{"id":103,"date":"2008-04-30T10:52:16","date_gmt":"2008-04-30T10:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/benedictions\/2008\/04\/catholics-as-political-orphans.html"},"modified":"2008-04-30T10:52:16","modified_gmt":"2008-04-30T10:52:16","slug":"catholics-as-political-orphans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/04\/catholics-as-political-orphans.html","title":{"rendered":"Catholics as political orphans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steve Waldman and Deal Hudson are having a debate about why Clinton is winning the Catholic vote and Obama is not–an interesting development given that the two candidates share most social justice views that might appeal to Catholics, as well as being pro-choice and pro-gay rights and such.
\nSteve argues <\/a>that “in the Democratic primaries, the Catholic vote has nothing to do with Catholicism,” while Deal argues<\/a> that Clinton has already branded herself positively in the eyes of Catholic voters, while Obama has not been able to translate “his social justice package into a family issue, as the Clintons have done so successfully”–and may never do so.
\nI’d have to side with Steve on this one, yet I’d take it a step further: Catholicism doesn’t “matter” to Catholic voters in the general election either. This is not to say that Catholicism doesn’t matter to Catholics. It’s just that it has little connection to politics, a “great divorce” that has been happening for decades, almost since the apex of Catholic solidarity in the 1960 Kennedy campaign. According to surveys (the Pew surveys being the best source), Catholics consistently say that their faith informs their political choices and views to a lesser degree than it does with any other believers. Depending on how the question is posed, the number of Catholics who say religion is important to their political decisions ranges from 12 percent to 26 percent–the latter figure from a 2004 Pew survey. The next lowest figure was for Mainline Protestants, at 32 percent, and then Jews, at 33 percent. Evangelicals and Black Protestants (hence the import of the Obama-Wright story) clocked in at nearly 6 in 10 saying religion informed their political thinking.
\nWhy is this so for Catholics? It’s not necessarily because Catholics have been trending Republican, although they have become the archetypal ‘swing” vote in recent cycles, one that, like the Holy Spirit, will blow where it will, with unpredictable results. The real reason, I think, is that Catholic voters are political orphans because neither party represents Catholic teachings or Catholic culture or Catholic interests to any consistent degree. Despite the claims of some that the bishops promote a single-issue agenda (that’d be abortion, for those who have been asleep at the switch), the hierarchy’s guide on informing Catholic voters (titled “Faithful Citizenship”<\/a>) is in fact–if you are a partisan looking for support–the worst voter guide ever written. (Or the safest, in terms of IRS statutes.) The Christian Coalition would have it mulched.
\nEven the bishops note that the guide’s explanation of Catholic political concerns makes it extremely difficult for a voter to know how to choose. Yes, Catholic voters have much more permissive views than the hierarchy of civil unions for gays and abortion rights and the like. But while abortion is a predominant concern for the bishops, the political reality is that most Catholics feel that even the GOP’s “culture of life” sloganeering (a rip-off from John Paul who, were he alive, should consider a plagiarism lawsuit) is empty rhetoric.
\nSo Catholic voters just don’t have a political affiliation that matches up well with their church’s teachings (though partisans on both sides will dispute that) and in the end they go to the dance with the candidate who makes them the sweetest-sounding promises.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Waldman and Deal Hudson are having a debate about why Clinton is winning the Catholic vote and Obama is not–an interesting development given that the two candidates share most social justice views that might appeal to Catholics, as well as being pro-choice and pro-gay rights and such. Steve argues that “in the Democratic primaries,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nCatholics as political orphans - Benedictions: The Pope in America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/04\/catholics-as-political-orphans.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Catholics as political orphans - Benedictions: The Pope in America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Steve Waldman and Deal Hudson are having a debate about why Clinton is winning the Catholic vote and Obama is not–an interesting development given that the two candidates share most social justice views that might appeal to Catholics, as well as being pro-choice and pro-gay rights and such. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}