Is Martin O’Malley The Candidate Religious Progressives Have Been Waiting For?

'When asked in December 2015 to describe his approach to politics, former Maryland governor and Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley could have repeated the same slew of archetypes commonly heard from those seeking the White House. He could have framed his campaign as that of a political outsider, for instance, or championed his desire to “get stuff done,” or even trumpeted himself as a harbinger of hope and change.

Instead, the two-term governor appealed to something increasingly uncommon among Democratic candidates: his faith.
“The politics of higher purpose — that’s what’s always drawn me to public service,” he told the Nation. “I believe that the power of politics isn’t money. It’s the beliefs that unite us, when they are actually tapped — when a leader is willing to make him- or herself vulnerable for the sake of those values.”

Granted, O’Malley didn’t specifically tie this “higher purpose” to his Catholic beliefs (the interviewer did that for him), but he didn’t have to. Of the three Democratic candidates vying for the presidency, O’Malley — who attends mass regularly while on the campaign trail — is arguably the most explicit about his religious beliefs, often invoking his faith while discussing his policy positions.

This firm embrace of the spiritual is arguably seen as a detriment to an increasingly secular Democratic electorate, whose ranks are rapidly being filled by nonreligious voters often wary of politicians who make explicit appeals to faith. It certainly doesn’t appear to be doing O’Malley any favors this campaign season: He still trails far behind rivals Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in Real Clear Politics poll averages, barely making a blip at 2.1 percent nationally compared to Sanders’ 37.2 percent and Clinton’s 52.1 percent.

O’Malley’s apparent invisibility stands in stark contrast to the man he is most often associated with — Pope Francis, the wildly popular pontiff who is second only to Barack Obama as the most admired man in the world (tied, inexplicably, with Donald Trump). Unlike O’Malley, Francis has garnered widespread approval among left-leaning Americans, largely for his more liberal approach to religion.

But when you get down to it, O’Malley is actually far, far more liberal than Francis on several issues. This makes the progressive tendency to ignore him interesting, and the contours of his faith — which he argues compels him to endorse left-leaning policies — worth exploring.

O’Malley often jokes about growing up in a “mid-size Irish Catholic family” of “only” six children, quipping, “People at Our Lady of Lourdes thought we were Lutheran spies.” “Mid-sized” or not, his parents reportedly raised him with an abiding respect for the Christian faith, especially Catholicism’s historic — and in many ways progressive — social-justice teaching.

“My father taught me that the only thing that lasts in this world is being good to other people,” he told Esquire. . .

”There’s no progress without adversity, for a people or a person,” O’Malley said in December during his interview with the Nation. “Even for all of the service I’ve offered, and all of the good things we’ve done in both Baltimore and the state of Maryland, none of us as white people can ever fully appreciate the constant sense of vulnerability that our black neighbors live with in our country. I’m on a constant learning curve. I’m always trying to get better, to deepen my own personal understanding so I can be of greater service.”

Time will tell whether voters will give O’Malley the chance to be “of greater service” while serving from the Oval Office, or if he will have to continue his “politics of higher purpose” somewhere else.'

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/01/29/3744243/martin-omalley-pope-francis-catholic/