Touchdown Jesus Comes to Washington

If it wasn’t already clear Bill Barr’s rallying cry for fascist, authoritarian government in his Notre Dame speech has made it so, that there’s something wrong in South Bend and in a lot of other places but especially in Washington where bullying Catholics of a conservative bent have undue influence. I view them as a priesthood, sheltering under federal skirts as they might once have the Church’s and with many of the same perquisites, like an easy and opulent life among the folds of those dresses.

Rich folds they are. All the talk about small, stripped-down, efficient, lean-and-mean government was always a sham. If not where is it? Republicans have controlled it all for 40 years, at least, disallowing Democrats their swing at governance even when they win fair and square. There is no “fair and square” among Republicans, only a desire to win at all costs, kinda like the worshippers of Touchdown Jesus, I would say. The feeding trough in Washington is obscene.

I believe that Catholics were the original American outsiders and, like the Catholic converts that famously overcompensate, they became exaggeratedly American, many of them out-wasping the WASPs. They cracked it partly through athletics. I read David Halberstam’s book on Michael Jordan only to figure out why he wrote it. I thought the subject matter beneath him, not to slight Jordan in any way. Halberstam had done Vietnam. Risked his ass like all of them. Why write on Jordan?

It’s been a long time but I think one point was Jordan was a breakthrough black guy. Black guys were feared. They were associated with drugs and crime. Jordan was too talented, handsome, likable and everything — the whole package. Miraculously he was all of this and unthreatening, too. Catholics — especially Irish Catholics — broke through in a similar way. There were many other things going on, Protestants and Catholics working side by side, for example, and learning to respect and accept one another, but sports was big and especially Notre Dame football.

Lots of people know and have commented on the Catholic obsession with their sports teams and winning. Win at all costs, some might say. I remember the weird ritual of praying at mass before games to kick ass and how injuring or humiliating an opponent was cool, a point of pride, at my all-male Catholic high school, the one that produced Gerry Faust, by the way. If you don’t remember see if you can find videos of him losing his shit on the sidelines when he coached at Notre Dame and try to find the Jesus in that. Better yet, the Mary, to whom he is very devoted.

Anyway, that whole ethic is not only entrenched in Washington but conservative, authoritarian Catholic ass-kickers also play an outsized role at Fox News, that bastion of decency, Christian kindness and humility as embodied in their boy, Donald Trump, a win-at-all-costs model of the Catholic precepts of benign governance and righteous paragon of responsible living. Gerry Faust, kinda like — let’s go aboriginal and win, fuck-all. This is a Faust story, it turns out.

Many, many souls have been sold. And the debt is now being collected, by you-know-who. Touchdown!