Conservative Catholic Elites Oppose Trump… as He Rides Catholic Vote to Victory in Michigan

Much ink has already been spilled trying to parse Donald Trump’s appeal to evangelicals. Are they “Trumpvangelicals” more concerned with “immigration, Islamophobia, and guns” than abortion and gay marriage? Or just bad evangelicals? Or are they Appalachian rednecks, the descendants of the Scots-Irish who colonized the southern highlands with a distinct cultural folkway that combined a fierce distrust of central authority with the worship of charismatic leaders, seething xenophobia, a penchant for retributive justice, and, in the words of David Hackett Fischer, an “intense hostility to organized churches and established clergy … and an abiding interest in religion.”

My vote is with the latter. Trump’s appeal to evangelicals is more folkway than religious. But as the last couple of election cycles have demonstrated, the evangelical vote doesn’t deliver the general election. If it did, we would have Mitt Romney in the White House. But the Catholic vote does. And now the conservative Catholic cabal that teamed up with evangelical power brokers to deliver us George W. Bush, and tried to shove Romney down the nation’s throat, is in a full-fledged panic that white, Catholic, working-class voters might throw their support behind Donald Trump and upset their neocon apple cart.

In “An Appeal to Our Fellow Catholics” published in the National Review, “natural rights” proponent Robert P. George and Pope John Paul II biographer George Weigel lament that the Republican Party, which has been a flawed but “serviceable” vehicle for “promoting causes at the center of Catholic social concern in the United States,” is about to be hijacked by one Donald J. Trump.

Read more at Religion Dispatches >>

Donald Trump’s Surprise Support from Catholics

There are some new faith findings of note: Republican front-runner Donald Trump has more support from GOP Catholic voters than their Protestant brethren. According to a review of three Monmouth University surveys, Mr. Trump pulled 44 percent support in Iowa from Catholic caucusgoers compared to 24 percent from Protestants. The candidate garnered 30 percent of the Catholic vote and 26 percent of the Protestant vote in New Hampshire. In South Carolina he currently holds 42 percent of the Catholic vote compared with 32 percent of the Protestant vote.

And one more thing, says the exacting Patrick Murray, director of polling on the Monmouth campus, and the man who pored over all the numbers.

“A whopping 76 percent of Catholic Republicans said they favored building a wall across the Mexican border and 61 percent specifically said they approved of Trump’s immigration plan,” Mr. Murray noted in an analysis compiled for the New York Daily News.

Read more at The Washington Times >>

The Catholic Vote Swings

There is a term from Catholic theology which aptly describes those Catholics who will again vote for the despotic thug illegitimately occupying the White House; that term is "invincible ignorance."

According to Gallup, President John F. Kennedy garnered 78 percent of the Catholic vote.

From National Review Online
By Michael Novak

The new wisdom is that Catholics vote just like everybody else. That purported wisdom isn’t wise.

The Catholic vote differs in four decisive ways from the Protestant, Jewish, and secular votes.

(1) The Catholic vote is concentrated mainly in the largest states in the Electoral College: California, Texas, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey.

(2) A larger proportion of Catholics than of any other religious group except Jews votes regularly, every election. In some jurisdictions (Chicago, Boston) Catholic voters have been known to vote at a rate of 104 percent or more when necessary, some of them after their natural deaths.

(3) In some key states, the Catholic vote, although tending more Democratic, is fairly evenly split between the Democrats and the Republicans. Keeping the Catholic vote for the Democrat down even to 52 percent may be enough to get a Republican elected.

And (4) — most important of all — in many states Catholic voters frequently swing between parties by margins of 3 to 6 percent. And even more in some years.

As political professionals know well, each swinger counts twice. Each takes a vote away from one column and puts it into the other. If on a national basis the 25 million Catholic votes (24 percent of all votes cast) swing by 1 million votes toward Romney and away from Obama, that gives Romney a net gain of 2 million votes in relation to his competitor, and Obama a net loss of 2 million. This year it seems more likely to be a swing of 2 million for Romney, a net loss to Obama of 4 million. And it may be even a larger swing, depending on how powerful the broad-based campaign to protect religious liberty turns out to be.

The historical record of these large swings helps to explain why the Catholic vote has gone with the winning side in so many elections since 1952. Put another way, the Catholic swing vote has more than any other decided the winner, just because it is of such significant numbers. No Democrat since 1952 (except for Clinton in 1992) has ever won the White House without a majority of the Catholic vote.

