Frank Schaeffer on Why White Evangelicals Love Trump: "The Context Is American Racism" — Implications for White Catholic "Pro-Life" Voters

This is the kind of testimony that white Catholics who claim to be motivated solely by opposition to abortion as they cast their votes do not want to hear. I wonder why?

Religion and Poltics in News: From Passion of Southern Christians to Walk-Out in Italian Catholic Parish

Because of the intersection of Jewish Passover and Christian Holy Week, the news is chock-full of religion stories and religious commentary today in the nation with the soul of a church — which made Donald Trump president. Here's are some of my own picks from articles/commentary I've read this morning, whose only common thread is that they're about matters of religion (and, usually, politics):

Patricia Miller on Why White Catholics of the John Paul II Church May Be Rejecting Donald Trump: "Seems Awfully Quiet in the Catholic Trenches This Year"

In a just-published essay at Religion Dispatches, Patricia Miller takes a sharp look at the discernible trend of white Catholics towards Hillary Clinton and away from Donald Trump. I discussed this trend several weeks ago, calling it slight. Patti Miller offers persuasive evidence for it as more than a slight trend, and notes, in particular, the movement of white church-going Catholics of the John Paul II church in the direction of the Democratic candidate and away from the Republican one — a noteworthy trend, when that demographic has been trending "with alacrity" to the GOP since 2000, as she states.

Father Thomas Reese on How Catholic Vote May Well Decide 2016 Elections: This Analysis Leads to the Question, What's Wrong with White Catholics?

Father Thomas Reese at National Catholic Reporter this morning on how the 2016 elections, which present a stark choice between two very different presidential candidates and two very different visions of American democracy, may well hinge on what Catholic voters choose to do:

Robert P. Jones and The End of White Christian America: Want to Understand Trump's Rise to Power? Pay Attention to White Christian Strategy

In her recent commentary on Robert P. Jones' book The End of White Christian America (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2016) at National Catholic Reporter, Maureen Fiedler provides a very good reason for why we might want to familiarize ourselves with Jones' book and its argument (based on extensive sound empirical research) that White Christian America* is now waning: Fielder reports that she has recently interviewed Jones for Interfaith Voices, and,

Big News: Obama and Democrats Enjoying Wide Lead Among Catholics

The big news now vis-a-vis Catholics and politics in the U.S.: as Daniel Burke reports at Religion News Service, a Pew Research Center poll conducted on 16 September shows Obama leading Romney among American Catholics by 54-39 percent.  As Burke notes, this widening lead is despite the U.S. bishops' "fortnight for freedom" shock-and-awe events this summer, and despite Romney's having selected Catholic Paul Ryan as his running mate.

Catholics Ignoring Bishops, Trending Democratic As U.S. Elections Near: Polling Data, My Reflections

Snatching a free moment later in the day to catch up on news-reading--and to post the following:

Catholic Vote.org Still Pushing False Meme That HHS Guidelines Fund Abortions

Fred Clarkson couldn't be more right in his analysis of the dog whistle the religious right uses to keep "values" voters doing the bidding of the political right.  As I noted earlier today, he points out that the religious right pushes the meme of life, marriage, and religious freedom, sometimes varying the terms used in the formula, but always enunciating them in that order.

HHS Controversy and Catholic Vote: A Selection of Recent Articles

Commentary from various perspectives about the bishops' war on Obama over the HHS guidelines:

Charlotte Allen finds it "refreshing" that "Catholics" are all now in rare agreement about how the Obama administration is trampling on the religious freedom of "Catholics"--since it's about religious freedom and not contraception, you understand.  Allen finds it especially "refreshing" to see "liberal Catholics - people who don't even agree with the church's position on contraception" helping the bishops lie and dissimulate manufacture totally false claims that the Obama administration is at war with Catholics in an effort to drive swing-state Catholic voters to the polls to vote Republican.

Alex Pareene and Sarah Jaffe on Why Republicans (and U.S. Catholic Bishops) Reignited Culture Wars

Alex Pareene at Salon this morning, on the Santorum bump as the political and religious right try to reignite the never-ending culture wars over women's and gay rights in the 2012 election cycle: 

(Would it be conspiratorial to note that these divisive cultural issues began attracting a great deal of right-wing attention very soon after the release of a positive jobs report? A little bit, probably.) (Also: Remember when the Tea Party meant the GOP was going all libertarian and abandoning social issues? Ha, ha.)

Sara Seltzer on How Popular Reaction Drove Backlash against Komen Decision: Implications for Catholic Discussion

As Sarah Seltzer notes at Alternet today, part of what has the political and religious right so exercised about the reversal of Komen's decision to defund Planned Parenthood is this: it's very clear that the pushback against Komen's decision to use the health care of poor women as a bargaining chip in partisan political "pro-life" culture war battles came from the American public.  Not the media, as some right-wingers are now trying to insist.

Post Post-Mortem: Obama's Notre Dame Appearance

As I said earlier today, I realize we play right into the hands of those who are manufacturing the bogus Catholics-vs.-Obama meme, in continuing to discuss the president's appearance at Notre Dame yesterday. And I also said earlier today that I had wrapped up my commentary.

But the outpouring of published statements about what took place at Notre Dame yesterday--the vast majority of them from the right--as this day goes on demands attention. Go to Google news and look at the list of articles about Obama and Notre Dame, and you'll see what I mean.

