than, in an era of polarization, when most politicians predictably toe the party line, Mr. Edwards has a track record that is non hands classified: He is anti-abortion, pro-2nd Amendment, pro-L.1000.B.T. civil rights, pro-social safety internet and, in this increasingly cherry-red land, he is a Democrat.
His Governing Principle
Governor Edwards speaks with a honeyed and united nations-self-conscious Louisiana drawl, every bit if he has thought carefully about what he is saying merely doesn't pride himself on the fact. He briefly tells me the story of his come-from-behind gubernatorial campaign, for example, with a lingering sense of anaesthesia at the outcome—every bit if it had happened to someone else.
It is an astonishing story. When John Bel Edwards first announced that he would run for governor in the 2015 ballot, he was the longest of long shots, the leader of the unpopular minority party in the state House of Representatives. Promising "a healthy dose of mutual sense and compassion for ordinary people," he was the simply major Democrat in the race and finished offset in the state's all-party primary, so facing U.Southward. Senator David Vitter in the run-off ballot. Despite a sordid sex scandal, Mr. Vitter was even so considered a formidable foe and the political bookies wagered that in a state every bit scarlet as Louisiana, the odds were with the Republican.
"I was not the favorite to win that race," Mr. Edwards says with understatement. When he did win the run-off, with an impressive 56 percentage of the vote (carrying 39 of the state's 64 parishes), the kickoff matter he did in his victory spoken communication was thank God.
"You cannot be great if you're non starting time expert. Your policies accept to be rooted in basic goodness."
"Our faith is important, and I know nosotros're chosen to give thanks in all things," he tells me, explaining his remarks on election nighttime. "So I did that, and it was heartfelt considering I've at present been given the opportunity to exist the governor of a state with most four and a half 1000000 people, a country that's very challenged in terms of poverty, educational outcomes, health care-related outcomes, but too a cute state with wonderful people, really decent, adept, generous people."
That Louisiana is "very challenged" is likewise an understatement. Decumbent to both manmade and natural disasters, the land has struggled in recent decades. About xx percent of the state'due south citizens still alive in poverty when measured by household income. Economic growth has accelerated somewhat in the cities simply is still anemic overall. And when Mr. Edwards assumed office three years ago, he inherited what was possibly the largest deficit in state history, making it all the more difficult for him to move those numbers in the correct management.
"I fundamentally believe that government has a office to play in improving people'southward lives," he says, "merely yous tin can't do everything for everybody, both considering information technology'south inappropriate and considering you lot'll never [be able to] pay for it."
So Mr. Edwards started to brand changes where he could, when he could. The results are impressive, fifty-fifty if the process of achieving them was messy, including 7 special sessions to hammer out annual budgets with the Thou.O.P.-led legislature. In 2016, for example, Mr. Edwards took reward of the federal government'southward Medicaid expansion offer, the same offer his Republican predecessor had rejected. By the end of 2017, the number of Louisianans without basic health coverage was half what information technology had been simply the year before.
He has as well championed criminal justice reform: "For 40 years, Louisiana took the approach that we were merely going to put more people in prison house, keep them in that location longer and pay whatsoever it toll. We couldn't afford it, and we were non safer as a issue."
In fact, Louisiana had the highest incarceration rate in the nation until this year, when it vicious below Oklahoma'due south. Mr. Edwards explains how he shed that distinction past releasing some nonviolent offenders early on and and so reimagining the whole system. Every bit a result, he says, "nosotros were able to save 12 million dollars last fiscal year alone, and we're going to reinvest viii million of that into making certain that people are successful upon re-entry" into society. Mr. Edwards has also restarted the process of commuting sentences; as of Oct, he has approved 119 of the 164 pardons recommended by the state'southward Pardon Board during his term. (His predecessor, Bobby Jindal, had approved merely 23 pardons during the same point in his first term.)
On the issue of the death penalty, Mr. Edwards has been circumspect, failing to take a position on efforts to ban the punishment in Louisiana. At the aforementioned time, the Edwards administration has supported a federal court lodge that prohibits executions considering pharmaceutical companies decline to provide the drugs needed for lethal injections under Louisiana law. Considering of the inability to obtain these specific drugs, Louisiana has not carried out an execution since 2010.
Late last leap, Mr. Edwards too signed into law i of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in the state, earning praise from groups like the Susan B. Anthony List, which applauded him for "leading the way in the bipartisan effort to bring our nation's laws into line with basic man decency."
Mr. Edwards has expanded Medicaid and cut in half the number of Louisianans without basic wellness coverage.