In some states, as noted above, Republicans do not have to win a majority of the Catholic vote to carry the state; they need only hold down the Democratic Catholic majority by two or three percentage points. In Pennsylvania, my home state, the rule among professionals was that if the Catholic vote for the Democrat could be held down to 52 percent, the Republican could take the state.

Percentage of Catholic Vote for Presidential Winners

1952: Eisenhower, 44%
1956: Eisenhower, 49%
1960: Kennedy, 78%
1964: Johnson, 76%
1968: Nixon, 33%
1972: Nixon, 52%
1976: Carter, 57%
1980: Reagan, 47%
1984: Reagan, 61%
1988: Bush, 49%
1992: Clinton, 47%
1996: Clinton, 55%
2000: Bush, 46%
2004: Bush, 48%
2008: Obama, 53%

(The figures above are from Gallup. In the three-way race of 1968, Nixon lost the Catholic vote to Hubert Humphrey by a margin of 59 percent to 33 percent, but managed to squeak out a victory, since much of the Southern Protestant vote went to George Wallace. In 1972, however, Mr. Nixon’s 52 percent broke the Democratic lock on the Catholic vote.)

Finally, it may be that in some years a particular factor affects a significant slice of Catholic voters more than most others — the chance to elect the first Catholic president in 1960, for instance.

And Catholics tend to identify themselves as Catholics long after they have ceased going to church (“born Catholic” or “non-practicing Catholic,” these tend to qualify their identity). The difference in voting patterns between Catholics who go to Mass at least weekly and those who don’t is in some matters (partial-birth abortion, e.g.) unusually large. In 2012, I expect the defense of religious liberty to cut as deeply against Obama as 3 million Catholic voters or more. Worth watching.

 

Michael Novak is distinguished visiting professor at Ave Maria University and co-author, with Jana Novak, of Washington’s God.

Obama and the Catholic Vote

From The Hill

By John Feehery

The Obama administration seems to be going out of its way to offend a key group of voters who swept the president into office three years ago. 

The Washington Post had this to say about this crucial voting bloc: “American Catholics are the ultimate swing voters, switching between Republicans and Democrats alike. Representing approximately one in four U.S. voters, Catholics make up the largest single religious voting bloc in American politics.”

Poll Predicts Huge Swing of US Catholic Vote Toward Republicans

Deo Gratias!

From Catholic World News
Pre-election polls in the US show a powerful trend toward the Republican Party among “swing” voters, including Catholics, the New York Times has reported.

A New York Timesreporter told Catholic Vote that in the latest survey Catholics were leaning toward Republicans by a 62-38% margin—a stunning contrast with the 2008 election, in which Catholic voters favored President Obama over his Republican challenger, John McCain, by 54- 44%.

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Obama Coalition Is Fraying, Poll Finds (New York Times)
• NY Times/CBS poll: GOP making gains among Catholic voters (CatholicVote)

Priest to Catholic Voters: Stop Being Stupid!

Hat Tip to Matt Abbott


A Message from Father Richard Perozich, a priest of the Diocese of San Diego

Elections are coming up November 2, 2010. Catholics must engage in the political process to form a nation that reflects the values held by Christ's followers. Learn who you are and act like a Christian. 1 Peter 2.9 But you are "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may announce the praises" of Him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

Your job is to announce to the whole world that Jesus is the anointed King of God's everlasting reign — and to offer all men His salvation given by grace and received by faith. One forum in which you do this is politics. Politics comes from the words pole and polarity. Poles are opposite ends of an idea, of a temporal structure, or of a force.

Catholics, even though we live in a country and are citizens of that country, have a higher calling and responsibility to God and to our neighbor to promote God's truth even when others hate it, reject it, and hate us for proclaiming it. We are citizens in an earthly realm, but more importantly we are citizens of the new kingdom of heaven with Jesus as the Lord, His laws as our prime way of life, and called to live them and to promote them even to unbelievers.

We live in a society where many people with power, possessions, and prestige are promoting ideas that are not founded in Christ. In order to promote their ideas over ours, they tell us we must stay in our churches, keep our religion to ourselves, and that their idea of separation of the church from the state (which does not exist in our American Constitution as they say it does) trumps any ideas we might have, so we have to shut up.

And Catholics sheepishly keep quiet and vote for men and women who promote evil.

