Will Catholics party on with Republicans?

Social justice news
June 2001

Amnesty International sees globalization as new human rights foe
Bush offers a "back to the future" energy plan
Pax Christi rejects racism in the peace and justice movment
President picks conservatve drug czar, calls for liberal policies
Will Catholics party on with Republicans?

Will Catholics party on with Republicans?
In American Catholic, his 1997 history of the Catholic Church in the United States, Charles Morris took the political pulse of mid-1990s American Catholicism: "On virtually all political issues that divide American liberals and conservatives . . . Catholics are more liberal than Protestants." And while Catholics were part of the conservative swing in the Reagan years and the 1994 Congressional election, "Catholics are still more likely than Protestants to vote Democratic, particularly in local elections," Morris wrote. But voting trends in the 2000 presidential election raise a contrary question about the Catholic vote: Is a traditionally liberal and Democratic electorate becoming more conservative and Republican?

Pretty much, says Steve Wagner, president of a Washington D.C. public opinion research firm. In a recent Crisis magazine article, Wagner reports survey data showing George W. Bush beat Al Gore by 13 percent among Catholic voters who attend Mass at least once a week. Although Gore won with all Catholics—both practicing and nonpracticing—Bush added 10 percentage points to Bob Dole's 37 percent performance in 1996—just one percentage point behind Bush's total with the whole electorate. And Bush creamed Gore among active Catholics "who have a discernible political identity."

"Never," Wagner points out, "has the gap between the Republican vote among religiously active Catholics and the overall Republican vote been narrower." The bottom line: In the 2000 presidential election, Catholics increasingly favored the Republican candidate.

Certainly the Bush Administration and the Republican national leadership have come, in the words of Washington Post staff writer Thomas B. Edsall, to "view the Catholic vote as the linchpin of a larger Republican strategy to gain solid majorities among all white religious voters—critical to Bush's reelection prospects." Bush has met with three prominent American bishops, has inserted Catholic "buzzwords" such as "culture of life" and hybrid versions of the corporal works of mercy into his speeches. Bush even quoted Catholic radical legend Dorothy Day during the Notre Dame commencement. His establishment of an office for faith-based initiatives has been viewed as another outreach to Catholic voters. His staff has a weekly conference call with a group of Catholic advisers (of which pollster Wagner is a member), and the Republican National Committee has been setting up a Catholic Task Force to identify active Catholics in key states and mobilize them on school vouchers, abortion, and other issues of Catholic interest.

But what of the Democratic Party, the historic home of many if not most Catholics? As John Carr, director of the U.S. Catholic Conference's Department of Social Development and World Peace, has argued, while the Clinton era was good for Democratic fundraising, it was bad for the party's electoral support. During Clinton's two terms, the Democrats lost majorities in both houses of Congress as well as most governorships and state legislatures. Moreover, Carr thinks, "In lots of ways, Democrats seem to have lost their soul."

Democrats don't seem to be saying much anymore about poor families, the earned income tax credit, and other issues advanced as policy priorities by Catholic organs such as the U.S. bishops and Catholic Charities. "When," Carr asks, "was the last time a Democratic leader talked about the minimum wage on a Sunday morning talk show?"

At the same time, says Carr, Catholics have reason to be skeptical of the promises of the Bush Administration and the Republican Party. First, Catholics expect real progress on the protection of the unborn. Second, they also expect real alternatives to failing schools. Finally, many Catholics seriously want more tolerant treatment of immigrants, a pullback on severe cuts to domestic programs, and a priority on overcoming poverty. On all these issues, Carr believes, "a key question is how compassionate conservatism' will play out. Will compassion' be mostly rhetoric and symbols, while conservatism' dominates policy priorities, or the other way around?"

So, are American Catholics turning Republican? That result is not yet clear. Catholics may be simply reflecting national political trends: While more Catholics voted Republican on the national ticket than in previous elections, one election does not a trend make, and the supposed Catholic shift to the right has to be seen against the general decline of the effectiveness of the Democratic Party on the national level, the overall conservative swing of the electorate in the last 20 years, and the targeting of Catholic and other religiously active voters by Republicans. Catholics may be looking—tentatively, perhaps—to the Republican Party as the national political body paying more attention at this time to their concerns and while Democrats in their disarray do not seem much interested in addressing Catholic issues these days, it is unclear whether Republican policy-makers can carry through on their Catholic-friendly rhetoric.

Finally, one must take into account the difficulty both in pinning down Catholics as liberals or conservatives (and in distinguishing what they really believe in and what their national church leadership says they should believe). Most penetrating may be Charles Morris' observation that "official Catholic teachings"—and Catholics' belief in and following of them—"have never fit well within traditional American liberal-conservative taxonomies."

Making a similar point at the 2000 Los Angeles Religious Education Conference, Christian ethicist Michael Baxter argued that during national elections Catholics of good conscience find that the standard definitions of what is liberal and conservative don't see to fit. On the one hand, the church is against birth control, abortion, and euthanasia, and thus comes out looking conservative. On the other hand, it questions the death penalty, the waging of war, and the treatment of the poor and immigrants, and comes out looking liberal. What is more, U.S. Catholic bishops, once known as "the Democratic Party at prayer," straddle a position of moral and ecclesiastical conservatism and social liberalism and progressivism that mirrors the ideological position emanating from the Vatican.

Which party will best tap the support of this unique blend of moral conservatives and social progressives that is the American Catholic electorate? Right now, the Republicans seem to be doing a better job of reaching Catholics, but only the next four years and beyond will show whether Republican rhetoric of compassionate conservativism translates into real policy, real social change, and Catholic votes.—Joel Schorn

For more information:
"Where are we now?" by John Carr, presentation to 2000 Annual Social Ministry Gathering, Washington, D.C.
"Bush Aims to Strengthen Catholic Base," by Thomas B. Edsall, the Washington Post, April 16, 2001. American Catholic, by Charles R. Morris.
"Will America bury the hatchet?" by Steve Wagner, Crisis, January 2001

Back to page top