“There is no Catholic vote. And yet, it matters.” This was the title of a quite famous commentary that E. J. Dionne, a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, penned on June 18, 2000. What was true in 2000 for the USA presidential election is truer even today.
Dionne was not writing a contradiction. Neither did he choose a fancy heading just to sex up his commentary. Dionne is intelligent enough to avoid the former situation and well-known enough to have no need for the second. He was just trying to come to terms with a complex situation. Catholics do not vote as a bloc. But they are the largest religious group which, all commentators admit, no candidate who wants to be elected can ignore.
Last month John Carr, head of Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, threw light on this paradoxical situation during an interview with Renee Montagne from the National Public Radio. The Catholic vote is several pieces, he said. “About 40 per cent tips Republican, about 40 per cent tips Democratic and the remaining 20 per cent helps decide who is president.”
Perhaps one can point to two different ‘pieces’ in the Catholic vote. One piece is made up of the big difference there is between white Catholics and Hispanic Catholics. Then there is a second important piece made up of Catholics who are regular church-goers in contrast to those who are not.
The ancestors of today’s white Catholics were poor immigrants from Italy, Poland and Ireland struggling against the Protestant establishment which greeted them with suspicion and fear. The Democratic Party and the unions fought for their rights. White Catholics stuck with the Democrats for decades. Then they got educated, got rich, joined the middle class and became executives and professionals. The Democrats started championing the blacks and Hispanics. White Catholics felt ignored. Many migrated to the Republican Party. For such Catholics religion has to do a lot with the family and very little with politics.
The Hispanics, and not just Catholic Hispanics, have a different view of America than that of the white Americans. According to a 2016 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, 56 per cent of white Americans think that American society and culture has gotten worse since the 1950s. They are very nostalgic about the past. Meanwhile 57 per cent of Hispanics think things have improved. For them, the 1950s is not an idealised period but a time of discrimination and prejudice.
The number of Hispanics among Catholics is increasing. According to surveys by CARA, Washington University, 38 per cent of adult Catholics self-identify their ethnicity as Hispanic or Latino/a. Hispanics also form the majority of millennial Catholics. They favour the Democrats because of, among other things, the Republicans’ bad record on immigration. Under the increased presence of Hispanics, it seems that the Catholic pendulum is moving back towards the Democrats.
Voting patterns between Catholics who regularly go to church and those who do not go regularly provide another difference. The abortion issue played an important part during the election campaigns of 2008 and 2012. Catholics debated whether they could vote or not for Barack Obama because of his track record on abortion. Some bishops said that voting for Obama was a sin, some bishops said it was not.
Many are not fully persuaded that Trump’s conversion to the pro-life cause is real
The controversy left its effect. During the last presidential elections regular church-going Catholics supported Mitt Romney more than they supported Obama.
Today the electorate is also faced by a candidate who positions himself as part of the pro-life movement, Donald Trump, and a candidate who advocates for the other side, Hillary Clinton.
But one would be wrong to conclude that what happened in the last election will also happen now. In fact, the opposite is happening. According to a July survey by the Pew Research Center, Clinton holds a 19-point lead over Trump among all Catholics who attend Mass weekly.
In the interview, Carr said that the Catholics who go to church more than others are less likely to support Trump. The reasons are various. More and more Catholics today are veering away from the idea that the presidential election should be a one-issue election. Without in any way diminishing the immense importance of a candidate’s position on abortion, they are ready to consider voting or not voting for a candidate because of several other issues.
Trump’s demonisation of immigrants is one of them. The Pope himself waded into this debate. In February 2016, while on his way home following a visit to Mexico, he said that “a person who thinks only about building walls – wherever they may be – and not building bridges, is not Christian”. Migration was also a topic given importance by Pope Francis during his address to Congress in September 2015.
Social justice and the common good, for example, are given great importance because they are the bedrock of Catholic social teaching. Trump does not score highly on any one of these issues.
Should not Catholics forgive Trump these un-Catholic attitudes if he is pro-life? Undoubtedly there are Catholics who definitively answer yes. The newsletter of the Bethesda Catholic church in Maryland, a prosperous, largely white suburb of Washington, DC, suggests that Catholic voters should consider the abortion issue more than any other issue.
But there is a snag. Many are not fully persuaded that Trump’s conversion to the pro-life cause is real. Those who do not believe Trump have an easier choice to make. This choice was made easier still after the release a 2005 video tape in which Trump boasts crudely of groping women.
Many Catholics will definitively vote for Trump but it seems that more will vote for Clinton. Many, however, would not do so enthusiastically but will vote holding their noses with a clothes peg.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt