In the 2008 election, Barack Obama carried 54% of Catholic votes. Now his support is down 14 points among Roman Catholics, according to data cited by conservative writer David Gerson. The extent of the decline is surprising.
Much of it can be attributed to a relentless campaign, financed by the GOP and assisted by partisan prelates, to reduce Catholic support for President Obama.
Some of the decline could have been prevented by the Obama administration.
The unending campaign against Obama among Catholics is based on his statement that he would happily sign an extreme pro-abortion bill when it reached his desk. The bill could drive Catholic hospitals out of some forms of health care and punish Catholic health-care providers who refused to participate in abnortions. This support is used to back the claim he is the most pro-abortion president yet. Those who advance this argument do not add that the bill will never reach his desk.
Obama's Department of Health and Human Services lifted a Bush ruling that proctecte health care providers who refused to participate in health birth control and abortion services. Perhaps litigation would result in a decision that these people have the right in conscience to opt out of these activities. I would like to see some careful reasoning about these matters and a little more respect for conscience rights. My answer might be that a pharmacist who was the only one on duty in a municipality may have no choice but to dispense birth control meds, but one where several on duty might have more conscience rights.
This action on the part of the Obama administration showed too little interest in dialogue and the conscience rights of the providers.
Frankly, it alarmed me, a progressive CAtholic of sorts. I just sent a contribution to the DNC an hour ago, but I am a bit troubled. My guess is that what was at work here was the usual inclination within intellectual and academic circles to simply dismiss conscience claims of Roman Catholics and evangelicals as groundless. I would not ascribe this action to anti-Catholicism.
This is a pluralistic society, and the stem cell decision was proper.But, again, there was a brusqueness and insensitivity, that was bothersome. It would have been better to only open the use of fetal stem cells if it weas clear they were about to be discarded. A presidential commission could study whether other modifications were necessary.
This reminded my of the abortion debate twenty years ago. The Roman Catholic bishops insisted that all life began at conception but refused to provide any good evidence to back their position. Extremists on the other side were still certain that a fetus at 15 weeks was just a mass of protoplasm.
Back in the late 1970s and 1980s, many Roman CAtholics stopped supporting the Democratic party because they perceived that the Democrats did not respect them and their values. A bit of this is at work now. There was too little sensitivity and willingness to dialogue.
But the main reason Catholics are turning against Obama is that the campaign of the partisan Republican bishops --perhaps a minority of American bishops--and the GOP works so well. I would think the bishops would welcome many aspects of the Obama program as they are so consistent with Catholic social teaching. On abortion, nothing can be done anyhow, so they might need to recognize this. I see a parallel between the bishops now and the evangelicals in the 1920s. Both groups see themselves as losing influence in society and facing a future where there power will be less and less. The evangelicals in the 1920s struck back by attacking the teaching of evolution, demanding blue laws, and insisting on enforcement of prohibition. The bishops today are in even worse shape, they cannot recruit clergy, do not fill churches even during Holy Week, and are ignored by growing numbers of Catholics.
The bishop of South Bend spoke about Obama speaking at Notre Deme and said the only things obama had acted on were life matters. This reflect a very narrow vision and the adoption of something like a fundamentalist outlook. This is the broader mcontext for the folks praying that Notre Dame change its mind about Obama. Their horizon does not extend beyond narrow life or totem identity issues. The rest of the CAtholic corpus is not on their horizon. They are trying to stop inevitable cultural changes.
Something similar is at work at Arizona State University, located in a prototypical red state. The election of 2008 was for them an earthquake and the coming of a Black president very difficult to accept. They too
see themselves as bucking a cultural tide, but in their case it could well be that the tide will eventually recede.