The GOP’s Catholic freefall
June 24, 2008, 10:00 am
Posted by David Gibson
Over at Pontifications, I take a look at the latest numbers from both the voluminous Pew “Religious Landscape Survey” and the lesser-noted survey from Georgetown’s CARA institute and the conclusion seems inescapable: The GOP is losing the Catholic vote by a huge margin, from near parity in 2004 to a 15 percent (or higher differential) for the Dems today. War (and no peace), tax policies, and no traction on abortion and gay marriage explain some of the falloff.
Yes, I agree, there is no traction on the abortion issue or on gay rights for the GOP. I remember, I was set to vote for Kerry in ’04, but he admitted he was for partial birth abortion, and I changed my mind. Moral issues will sway the Catholic vote. Economic issues for both sides are tenuous; Obama will spend, spend, spend; and we still have the Iraqi war going on for the GOP. However, Iraq is now giving US companies the rights to start drilling for oil in Iraq. Like it or not, I believe it is some payback for all we have spent and done there.
Calling this a freefall is an overstatement. The stats show a 15% advantage in party affiliation for the democrats, but that has always been the case. Even when Bush won a majority of Catholics there were significantly more Democrats than Republicans. A more important number in the study, I think, is that 36% of Catholics self-identify as conservative while only 18% say they are liberal.
Party affiliation for Catholics is a strange thing. I grew up in the Rocky Mountain west where most non-hispanic Catholics were Republicans. Living in the Northeast now I find party affiliations confusing – almost bizarre. I know people who, because they are Irish Catholic, will never become Republicans even if they are straight down the line conservative on economic and social issues. They may vote Republican sometimes, but they won’t become one.
Sean, I do think party affiliation is clearly weaker now than in the past, and yet it is an important indicator of part preference and how people vote now and in the future. These identifications are ingrained over generations, and can influence people. Moreover, what you say about this Democratic edge being the case historically isn’t quite right: The polls showed, and the Republican trumpeted, a near parity four years ago. How do you explain the huge falloff for the GOP and no parallel falloff for the Dems?
Denise, I think you may be the excpetion rather than the norm. The polls show in fact that abortion and homosexuality do not sway voters, or not nearly as much as economic issues and war and peace issues.
David–I remember the analysis as to why Kerry lost in ’04, and moral issues were key. Remember Bush had the evangelical Christian vote. Yes, I believe economics and war/peace issues trump many moral issues, but stances on moral issues will still sway voters. I’m proud that Catholics can still lead the way on that, and that we are the only religion that has a clear public leader on moral issues, the Pope.
Many current voters are independents, and that may be a direct result of the complexity of the issues this time.
David,
The Dems have always, always, had an edge – even in the last Pew study from 2006 it was 5%. That actually makes me a little suspicious of these numbers. They are saying that in less than two years there was a 10% shift in affiliation? The number of independents didn’t increase much, so the shift was almost all to the democratic side. Moreover, they say that only 33% now lean GOP, but 33% self identify as conservative and 38% are moderate. How does that add up – 90% of the moderates are democrats?
More to the point, are we seeing a fundamental shift or an historical blip? Long-term I think this is a center-right country, including Catholics. Recognizing this is fundamentally how the democrats have been successful in 1992, 1996, and 2006. They ran moderate – they triangulated. I admit, they may pull off a left-wing candidate this time, but I see it as an aberation.
I wonder if the social issues do have as much traction. I grew up in RI, and lived in Mass, and still know many Catholics there–from all walks of life, not merely academics. Most of them, even older Catholics, think the sky didn’t fall in after gay marriage was protected in Mass., and are more or less live and let live about these matters.
If there is one thing the Pew study points up it is the dominance of what David Brooks calls “flexidoxy”–a phrase he apparently got from a rabbi in Montana (neat trick) that he ascribes, rightly I think, to American believers. By wide margins Americans believe in religion, but say others can find the way to salvation, and that dogma is not as important as their own lived experience. And that goes for regular churchgoers of all stripes, and quite notably for Catholics, who, the numbers say, just aren’t very interested in gay marriage. Which doesn’t bode well for the hierarchy’s decision to put their resources into that battle.
Cathleen, “gay” marriage is not consistent with God’s intention for Marriage, nor is it consistent with the teaching of the Catholic Church. Sexual Love only exists within the Sanctity of a Holy Marriage between a Husband and Wife in Covenant with God. This has been God’s definition of Marriage from the beginning of Time.
Studies show that voters who tend to vote on “values” issues also tend to be economically secure. (This might seem counterintuitive, but what has hidden this basic trend in the last few election cycles is outlier voting patterns in the South.)
Voting is an exercise in assigning relative importance to a whole host of issues. As some issues assume relatively greater importance in the mind of voters, others will matter less.
So what the trend among Catholics might show is that a rather well-documented increasing sense of economic insecurity in the population at large makes it far more likely that Catholics and others will see the common good in economic rather than other terms, and vote accordingly.
Nancy, are we to understand you’ve been around “from the beginning of Time?”