In chapter 3 of Galatians, St. Paul, frustrated with the Galatians allowing non-believers to silence the truth even to the point of the Galatians returning to pagan or evil ways chastises them saying, "O stupid Galatians. Who has bewitched you?"

It can be said of us in America in the year 2010, "O stupid Catholics, who has bewitched you?" We easily go over to pagan ideas, putting aside our faith, our truth, in order to accommodate the evil of people who will not accommodate us! To promote their ideas they attack us personally calling us the far right, ultra-conservative, bigoted, homophobic, hate mongers, holy rollers, and other epithets. This silences many Catholics. It only emboldens me, and it should embolden you also to promote your faith.

In the fights in politics, all sides cannot win. It is either going to be the way of evil or the way of truth. You must engage it as an ambassador for Christ and not as an agent of the devil. God is life. Jesus is King. Christians are citizens of the kingdom sharing in life, the mission of God to promote it constantly in every forum.

People are most concerned with their economic power to purchase, to live, to save. Their greatest fear is losing this, evident in how they voted in 2006 and 2008. For Christians our greatest concern should be with life, and we vote for those who promote it. You have heard the mantra, "I'm a fiscal conservative, but a social liberal." Nonsense. The societal responsibilities come first, and from a sound society built on biblical principles flow the economic concerns.

In a healthy economy there will be rich people. I who earn $20,000 a year do not envy their wealth, their homes, their power to shape the economy. The people Americans put into office in 2006 and 2008 do envy, and are using the economy to tear apart the entire social fabric of society to promote abortion here in our country and abroad; to kill new life in embryos; to kill the elderly and sick; to destroy the nature of gender and marriage; to allow sexually-immature people to be predators of others to try to satisfy their lack of psychological development.

For us Catholics, the basic issues are: Life from conception to natural death, that is, protection of the unborn, those with life, and those who are sick; protection of new life in its most nascent form, the embryo; protection from cloning to farm body parts; protection from sexual deviance in the form of pederasty, homosexuality, adultery, fornication, prostitution.

An elite class has assumed power in the United States, transcending political parties. They claim to know more than the people the elites represent. They do not. Their interest is keeping their positions in which they earn upwards of $200,000 with a health plan that is not part of the new one passed for the rest of us. They plan the destruction of the military, the silence of the churches and free voices, the destruction of children, embryos. They simply cannot stay in power. I have voted for some of them despite their mixed policies.

But enough! I refuse to cast a vote for anyone who supports abortion, sexual confusion to be forced in the military, marriage, school curricula, or any other societal aspect, cloning, embryonic stem cell research, or euthanasia. I am a Catholic. I am a citizen of the kingdom of God and will promote that kingdom in all parts of my life.

To you politicians who promote non-Catholic values, I will not vote for you just so your opponent will not get into office. If you do not represent me, you do not have my vote. I don't want your government money. I don't want your ideas of equality, fairness, and justice. I don't want your health care. I am not a prostitute who sells my vote for temporal benefits.

I am checking your voting records through various organizations which monitor your voting. If you do not promote life from the moment of conception to natural death, chastity and sexual distinctions, traditional marriage, respect for embryos in science, then you will not get my vote. You do not belong in political office. Teachers who sheepishly follow their corrupt unions do not belong in the classrooms. Clergy who follow non- Christian teaching do not belong in the pulpit.

My hope rests in Jesus Christ and His salvation exactly from the very things these politicians are promoting. Change is repentance from sin, conversion to God, and reparation of the damage by following the Commandments without relativizing them.

Hope and change did not come in 2008. I'm going to do my part to see that it does in 2010.

Another Priest Urges Confession for Catholics who Voted for Pro-Abortion Obama

From LifeSiteNews
By Kathleen Gilbert

A California priest has garnered international attention and strong praise for pointing out the moral peril of Catholics who voted for President-elect Barack Obama despite being aware of his agenda to aggressively promote abortion.

"If you are one of the 54 percent of Catholics who voted for a pro-abortion candidate, you were clear on his position, and you knew the gravity of the question, I urge you to go to confession before receiving communion," wrote Fr. Joseph Illo, pastor of St. Joseph's Catholic Church in the Stockton diocese, in a letter to his parishioners. "Don't risk losing your state of grace by receiving sacrilegiously."

