A few months ago, I had the privilege of appearing twice on a relatively new Catholic podcast created by Dustin Faber. Dustin chose the title The 16-Bit Catholic to reflect not only his love of the Catholic Faith but his enjoyment of video games, and my appearance last week was supposed to mark a rebalancing of the podcast, with more video-game material. Unfortunately for Dustin, I'm not much of a gamer (the Nintendo Wii was the first game console I ever owned, and most of my gaming consists of Angry Birds and Infinity Blade on my iPhone), so we had to spend most of the episode instead talking about the 2012 U.S. presidential election. (We did manage to have a brief discussion about the successor to the Wii, the Wii U—which may be the silliest name ever for a game console.)
We also talked about the Emmy Awards, and I revealed the network that I think is creating consistently the best TV shows in recent years (here's a hint—it's not one of the big four), and we lamented the fact that no one recorded an event on faith and humor, moderated by Fr. James Martin and featuring Stephen Colbert and Timothy Cardinal Dolan. Missed opportunities . . .
But back to the presidential election: I think Dustin was hoping for a more optimistic assessment, but much of our discussion centered on the reasons why I think President Obama is likely to be reelected, and how the Republicans, who should have been able to walk away with this election, blew it. It wasn't just the nomination of Mitt Romney, but decades of lip service paid to the kinds of issues that Catholics care about, with little or no follow-through. And that, in turn, may be carrying us into a period of Democratic ascendancy, in which the Obama administration's radical stand on abortion and its antagonism toward the Catholic Church are just the beginning.
If you want to know more of what we said, you'll have to download the episode, either from iTunes or from Dustin's website. And while you're there, check out my previous appearances, from June 15 and June 29, in which Dustin and I discussed the Obama administration's contraception mandate and the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a ObamaCare) is constitutional.