It’s time to head back into the tmatt GetReligion folder of guilt. To make matters worse, this is an example of a GetReligion theme that we keep trumpeting, like a call to battle. The fact that it’s something we say all the time, however, is evidence that it’s a journalistic sin that we keep seeing all of the time.
As you may have noticed, the mainstream press has finally noticed that there are still traditional Catholics in the Democratic Party who are opposed to abortion, as is their church. There are also other Democrats — lots of them, actually — who support abortion rights, but do not believe that abortions should be funded with tax dollars.
So Catholics are suddenly getting lots of analog and digital ink, when it comes to the health-care wars. Which leads us to a story the other day (one of many containing similar material) in The Politico, where we read:
By teeing up a public battle over abortion in the health care bill now before the Senate, congressional Democrats could be risking more than just the fate of the legislation.
Hanging in the balance are millions of Catholic swing voters who moved decisively to the Democrats in 2008 and who could shift away just as readily in 2010. According to exit polls, President Barack Obama won the support of 53 percent of Catholic voters, a seven-point increase over the showing of the Democrats’ 2004 nominee, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), a Catholic. Among Latino Catholics, who are often more conservative than their white counterparts on social issues, Obama did even better, winning more than two-thirds of their support, a 14-point improvement over Kerry’s totals, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center.
Those gains will be at risk if a polarizing abortion fight takes place in the Senate.
“There could be political repercussions in the election. It could be harder for the Democrats to keep those Catholics voters they gained and they may put some of their members at risk,” said John Green, a religion and politics expert at the Bliss Institute at the University of Akron. Moreover, said Green, Catholics are a constituency that backs the reform effort itself. “To alienate them on abortion could be to alienate them on health care reform,” he said.
Now, no one on planet earth knows these numbers better than Green, a quote-machine who is worthy of all the telephone calls that he receives from reporters (me included). And the sage of Akron, I think, would be join me in noting that these kinds of discussions of “Catholic voters” are way too simplistic.
After all, before the last election, I heard him offer a great one-liner in a seminar on religion and politics here inside the Beltway. There are times, Green said, when he is tempted to believe that “all of American politics has boiled down to Catholics in the state of Ohio who go to Mass once a month instead of once a week.”
In other words, there are Catholic voters and then there are Catholic voters and religious practice has a lot to do with who is who and how they usually vote.
So, one more time, here is GetReligion’s typology on four of the niches that can be found inside that meaningless “Catholic voters” label. Please pay attention, because the future of American health care will, in large part, depend on this:
* Ex-Catholics. Solid for the Democrats. Cultural conservatives have no chance.
* Cultural Catholics who may go to church a few times a year. This group may provide some of those all-important “undecided swing voters depending on what’s happening with the economy, foreign policy, etc. This group leans to Democrats.
* Sunday-morning American Catholics. This voter is a regular in the pew and may even play some leadership role in the parish. These are the Catholic voters who are really up for grabs — the true swing voters.
* The “sweats the details” Catholic, the kind who regularly goes confession, is active in the full sacramental life of the parish and almost always backs the Vatican, when it comes to matters of faith and practice. This is a very small slice of the American Catholic pie.
So, who is this Politico story actually about? Who are the U.S. bishops hearing from? Which Catholic voters are leaning which way when it comes to health care?
In other words, religion remains a major part of this story. Saying the “Catholic voters” are involved tells us next to nothing.
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Comments (14) |
November 21, 2009, at 8:03 pm
Looking at the idea of a ‘Catholic vote’ seems like a throwback to the NewDeal. Aside from your ‘sweats the deatails Catholics’ it appears that most Catholics vote pretty much like their socio-economic peers. It also appears that abortion is not a make or break item for most, just one consideration among many.
November 21, 2009, at 8:30 pm
Anyone saying that you can’t be a member of a religion because of your political views is abusing religion for their own personal gain and ignoring God.
The protesters in the picture look like “Uncle Tom” Jesse Jackson.
November 21, 2009, at 8:58 pm
“Moral views,” and “public moral actions,” I think are the terms you want, rather than “political views.” Of course, using the accurate terms makes you position somewhat less convincing.
So let’s be clear. When Archbishop Joseph Rummel excommunicated three members of his flock in 1962 for publicly opposing his efforts to desegregate the Catholic schools, I think, like most Catholic do, that he was a hero. You’re saying he was abusing religion for his personal gain and ignoring God. Right?
November 21, 2009, at 9:02 pm
Oh, I hate to leave the Archbishop Rummel story without its happy conclusion. I believe all three of those excommunicated repented of their wicked “political views” and were reconciled with God and the Church. That happens to be one of the main points of ecclesiastical discipline. But I suppose that’s ignoring God and abusing religion for one’s personal gain, too.
November 21, 2009, at 9:15 pm
MITCH:
As others have noted, abortion is not — for the ancient churches — a political matter. It is a doctrinal matter.
Journalists, thus, need to know that THAT ABORTION IS BOTH doctrinal and political.
However, the Catholic church is in charge of deciding its own doctrines. Thus, conflicts between the Church and those who want to claim sacramental membership in that Church are issues of doctrine.
November 21, 2009, at 9:35 pm
Since the Bible is explicit in condemning murder by abortion; human beings start at conception (Judges 13:5), their murder in the womb is just that (Hosea 9:13-14), and Jesus affirmed the Old Testament in Luke 11:51 and Mat 5:17-18. Catholics should be against abortion not because of fear from their church, but because God is against murder.