The human himself sees a mutual principle at work in all those initiatives: "The idea of not doing the Medicaid expansion, I just couldn't reconcile that, because I am pro-life. And the pro-life ethos has to mean more than than just the abortion effect. [Abortion] is fundamental, and I empathise how of import it is, but information technology'due south got to go beyond that. The job isn't over when the baby's born if yous've got poor people who need access to wellness care."
While Mr. Edwards is a supporter of the Second Amendment and a lifelong hunter (he makes a point of telling me that all the guns he owns are for hunting), he believes "that at that place ought to be sensible, reasonable restrictions in some areas. For example, I know that nosotros need to practice a better job with our groundwork checks.... The overwhelming bulk of gun owners are responsible, constabulary-abiding people. And and then that makes it a difficult dilemma. I've come downwardly every bit a strong supporter of the Second Subpoena. But I'thousand not somebody who but believes that at that place shouldn't be any regulation. That's non where I am on that event."
"The pro-life ethos has to hateful more than just the ballgame issue. The job isn't over when the babe's born if you lot've got poor people who need access to health intendance."
Add this view to the fact that the governor has taken a more liberal view than his predecessors on some other social issues, including legal protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and you might be left scratching your head and wondering: Who is this guy? Is he a liberal, a bourgeois, a moderate or what?
In Mr. Edwards'due south mind, he is none of those things and, in a way, he is all of them: "I don't like the labels considering I don't retrieve that they're accurate. I don't like beingness pigeonholed. There are people who say, 'You're pro-life on abortion, so that makes you bourgeois, but you lot're for the Medicaid expansion. That makes you liberal.' But it's the exact same Cosmic Christian faith, at to the lowest degree as I empathise it, that pushes me into both of those positions."
That arroyo has then far made for a winning balloter combination. Merely where did it come from and how far might it have him?
Living the Religion
Is John Bel Edwards, so, but a pragmatist? Au contraire, as they might say in the French Quarter. He is a human being of deep conviction, his friends and family unit say.
"He lives his values every day," said his wife, Donna. In many ways, he is merely an erstwhile-fashioned politician who nonetheless puts stock in moral values and not just party loyalty. And Mr. Edwards knows where those values come from. "I know that all of the people that I have been associated with who were stiff Catholics, they were public servants in 1 fashion or another.... Everything that I experienced growing up in Amite equally a Catholic just pushed me towards service."
Amite is one of those Southern towns that resembles an HO-scale model train set—almost too mannerly to exist existent. The two-story, early-20th-century downtown; the 2-room mail part; the sheriff's car parked in front of Urban center Hall; multiple churches inside a square mile and a couple of weathered charcoal-broil joints—Amite's got information technology all, a kind of idyllic Southern community at the crossroads of heritage and hospitality. This is the place where John Bel Edwards grew up, met the loftier school sweetheart he later married, and launched his political career equally a state representative.
To understand this identify is to understand John Bel Edwards. He is the son, grandson and great-grandson of Amite sheriffs. The Edwards are to Amite, in the eastern role of Louisiana a few miles south of the Mississippi border, what the Kennedys are to Boston. And in the life and imagination of John Bel, as he is known to family unit and neighbors akin, Amite is inseparable from St. Helena's Roman Cosmic Parish.
"My mother and father were tremendous examples of faith, both of them being cradle Catholics, and they raised us in St. Helena Catholic Church." Curiously, the starting time word Mr. Edwards uses to depict his parish is "fun."
"My family, with my mom and dad and their eight kids, nosotros took up the whole pew," he recalls.
Mr. Edwards credits the Dominican priests who staffed St. Helena's with inspiring him to pursue the best instruction possible. "I'm convinced that that was part of the reason why I was successful enough in K-12 education to get accepted to West Point. They had a lot to practice with that, non merely faith formation, but also the education besides."
Above all, it was his mother who gave him the souvenir of faith. With evident pride he tells me that Dora Jean Edwards was non only mom to him and his seven siblings but as well served equally the emergency room nurse at the local infirmary and (in her spare time, presumably) was the sixth-grade canon teacher at St. Helena's to boot. Every bit a teacher "she was pretty tough on usa," he says, "and so we knew we had to study and, of course, she would get reports from the other teachers if we showed up unprepared" to their classes.
"The Catholic faith has been central to our family just as long as I can remember," he says. "I'g fortunate that my mother is still alive, and she still attends Mass only about every day."
To John Bel, as he is known to family and neighbors akin, his hometown of Amite is inseparable from St. Helena's Roman Catholic Parish.
I don't have the feeling that Mr. Edwards is saying all this just to impress his priest-interviewer. Some politicians might try that, simply information technology is hard to fake the sincerity he conveys when I inquire, for example, what he learned from his mother well-nigh the faith. "I am most beholden that she taught us how important it is to have an active sacramental life in the Cosmic Church building," he says, "particularly the Eucharist."
