It is one of the GOP’s tried and untrue slanders, deployed every time a Republican President nominates an anti-abortion Catholic to the federal judiciary. The GOP and its amen corner claim Democrats are waging a “war on Catholics” and requiring a “religious test” for office. This week’s confirmation theater for Judge Amy Coney Barrett is no exception.
Of course, the bogus claim of Democratic anti-Catholic bigotry is laughably false. After all, there are not just more Catholic Democrats than Catholic Republicans in Congress; the party’s presidential nominee (Joe Biden), the Speaker of the House (Nancy Pelosi) and one of its most recent addition to the Supreme Court (Sonia Sotomayor) are all members of the faith. In addition, the Obama-Biden ticket won the Catholic vote in both 2008 and 2012. Oh, and one other thing. Polls consistently show that a majority of America’s 70 million Catholics are in fact pro-choice.
As the Catholic News Agency reported in February:
According to a RealClear Opinion Research poll sponsored by EWTN and published on Monday, 47% of Catholics in the U.S. believe abortion is “intrinsically evil,” while a 53% hold otherwise.
A majority -- 51%-- say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, with 31% saying it should be legal except for late-term cases and 20% saying it should always be legal.
Those findings from the Real Clear/EWTN poll echo the results of a Pew Research Center survey in 2019. Overall, 61 percent of Americans responded that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. At 56%, Catholics were little different than the country as a whole (see chart at top). White evangelicals were alone in their consistent opposition to women’s reproductive rights:
About three-quarters of white evangelical Protestants (77%) think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases.
By contrast, 83% of religiously unaffiliated Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, as do nearly two-thirds of black Protestants (64%), six-in-ten white mainline Protestants (60%) and a slim majority of Catholics (56%).
In its 2018 and 2019 polling, Gallup found similar results.
Overall, 29% of respondents said abortion should be legal in all circumstances. Another 14% support abortion rights in most cases, while a further 35% backed it in a few circumstances. Only 16% would ban the practice outright. Among Catholic Americans, the figures were 22%, 16% and 37%, with opposition in all cases totaling 22%.
To be sure, support for abortion among American drops at their frequency of church attendance increases. As was the case in Gallup’s 2009 survey, those who go to mass at least once a week are strongly opposed to abortion. Only 24% of regular churchgoers believed abortion was morally acceptable, compared to 52% of nonregular mass attendees.
Now, these facts did not deter former Notre Dame football coach and RNC 2020 speaker Lou Holtz from proclaiming his own religious test at the GOP’s convention in August:
“One of the important reasons he has my trust is because nobody is but a stronger advocate for the unborn than President Trump. The Biden-Harris ticket is the most radically pro-abortion campaign in history. They and other politicians are Catholics in name only and abandon innocent lives.” [Emphasis mine.]
For this act of fealty to Donald Trump, the President of the Unites States has announced he will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Coach Holtz. But the president of Notre Dame University, Father John Jenkins, offered only admonishment to the former leader of the Fighting Irish.
“While Coach Lou Holtz is a former coach at Notre Dame, his use of the University’s name at the Republican National Convention must not be taken to imply that the University endorses his views, any candidate or any political party.
Moreover, we Catholics should remind ourselves that while we may judge the objective moral quality of another’s actions, we must never question the sincerity of another’s faith, which is due to the mysterious working of grace in that person’s heart.” [Emphasis mine.]
Father Jenkins’ message is certainly an understandable one. He, after all, knows what the American media and Republican leaders apparently do not. Even though Jenkins was happy to support Trump’s selection of his former professor Amy Coney Barrett (the Father tested positive for COVID after her nomination event at the White House Rose Garden), he knows where his bread is buttered. Some 40 to 45 million American Catholics, well over half of the U.S. flock, support protecting women’s reproductive rights in all or most cases.