Gay marriage may not be “consistent with the teaching of the Catholic Church,” but it is consistent with the beliefs of more and more Catholics, indeed, a majority if I remember. Either most of us are wrong, or the Holy Spirit is wrong although I seriously doubt either party is mistaken. In other words, Nancy, we are seeing the solid development of the sense of the faithful on this matter (I would use the term “issue,” but it’s no longer an issue for most folks including the younger generations who apparently don’t regard gay marriage as an issue at all!
Your belief that “[s]exual love only exists within the Sanctity of a Holy Marriage between a Husband and Wife in Covenant with God” is simply erroneous.
No, Joseph, I have not been around from the beginning of Time, but The Word, I AM, has been. The Word is the same, yesterday, today and always.
This is not only my belief, it is God’s intention for Marriage.
“…Have you not heard that a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two will become one flesh? What GOD HAS joined together let no man put asunder.”
-Christ
This statement also refers to God’s authority over man regarding Marriage.
Nancy, the last time I looked, God wasn’t on the ballot.
Adam and Eve weren’t married.
Joseph,
What is the basis for your claim that a majority of Catholics approve of same sex marriage? I have not seen a single poll, or study, or anything that says that. So if you are relying on the “sense of the faithful,” it is still consistent with Church teaching on the subject.
Even so, that whole – a majority of Catholics think X, therefore the Church should agree because it is the sense of the Faithful is nonsense. It is not the Holy Spirit that is working the change, it is Oprah and Desperate Housewives. Do you really think Catholics’ acceptance of divorce and sex outside marriage is the Holy Spirit’s doing?
Cathleen,
The whole – they had same sex marriage in Massachusetts and the sky didn’t fall in is a red herring. Same sex marriage opponents never said the sky would fall in. The damage being done will not occur over night. Look how long it has taken other social and legal changes to erode marriage. Marriage is a resliant institution, so the damage will take decades to be fully appreciated. You are right, though. We will grow to accept it, like we have grown to accept rampant illegitimacy and the treatment of sex as just another social activity.
Nancy:
Regarding teachings of the Catholic Church:
• It was OK to own slaves.
• Earning interest on loaning money was wrong.
• Anyone who wasn’t a Catholic was doomed to hell. You know, the old “extra ecclesia nulla salus” thing.
• Almost anything the church said about Jews prior to Nostra Aetate.
• It was OK to kidnap a Jewish child who was clandestinely baptized and not let the child go back to his parents to be raised as a Jew.
• Women are a near occasion of sin.
• If you eat meat on Friday and die before confessing, you will go to hell because to do so was a mortal sin.
• You were not allowed to read the Bible without prior church permission.
• You were not allowed to read any book on the Index of Forbidden Books.
• Do you remember the Galileo Affair?
Gee, do you think the church’s position on same-sex (not just gay) marriage is on the same par as these? If not, why not?
Sean, as to Catholics and gay marriage, this Pew poll from two years ago showed that 42 percent favored gay marriage and 48 opposed it, with 10 percent undecided. (It is noteworthy that the question was phrased to ask about gay “marriage,” which generally ensures the highest negative answer.)
http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=290
In the latest survey, 58 percent of Catholics say that “homosexuality should be accepted by society.” (An even larger majority say gay marriage is not an electoral concern.) 30 percent say homosexuality should be “discouraged by society.” Those compare with figures of 50 percent and 40 percent overall, respectively.
http://religions.pewforum.org/comparisons
So fair to say homosexuality is not a hot-button issue for Catholics, and the numbers much less so for the next generation of Catholics.
Nancy, your comment begs a question: Which way would you vote? GOP or Democratic? Neither party would seem to fit your rather high standards. So what do you do?
Jimmy Mac, where is your proof ,for each of your statements ,regarding the teaching of the Magisterium?
It is a truth of the Catholic Church, that Christ, at the hour of our death, will decide if we are worthy of His Kingdom.
We now know that the sun is NOT the center of the Universe. The Earth, simply because it can sustain Life, has the obvious PREFERRED location in the Universe, which is exactly what God intended. This would not be so if the Earth was to be moved from its present location.
Nancy: read your church history!
As a woman you might be interested to read that Tertullian saw women as “the devil’s gateway”. St. John Chrysostom wrote that “woman taught once and ruined all.” St. Augustine taught that “separately, as helpmate, the woman herself alone is not the image of God; whereas the man alone is the image of God.”
The first Council of Nicaea in 325 forbade clergy from engaging in usury. Lateran III declared that persons who accepted interest on loans could receive neither the sacraments nor Christian burial. As late as 1745 Benedict XIV in “Vix Prevenit” strictly prohibited charging interest on loans.
If it wasn’t a mortal sin to eat mean on Friday pre-V2, then I wasted a lot of time getting forgiven for doing the same in Confession. And the USAF made a mistake in telling me in 1962 that I was no longer subject to the mandatory Friday fast from meat.
The Catholic history of the treatment of Jews is painfully covered in any number of historical sources. In 1965 in “Nostra Aetate” the church speaks of the bond that ties the people of the ‘New Covenant’ (Christians) to Abraham’s stock(Jews). It states that even though some Jewish authorities and those who followed them called for Jesus’ death, the blame for this cannot be laid at the door of all those Jews present at that time, nor can the Jews in our time be held as guilty, thus repudiating the charge of deicide; ‘the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God’. The Declaration also decries all displays of anti-semitism made at any time by anyone.