Then his spoken communication slows and his optics widen, making that unmistakable face people brand when they desire you lot to listen carefully to what they are about to say: "If yous believe, as we were taught, that that's the trunk, claret, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ [in the Eucharist], and so in that location is nowhere else to get but the Catholic Church. And then it's incredibly important to me to make sure that my wife and I model that for our children. That'due south how we were brought into the Catholic faith and why it's so important to us, both now for ourselves, merely especially for our children."
Yes, John Bel Edwards ways information technology. What he wants to hand on to his 3 children is not just a way of talking well-nigh the Catholic faith, only an example of how to live it. "Even when we're on holiday," his daughter said in a entrada commercial in 2015, her father "will detect out where the Mass is, what time the Mass is."
Yet his faith was also shaped by hardship. "[Donna and I] had simply been married a couple years," he tells me. "We were living in Hawaii. I was there as an army officer. Our start child, Samantha, had spina bifida and we didn't know how profoundly she would exist impacted. Donna's doctor took Donna and myself to a clinic at the hospital there in Honolulu and just showed the states various kids and said, 'Now, information technology could be as mild every bit this kid,' who had braces on the legs, 'and as serious as this ane over hither.'" The Edwardses prayed about it a lot, he says. "But abortion was never an choice for us."
"That must've been terrifying," I say.
"It was," Mr. Edwards responds. "It was terrifying, but I will tell you, it brought Donna and me together and really, I think, strengthened our Catholic Christian religion." (Thanks be to God, Samantha grew into a healthy adult.) Donna, who is a catechumen to Catholicism, even fabricated a commercial during the gubernatorial campaign that told Samantha'southward story.
"Because I'm a Democrat," the governor says, "at that place were certain people around the land who were openly questioning whether I was [pro-life]. It didn't matter that I had an 8-twelvemonth voting record in the legislature that was very solid on the effect. They were questioning that. It was actually our daughter who saw what was happening. She said, 'Why don't y'all go tell them virtually me?' We fabricated admittedly certain that Samantha was going to be okay with that.'" The commercial, says Mr. Edwards, helped Louisianans to empathize "that this wasn't a position I had come to when I decided I wanted to run for governor and that it was sincere."
A Model for National Democrats?
Sincerity. It is clearer to me now that this is why John Bel Edwards is succeeding here. He comes across as sincere. He as well appears to be principled, reasonable and sober. Those are not qualities that are highly rewarded in our gimmicky politics—dash just doesn't play well in the cutting and thrust of our mortal political combat. Yet it is playing well hither.
Might it play elsewhere? Might other moderate voices be able to break through the toxic din, equally he has in Louisiana? Might the Democrats, for example, be more competitive in the Southward if the party lifted its litmus exam on abortion and became more welcoming to pro-life candidates?
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"Technically, I don't believe there is a formal litmus test," Mr. Edwards says, "but information technology surely seems that style.... I do believe that [being more than open to pro-life candidates] would make Democrats more competitive." Merely, he adds, "it's also of import that y'all're sincere about it.... You can't come with that position because you decided you're going to run for higher office."
Speaking of higher office, President Trump carried Louisiana by xx points in the 2016 election. Does the governor become forth with Mr. Trump? Mr. Edwards is clear: He is the governor of a poor land and he needs the help of the federal government, so he will work with whomever is in the White House. He says he was not a fan of the manner his Republican predecessor, Bobby Jindal, treated President Obama: "[Jindal] was very free in his commentary about President Obama. And it was e'er taking on the president and not giving him the benefit of the dubiety on anything." Mr. Edwards says he is not going to play that game. His relationship with Mr. Trump is "pretty good," and he has even been consulted by the White Business firm virtually the criminal justice reforms he has enacted in Louisiana. "It's not that I don't e'er disagree. I but don't leave in public and smash the president, because I don't think it would be helpful."
Nevertheless Mr. Edwards is willing to challenge Mr. Trump when he thinks the president is clearly in the incorrect. "I felt compelled," for case, "to phone call the White House and personally register my opposition to the policy at the border separating children from parents. I didn't call back it was necessary, and it didn't strike me as especially American to do that."
At that place it is again: values. The values that Mr. Edwards learned in Amite, which he celebrated every Sunday at St. Helena's, the values that made him valedictorian of Amite High School, a distinguished graduate of West Betoken, and a decorated fellow member of the 82nd Airborne Segmentation—these are the values, he says, that he is bringing to his work as governor. And he is just now reaching the heights of his political power and influence. His approval ratings are strong, and U.S. Senator John Kennedy, who was considered the strongest possible Republican candidate in 2019, has ruled out a challenge. Presuming he wins a second term in 2019—no Democrat seat is truly safe in Louisiana—what might the future hold for John Bel Edwards?