November 22, 2009, at 2:31 pm
Starting to spike away.
Back to the coverage issues, folks. What you think of the Catholic Church is basically irrelevant to the issue that the press should not treat conflicts between church members and bishops as SIMPLY political stories.
November 23, 2009, at 10:32 am
The question may not be precisely political, but it certainly has to do with the public / private boundary. the meaning of being a public Catholic, one who acknowledges membership publicly, seems to slightly different from that of one who is sacramentally or confessionally Catholic. The Church’s stance may be motivated by doctrine or political pique — in the case of Rhode Island, I vote the latter — as a public action however, it is inescapably political. The Bishop does not call the Representative on the carpet in public for religious purposes, but to enforce a political viewpoint. The action is fundamentally political in nature, affecting others (i.e. non-Catholics) in society. It seems an Occam’s Razor sort of issue: report what directly affects all, and not a specialized subset.
November 23, 2009, at 11:17 am
HARRIS:
The Catholic doctrines have political impact. Yes. They did with racial segregation, too. And other issues — like health care.
The problem is Kennedy’s public attacks on the DOCTRINE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH linked to abortion, in his words and actions.
The church’s stance? Repent or join another church. That’s a doctrinal matter.
November 23, 2009, at 11:56 am
One source of misunderstanding may be the distinction presented here between a “public Catholic” and “one who is sacramentally or confessionally Catholic” is not one based in Catholic doctrine, at least not in the sense that being elected to public office justifies a faithful Catholic living a life of public sin, for instance by consistently working to enact laws the teaches to be fundamentally unjust.
The secularist notion of “private religion” - some kind of hobby or tradition one carries around for sentimental value, carefully hidden while living in the “real world” - may be popular among many people, but it is again not grounded in Catholic doctrine, which teaches the opposite. Perhaps the journalistic coverage would be less inclined to reduce everything to politics if this different were more clearly recognized.
First, let’s get the timeline straight. The bishop privately asked the politician to stop receiving Communion. Two years later, the politician lashed out at bishops advocating that health care reform not fund abortion. The bishop responded publicly. And after a series of back-and-forth, the politician made public the bishop’s request that he not present himself for Communion.
The religious purpose here involves the avoidance of scandal, in the moral theology sense of the term “scandal,” which has been discussed in another thread here.
November 23, 2009, at 11:57 am
Harris,
You’re distinction is only valid if one accepts in advance the classically Liberal notions a) that ‘the political’ is itself religiously neutral, b)that ‘the political’ is more basic and more comprehensive than ‘the religious’, i.e., that the claims of citizenship are more basic than those of faith (which implies, in accordance with (a) that the claims of citizentship are not themselves religious) and c) that religion is therefore merely a private matter.
Deny that, which I do because it combines several kinds of nonsense, and your boundary between a public realm of pure politics and a private realm of faith disappears.
Which is entirely appropriate, since it has never really existed.
November 23, 2009, at 6:16 pm
I’m wondering if this blurriness is being exacerbated by the ubiquitous interviews of Fr. Reese, whose background is research and writing on church activities with a political science lens. In another post here on Get Religion - Yes, we cannon! -a journalist in the combox says that Fr Reese is orthodox doctrinally, but it seems to me that he gets controversial in discussing the tactics of churchmen. These kind of quotes lend credence to readers viewing the RI bishop’s actions as politically motivated, and bishops as politicians. All the more reason that other experts should also be represented in these stories.
Here’s what Anne Rogers had to say about Fr. Thomas Reese:
November 23, 2009, at 10:54 pm
… As to the public/sacramental difference: this was not a public/private split as Michael would have it, but simply an observation. There are those who participate publicly in the life of the Church who nonetheless do not especially share the full sacramental understandings. This is TMatt’s Sunday Catholic category. Their sense of belonging, their participation remains personally authentic even if regarded as deficient by the Church. Observationally, they are seen (sociologically) as legitimate members of the church.
This tension between the sociological visible and the spiritual or theological exposes the Church to a certain public risk. How then does sanction some actions, some discipline and not others? I would suggest that it is the perceived arbitrariness of the action — its singularity — that gives credence to the viewpoint that the difference is not theological, but political.
Thus as a matter of observational data, these Sunday participants are seen (sociologically) as legitimate members of the church.
November 24, 2009, at 11:03 am
Harris:
The issue is scandal and misleading the Catholic laity about what the church teaches. The average pew warmer doesn’t have the influence of a political figure and is not likely to lead many people astray by his/her actions or statements.
Consider the ethical rules for judges - they must not participate in activities or make statements that call the legal system into disrepute. Judges are influential. They must avoid even the appearance of wrong-doing. Lawyers can be disbarred for crimes involving moral turpitude and are not supposed to badmouth judges to the press.
These ethical standards for judges and lawyers have a similar basis as the Catholic view of “scandal”. The family member of a convicted perpetrator complaining on TV about the unfairness of the legal system does not have the same impact on public opinion as it would coming from a prosecutor or judge.
Another difference: the average pew sitter’s views on abortion are not likely to affect abortions other than the persons immediately connected to that person. Kennedy is in the position of actually facilitating millions of abortions; it’s not just his views on abortion. Theologically/ethically (as it relates to culpabililty), this is a huge difference.