Fr. Illo's kind but firm letter, dated November 21, mapped out at length the complex but grave moral situation, and took pains to outline the extent to which his admonition pertains to any particular Catholic voter.

“If you voted for a pro-abortion candidate, I cannot say for certain if you should refrain from Holy Communion. I don’t know what you were thinking," wrote Fr. Illo. "But voting for a candidate who promises ‘abortion rights,’ even if he promises every other good thing, is voting for abortion. It is a grave mistake, and probably a grave sin. No issue can compare with the legalized destruction of a mother’s child.

"I am writing to you because I love you and I care about your relationship with God," said the letter. "I am also writing because God requires this of me as a Catholic priest."

Read the rest of this entry >>

Bishops React to Priest who Told Obama-Supporting Catholics to Confess before Receiving Communion

From LifeSiteNews.com

A South Carolina Catholic priest who advised Obama supporters in his flock not to receive Communion before going to confession elicited polarized responses from the Catholic community - ranging from outrage at a misuse of authority to warm praise for championing Church teaching on abortion. Today LifeSiteNews.com spoke with bishops Gracida, Vasa, and Chaput, all known for their outspokenness on political issues, about the priest’s actions.

Following Obama's election, Fr. Jay Scott Newman wrote a letter to parishioners stating, "Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exits constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil."

Therefore, as Fr. Newman writes, "Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation."

Fr. Newman, pastor of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville, explained to local news that he will not refuse Communion to individual parishioners, as Church law would require in the case of a pro-abortion Catholic politician or other well-known public figure. Instead the priest is simply exhorting all Catholics who supported Obama's pro-abortion ticket not to approach the altar. (To see Fr. Newman's full letter, go to: http://www.stmarysgvl.org/ourparish/2008-dedication-of-the-l...)

St. Mary's is considered the mother church for upstate South Carolina Roman Catholics, with 7,500 registered members.

“Personally, I think it is valuable to have this discussion in the secular media because, many times, many Catholics don’t go to Mass, and so they come at this issue from a secular viewpoint,” said diocesan spokesman Steve Gajdosik to the Greenville News.

“I think to Father Newman’s credit, he isn’t afraid to tackle tough issues. And sometimes there is a lot of pressure to conform and just be nice and go along.”

Fr. Newman's sentiments aligned with those of Msgr. Martin Laughlin, the diocese's administrator.

"We must not be guided by the so called 'lesser of two evils' or attempt to justify the acceptance of intrinsic evil for some greater good. We may never embrace evil," Msgr. Laughlin had written in an October letter, in which he called abortion "an affront to human dignity."

Archbishop Burke, formerly archbishop of St. Louis, MO and the current Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, had said in an interview just before election day that for a citizen to not "support and vote for the candidate who most supports the inalienable dignity of innocent and defenseless life" is "to participate, in some way, in the culture of death which pervades the life of the nation and has led to so much violence.”

Bishop Emeritus Rene Henry Gracida of Corpus Christi, TX, told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) his reaction to Fr. Newman's letter "is one of admiration and awe. I find nothing in what he has written that is at variance with the Magisterium of the Church. He is to be congratulated."

Bishop Vasa of Baker, OR told LSN that, while Fr. Newman was correct to say that voting for Obama constitutes a material offense against moral teaching, it would nonetheless be impossible to "to ascertain with any degree of certainty the sinfulness of the action of any particular voter" as many voters may or may not have been aware of Obama’s extreme stance on abortion.

In a further statement, Fr. Newman appears to agree with Bishop Vasa. Newman said his statement on the "enormously complex subject" could be easily distorted when taken out of the context of his fidelity to normative Church doctrine. Within this context, he said, "no one could conclude that a vote for Senator Obama is in itself or by itself a mortal sin.

"But from that same teaching, though, we must conclude that a vote for a pro-abortion candidate can be a mortal sin if the intent is to support abortion, that abortion is not merely one issue among other important issues, and that no Catholic should endorse a pro-abortion politician if a plausible pro-life alternative is available." (http://www.stmarysgvl.org/ourparish/2008-dear-friends-in-chr...)

Bishop Chaput, one of the most outspoken bishops on political matters, declined to comment on Fr. Newman's letter, stating only that Charleston diocesan administration had authority to speak on the matter.