For several reasons, he would exist a highly competitive Democratic nominee for president. His Southern roots might help put deep red states similar Louisiana in play for the Democrats. His progressive views on economic science and his commitment to a potent social rubber net, likewise as his moderate views on some social issues, might also appeal to the working-class voters in the Rust Chugalug and elsewhere who decided the 2016 election by swinging toward Mr. Trump. And in a full general election, his views on abortion might be less of an electoral trouble than people think. A majority pro-choice national electorate has previously voted for the correct kind of pro-life candidate—Ronald Reagan and both of the Bushes are expert examples. Mr. Edwards'southward Catholicism might also aid. Since the 1960s, no candidate has won the national popular vote without at to the lowest degree splitting the votes of American Catholics downwards the center, and most presidential winners have carried a majority of Catholic voters.
But Mr. Edwards would face a steep, well-nigh impossible climb to win his party'south nomination. The Democratic Party is as beholden to its immoderate pro-abortion left as the Republican Party is to its immoderate pro-gun correct. And therein lies the principal problem with American balloter politics in 2018. Politicians who might entreatment to a diverse bulk of the voters in a general ballot cannot win their parties' nomination. Maybe Americans will grow and then weary of the country's polarization, so desperate to break the partisan gridlock, that primary voters will finally give candidates like Mr. Edwards a chance. Time will tell.
What we practise know is that neither party can ever merits ownership of the values that Mr. Edwards says he brings to public life. In his personal experience, they are values that are inseparable from his Catholic faith. Just compassion, prudence, justice, mercy and honesty are values that should guide all people of faith, or people of no religious faith at all. And such values are essential to recovering a sense of our national purpose, 1 that includes all of united states of america. For in the finish, nosotros are non mere soldiers locked in some perpetual political combat. We are, or should be at whatever rate, young man citizens and, higher up all, neighbors.
"It's not that I don't ever disagree. I simply don't get out in public and boom the president because I don't think it would exist helpful."
As the interview ends, I look toward the window, hoping that the vicious summer sun is at present a little lower in the Louisiana sky. I spy once more the Bible that I saw when I first entered the governor's part, the i Edwards keeps open on his desk, not merely today, simply every twenty-four hour period he comes to work here. It'south open to Matthew 25:40: "Truly I tell you lot, any you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."
I ask him, why that particular passage?
"Because in Louisiana," he says, "we accept more than our off-white share of poor people, the least among united states." Those people are not but voters or statistical abstractions to Mr. Edwards. They are his neighbors, "good and decent people," as he likes to say—the people who taught him that "you cannot be bully if you're not first practiced. Your policies accept to exist rooted in basic goodness."
For John Bel Edwards, it seems, how you lot become at that place matters simply as much as where you're going, and cypher matters more than than the people y'all meet along the manner.
Postscript: The governor and the pope
On Jan. 18, 2017, Gov. John Bel Edwards and his wife, Donna, led a delegation from Louisiana to the Vatican, where they met Pope Francis. The delegation was there to hash out human trafficking prevention and included representatives of the Hospitaler Sisters of Mercy, who were establishing a safe house for girls in Louisiana at the time. Mr. Edwards recalls:
The private audience doesn't last long. But in that couple of minutes, every bit a lifelong Catholic, I volition tell you, that was very impressive to me and to my wife, Donna. Because nosotros were both able to get [Pope Francis's] approving on a plaque that [we placed] on a home that we congenital for these teenage victims of homo trafficking. And to have him bless our efforts and then come up over later the individual audience and meet with the larger grouping that we had brought over from Louisiana, and spend a few minutes with united states was really, actually special.
I volition never forget it considering, you don't call back this is necessary, but we were asking him to bless our efforts and pray for u.s.a.. And he then asked us to pray for him. If there's ane person in the world that I would recall wouldn't necessarily need my prayers, considering he would already be in skilful standing, it would be the pope. Merely after he said that, and I got to thinking virtually information technology, I have to imagine that he does feel the need for prayers from people all over the world, so that he will accept the strength to go up and do every day what he has to do.
I know what the weight on my shoulders is similar being the governor for four and a one-half million people. I can merely imagine the weight that he feels every single day as the leader of Catholics all across the globe and [also but] being a religious leader on the world stage, menses. Because his vocalism matters, whether you're Catholic or you're non.
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Source: https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2018/12/14/america-profile-louisiana-governor-john-bel-edwards-pro-life-catholic
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