“Extra ecclesiam nula salus” comes from the writings of Cyprian of Carthage in the 3rd century. It refers to the belief of both the Orthodox and Catholic churches that the church is absolutely necessary for salvation. Catholicism particularized this to mean no salvation outside of Catholicism in the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), in Boniface VIII’s Bull “Unam Sanctum” (1302), Eugene V’s “Cantate Domino” (1441), Boniface I’s Epistle 14.1, Innocent III’s (1198-1216)“Profession of Faith” , Leo XIII’s “Ubi Primum” (1823-1829), Pius IX’s “Singulam Quadem” (1854), “Quanto conficiamur moerore” (1863), and the Syllabus of Errors (1864), Leo XIII’s “Annum Ingressi Sumus” and “Sapiente Christianae”, and Pius XII’s “Humanae Generis” . That’s one long history of magisterial pronouncements!
Now you can feel free to research the other items I outlined.
Sean,
I’m familiar with the ethical and sociological arguments on the question. I’m telling you how they will play out in Mass. Read Leslie Tentler’s book on the History of Contraception–the Church tried to make these arguments before, trying to keep contraception illegal in Mass. Big, huge, backfire. Even though divorce is bad for kids,people don’t want to get rid of it. They want to exercise it, more responsibly, themselves.
Plus, you can’t discount messy virtue theory arguments. For example, in Mass. the Church’s arguments were associated with corrupt Cardinal Law.
Cathy
Jimmy Mac, the reason why the Pope, and those Bishops in communion with him, (not all Bishops are in communion with him) are the final authority regarding the Deposit of Faith, is so that we do not have a bajillion (made up word) different interpretations. Christ entrusted His Church with the Deposit of Faith, through the guidance of The Holy Spirit, so that His Word would remain consistent until the end of Time.(“I will not leave you orphans”)
The fullness of Truth, the Way we are to Love one another, can only be found in His Church. Only His Sacrifice, His Passion, Has the Power before God, The Blessed Trinity, to forgive sins and bring us the Hope of Salvation. The Church is absolutely necessary for Salvation because it is through His Church, that Christ Has revealed the fullness of Truth.
And from time to time, in every age, God inspires men and women to remind His Church to listen to the Holy Spirit. In the 1960′s the Church showed its trust in God. We didn’t need one person, a la Francis of Assisi, to come to the Pope and tell him how to reform. We came together at the Vatican to implement improvements to bring us closer to God and let the world see into the Church. We should not nail the windows shut. That is fear. Jesus told us “be not afraid.”
Yes, change can be jarring. Imagine what Rome thought of Francis.
So Nancy, what is a voter like you to do in this election? Neither party is remotely close to your standards. Do you sit it out?
Jimmy,
You must be getting your talking points from the Rev Hagee.
Your gross oversimplification of Church history might as well be writtem by him. Please, tell us what happened to Gallileo. I would really like to hear how the Church “silenced and persecuted him” because they rejected the idea of heliocentricity. Seems not to have been a problem for Coperniucus – a Catholic priest. Women a near occaision of sin? How so?
Cathy,
You were the one who said “the sky didn’t fall.” I am only pointing out that no one ever thought that it would. Like I said, you are right in that proponents of same sex marriage understood this, but now point to “the lack of change” as justification for their position. By the way, the SJC didn’t “protect” same sex marriage, they created it – out of whole cloth.
Sean, the sky didn’t fall was deliberately non-technical language–that’s most people’s view, in my opinion. think that ordinary people are more afraid of what the religious right will do than what ssm will do. The religious right seem interfering, and well, for want of a better word, just plain mean.
Theocracy is an insult term–not an argument. But what people might say is that they’re afraid of a world run by the self-righteous and mean (which is how the religious right comes across to those who don’t agree).
Incidentally, I think it’s no accident that Pope Benedict didn’t ape their style.
You might reply, the left comes across as irresponsible, dissolute, and selfish to those who don’t agree. Yes. But they haven’t been in power for a long time, so their sins are fading from public view.
David, I will be voting Republican, unless the Catholic Advisory Board, is able to convince the Democratic Party, that from the beginning, both God and our Constitution, defends the Right to Life.
Nancy, that’s a rather generous prudential judgment you are making on behalf of the GOP. Good luck.
Cathleen, Theocracy is not an insult term. The Catholic Church, (Universal Church of Christ), is the Church that Christ Has Founded. He is Divine, we are not.
There is no conservative or liberal view of Truth, there is only Truth. Truth can not contradict itself.
Opinion poles have no bearing on Truth. Regarding Catholic Dogma, if what we believe is not consistent with Catholic Dogma than it is not the Truth.
Sean,
If the Church treated Galileo fairly, why did Pope John Paul II apologize in 2000? And why did he apologize for the Church’s treatment of Jews? And women?
oops, I meant opinion polls. The Truth is not a matter of opinion. God’s truth is absolute.
“You must be getting your talking points from the Rev Hagee.”
Nope, just the history of the church in this world.