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Catholics favoring Obama by 15-point margin is “a colossal Catholic failure”

Dr. Jeff Mirus

Mon Oct 01 19:48 EST

Opinion

October 1, 2012 (CatholicCulture.org) – Now that a Pew Survey shows Catholics favoring Obama by a 15-point margin, it is time to point out what is truly significant about the survey results. It isn’t significant that those who attend Mass monthly or yearly favor Obama 53 to 39 percent or that those who attend Mass seldom or never favor him by a 61 to 32 percent margin. These things, based on a combination of demographics and obvious spiritual apathy are to be expected.

Catholics who attend Mass infrequently cannot be expected to make Catholic moral judgments or to be champions of Catholic independence from government coercion. Most of these Catholics will have inherited sympathies for the Democratic Party based on ethnic group, family tradition or liberal media myths (Democrats care about people, Republicans don’t). They are almost inevitably influenced more by these attachments than by either coherent moral analysis or the needs and interests of their Church.

No, the most damning result of the poll is that Catholics who attend Mass at least weekly favor Mitt Romney by only nine percent (51 to 42). This compares with nearly a 30 point gap the other way for those who attend Mass very rarely or not at all. Why isn’t there a comparable gap against Obama by regularly practicing Catholics? This represents a colossal Catholic failure.

Obviously, one can allow for a certain apathy here. Mitt Romney does not impress voters as a man who has either a moral or a political clue. His position on abortion and related issues is confused and, as far as anyone can tell, self-serving. His ability to project a serious love and concern for our nation and its people ranges from weak to non-existent. He stumbles and backtracks constantly.

While there are many excellent moral reasons to vote against Barack Obama, there are few excellent moral reasons to vote for Mitt Romney. Moreover, there is always a strong reluctance on the part of those who depend on Federal largesse to admit the dangers of Federal power, a factor which minimizes support for Republican budget proposals.

But there is one huge issue that separates Obama and Romney, and it is the same issue which has been most forcefully identified by the country’s bishops—the HHS Mandate.

Obama is the architect of a law which forces Catholic organizations and individuals to financially support contraception, sterilization and abortion despite the Church’s teaching that it is deeply sinful to do so. In a similar way, Obama is the architect of policies which exclude Catholic organizations from traditional roles in social services because they will not do things like provide abortion referrals, recommend contraception, or facilitate adoptions for same-sex couples. But Romney has pledged to eliminate the HHS mandate immediately upon election, and has shown no propensity to continue Obama’s ideological exclusion of Catholic participation in public life.

Now, the American bishops have clearly identified the HHS mandate as a gross abrogation of religious liberty, and they have made it clear this violation is a key Catholic concern in the current campaign, the kind of concern that would prompt anybody with profound Catholic sympathies to vote against the Democrats. And yet only 51 percent of regular Catholic churchgoers state that they are willing to do so. This failure of churchgoing Catholics to defend their own religious freedom and the rights of the Church is the most significant revelation in the Pew poll.

There are, of course, several critical factors which work against the bishops here. First, with respect to doctrinal orthodoxy and Catholic identity, episcopal leadership has been notoriously weak and even directly counter-productive over the past fifty years. The American bishops have presided over a national, diocesan and parish infrastructure riddled with Modernism. They have been largely idle in the face of an abject secularization of Catholic colleges and universities. They have not worked to counter the loss of ecclesial fidelity in the nation’s religious communities. And they have done almost nothing to combat the universal acceptance of contraception which lies at the heart of the culture of death—and which makes the HHS Mandate seem innocuous.

Second, as Phil Lawler has pointed out several times (see, for example, The noise-to-signal ratio at the USCCB), while the bishops have spoken out strongly on religious liberty, they have spoken out again and again on so many other purely prudential topics that their concerns about religious liberty have been far too easily ignored.

Third, even the Fortnight for Freedom campaign was not implemented evenly across the country. There is still sufficient squishiness within the ranks for recalcitrant bishops and pastors to have ignored it, or for its message to go by without reinforcement.

For all these reasons, the American bishops have a long way to go before they will be able, over time, to effectively form the consciences of American Catholics. We are at the beginning of a long, slow and painful episcopal renewal in this country, not near the end.

The episcopal renewal will take even longer to bring renewal across the board, in all the structures and sub-institutions which shape American Catholic life, and in the laity themselves. Therefore, we can only wonder how much further religious liberty will suffer in American politics while the renewal develops—and whether increasing persecution will strengthen or weaken the Church overall.

The latest Pew survey is a reminder of this one essential fact: We are not at the end of a process here. We are at the beginning.

This article was originally published on CatholicCulture.org and is republished with permission.

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The noise-to-signal ratio at the USCCB

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By Phil Lawler (bio – articles – send a comment) | March 07, 2012 10:19 AM

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During the past several weeks the US bishops have been engaged in a critical political battle over the HHS contraceptive mandate, and the USCCB has issued a series of strong statements on that subject. Good.

During those same weeks, however, the USCCB has also issued statements on tax cuts and unemployment benefits, the consumer bill of rights, US policy in the Middle East, nuclear weapons, and now agricultural policy. Here I am including only statements released by the episcopal conference. Individual bishops have added their own opinions on public-policy matters ranging from immigration to climate change.

It is not obvious why the bishops feel obliged to speak on all those subjects. Is there a clear “Catholic” position on agricultural policy? No. Are American Catholics united in their views on agricultural policy? No. Do bishops have any special teaching authority regarding agricultural policy? Again, no.

But because the USCCB keeps cranking out policy recommendations, politicians can tune in and tune out, listening to the bishops whenever it suits their own partisan interests. A legislator can tell his bishop: “I might have disappointed you on the contraception mandate, but remember, I was with you on unemployment benefits and on the consumer’s bill of rights. So I was with you more often than I was against you.”

The bishops’ Faithful Citizenship guidelines compound the problem by encouraging both politicians and voters to consider a broad range of issues—some absolutely critical, others relatively minor; some clear moral imperatives, others questions of prudential judgment. Someone who reads the bishops’ statements carefully, honestly looking for guidance, will recognize that some questions take precedence. But someone who has already made up his mind, and combs through Faithful Citizenship looking for ways to justify his decisions, can easily pluck out quotations to cite in defense of his choices.

By speaking so often, on such a wide variety of public issues, the American bishops are watering down their own teaching authority. If they issued public statements less frequently, and confined themselves to important issues on which they could speak with clarity and authority, they would have far more impact. Toward that end, I have two suggestions:

1. On important moral questions, when the teaching of the Catholic Church is clear, a statement prepared by the USCCB should be stamped with a message that reads:
   

   On this issue, Catholic bishops speak with authority, and the faithful are bound in conscience to follow the guidance that follows.

2. If a statement prepared by the USCCB staff does not qualify for that authoritative stamp, it should not be released.

Update: It seems that I wrote too quickly. As soon as I pointed out that the USCCB issues opinions on too many debatable political issues, a new USCCB statement appeared to give us the bishops’ perspectives on the federal budget, taxation, deficits, welfare, defense spending, housing assistance, foreign aid, job training, tax credits, Pell grants, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Oh, yes, and school choice, which is an issue on which the Church has a clear and distinctive teaching. But most lawmakers probably won’t even notice the bishops’ comments on the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, because they’ll be too busy plowing through the rest of the rhetoric. So another opportunity to make a precise point, on an issue the USCCB could possibly affect, was sacrificed for the sake of a prolix catch-all approach.

Q.E.D.