"Praise God for priests with mettle enough to put what's right and good for their flocks before what is politically expedient," said Jim Sedlack, Vice President of the American Life League. "We pray more men like Fr. Newman will stand up and enforce Canon 915." Canon 915 deals with the subject of the distribution of Communion to those who are obstinately persisting in grave sin.

Numerous U.S. bishops issued a sustained volley of statements throughout the months prior to the presidential election condemning Catholics who supported pro-abortion candidates; these statements often contained thinly veiled references to Obama, considered by many to be poised to become the most pro-abortion president in history.

Prior to his election to the pontificate, Cardinal Ratzinger had written to U.S. bishops saying that Catholics indiscriminately receiving communion without discerning their worthiness "is an abuse that must be corrected," and that voting for a pro-abortion candidate without proportionate reason incurred moral guilt that disqualified a Catholic from receiving communion (See: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/apr/050419a.html).

A Tough Message Catholics Need To Hear

This program is from RealCatholicTV.com

Catholics and Abortion (Again!)

From Faithful Catholic Citizens
By Cal Thomas

In recent elections when a high-profile Roman Catholic Democrat seeks high, or higher office, the issue of abortion surfaces. As the pro-choice, non-Catholic Barack Obama makes a play for evangelical voters, conservative Catholics are asking their fellow believers to take seriously the church's teaching on abortion and not cast their vote for Obama and Catholic Joe Biden.

The split in Democratic ranks is along political as well as theological lines. Liberal Catholics claim that government programs advocated by Democrats more accurately reflect the teachings of Jesus about the poor and the weak. More "observant" Catholics, some of whom support anti-poverty government programs, point out that no program can help someone who is not given the right to live. Liberals want Catholics to look beyond abortion. Would they have been comfortable 50 years ago with appeals for Catholics to look beyond the racism of Southern Democratic senators? Probably not.

A group calling itself Faithful Catholic Citizens" (FCC) has produced two powerful television commercials, which are running in Iowa and soon, it hopes, in heavily Catholic Pennsylvania. Both spots begin with a confrontational question: "Are you truly Catholic" and follow with a sound bite from "Meet the Press" in which Speaker Nancy Pelosi asserts that Catholic teaching on abortion has been inconsistent. "Utterly incredible," Cardinal Edward Egan is then quoted as saying about Pelosi's statement, which is followed by one from the late Pope John Paul II, who called abortion "(the) deliberate killing of an innocent human being." And then comes a reference to Sen. Barack Obama on the abortion issue from Rick Warren's forum in August at which Obama said that knowing when life begins is "above my pay grade."

"Don't be misled," continue the ads, "Know the church. Know the truth." (View both ads below)

Is abortion "intrinsically evil" and "a non-negotiable issue for Catholics," as FCC President Heidi Stirrup asserts? If one is a Catholic and subscribes to the belief that the interpretation of Scripture and moral truth is the responsibility of the pope and the apostolic bishops, then one would have to say, "yes;" and when faith and politics conflict, a politician should be required to choose one or the other.

Some Catholic politicians have tried to have it both ways. They have even tried to gain favor among their fellow Catholics by noting their strong opposition to capital punishment, which puts them in an oddly inconsistent position. Such Catholic politicians favor preserving the lives of convicted murderers, but choose to do nothing when they have the power to stop, or at least curtail, the killing of the innocent unborn.

While I am not a Catholic, it seems more than inconsistent to take such a position. One chooses one's denomination, just as one chooses one's political affiliation. No one forces another to become a Catholic and no one requires one to become a Democrat, or Republican. Judicial nominees have been denied confirmation based on their membership in clubs that excluded blacks and Jews. But now we may be about to elevate two men to our highest offices who would deny civil rights to African American babies (who are aborted disproportionately to other races), one of whom seeks the votes of his fellow Catholics.

Two years ago, Pope Benedict XVI reiterated the church's "non-negotiable" issues: "Protection of life at all stages, from the moment of conception until natural death; recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family as a union between a man and a woman based on marriage; the protection of the rights of parents to educate their children."

Obama and Biden oppose at least two of these (they claim to be against same-sex "marriage," but for "civil unions"). Whether the TV ads change any minds may be problematic. Catholics who are enamored with "change" and the belief that government is the primary instrument of God, rather than the church, in carrying out His will — and who have ignored church teaching on profound moral issues — are unlikely to be swayed by further appeals to become "truly Catholic." But if only a few see where an Obama-Biden administration would take the country on moral issues, in a close election that might be enough.