I have several observations about this outpouring of right-wing vitriol (and outright lies) about yesterday's event:

• For any of us who watched coverage of the president's commencement address yesterday, and above all, how he was received by an iconic Catholic audience, it will be very difficult for this coverage to falsify our memory of what we saw and heard.
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• A lot of folks will not have watched, however, and this well-orchestrated spin campaign that continues to try to drive a wedge between Obama and Catholic voters will lead some citizens to think that Obama continues to be at odds with "the" Catholic positions on issues and with "the" Catholic voter.
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• These right-wing commentators who are pouring out dreck in the aftermath of Notre Dame are counting on their lies to taint and misshape the perception of many people who did not watch the commencement events, and who are accustomed to reading that "the" Catholic position conforms to the Republican agenda.
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• As I observed yesterday, the mainstream media continues to do its pimping job for the right, in its approach to the story of Catholic voters and Obama. Which suggests to me that there's a tremendous fear of letting the real story--namely, that a majority of Catholic voters support the president and do not buy the positions of the fringe right--out of the bag.
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• In that regard, it's grimly funny to read one piece after another in mainstream secular media outlets slamming the new president and going to bat for "the" Catholic position on abortion and other issues, when those writing these pieces have no interest at all in Catholic thought or Catholic values, except insofar as they can twist that thought and those values to bolster economic and political positions at odds with traditional Catholic moral teaching.
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• A case in point: Peter Roff of the "non-partisan" Let Freedom Ring institute (as his U.S. News and World Report bio proclaims) expressing shock and alarm at the president's "alarming violation of church-state separation." And doing so in that, well, that bastion of Catholic values and defender of embattled Catholic orthodoxy, U.S. News and World Report! Could anything be more richly ironic than this attempt of a writer for a secular journal to use said secular journal to lecture Catholics on what being truly Catholic entails, while decrying the president's attempt to address intra-Catholic issues as a breach of church-state separation?
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• And so why the fervent interest of one secular journal and newspaper after another in lecturing Catholics about what it really means to be Catholic, following Obama's speech? Because these political commentators and the economic elites they serve fear tremendously the resurgence of a Catholic voice in the public sphere, which is authentically Catholic and representative of the real views of a majority of American Catholics, regarding social and economic issues.
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• They have benefited for decades now from the captivity of "the" Catholic voice to the Republican party, and they are going to fight tooth and nail to keep that captivity going.
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• And we who recognize the unholy game that is being played here would be foolish to be naive about the economic and social power these folks have, about their ability to disseminate lies through the mainstream media, and about their willingness to play even dirtier than we have begun to imagine, in their attempt to combat the emergence of a new coalition of progressive people of faith at this point in our nation's history.

Spinning the Pew Data: Attempt of the Right to Depict American Catholicism as Robust

“Many Americans Raised Catholic, Still Are.” That’s the announcement blaring today from the website of one of my local news outlets (here). It’s followed by this analysis, citing the latest Pew Forum “Faith in Flux” study:

A majority of people who are raised Catholic keep the faith through adulthood.

The latest Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows that 68-percent of Americans who were brought up Catholic still practice the religion, which is one of the highest retention rates among Christian denominations.

Things are going great guns for Catholicism in the U.S., no? That’s surely what one would conclude, having read the preceding headline and the explanation following it.

But head to the “Faith in Flux” study itself at the Pew Forum website (here), and one reads the following:

While the ranks of the unaffiliated have grown the most due to changes in religious affiliation, the Catholic Church has lost the most members in the same process; this is the case even though Catholicism's retention rate of childhood members (68%) is far greater than the retention rate of the unaffiliated and is comparable with or better than the retention rates of other religious groups. Those who have left Catholicism outnumber those who have joined the Catholic Church by nearly a four-to-one margin. Overall, one-in-ten American adults (10.1%) have left the Catholic Church after having been raised Catholic, while only 2.6% of adults have become Catholic after having been raised something other than Catholic.

That statement is from the Pew Forum’s executive summary of the Faith in Flux study, in a section of the executive summary called “Leaving Catholicism.”

“[T]he Catholic Church has lost the most members in the same process; this is the case even though Catholicism's retention rate of childhood members (68%) is far greater than the retention rate of the unaffiliated and is comparable with or better than the retention rates of other religious groups”: 68% of those raised Catholics are presently identifying as Catholics.

But one in ten American adults (10.1%) is a former Catholic, and those who have left the Catholic church outnumber those who have joined by a nearly four-to-one margin.

Hardly a rosy picture at all, is it? Certainly not the picture my local news outlet expects you to have in your mind as you read its story.

The disparity between what some media folks would like to make of the Pew data, and what Pew itself is making of those data, is illustrative: it is a significant reminder of what happens when groups interested more in spinning than in reporting lay hold of data such as the data captured by the Pew "Faith in Flux" study.

This spin process is one we’re going to be seeing in rampant mode in the next weeks, I suspect. Many political and economic groups have a strong vested interest in leading the public to believe that Catholicism in the U.S. is alive and well, strong and united, a bastion of the political and religious right.

That is simply not the case. A majority of American Catholics voted for Mr. Obama and continue to support him. As a body, American Catholics lean further left on most moral, political, and economic issues than the majority of Americans—far more to the left than do evangelical Protestants (here). And the U.S. Catholic church is deeply divided and demoralized due to the efforts of right-wing demagogues to force it to the right.

Granted, for some decades now, with spinmeisters like Richard John Neuhaus, Deal Hudson, and Newt Gingrich hard at work to suggest that American Catholics are largely neoconservative, the media have had a free pass at using the term “Catholic” as a cipher for neocon. And quite a few American bishops have done all they can to cement that identification.

The facts say otherwise, however. And they also say that the more the leaders of the American Catholic church try to push it to the right, the more the American Catholic church bleeds members.

One in ten American adults as former Catholics is not a pretty picture. It’s a shocking one, one that points to glaring pastoral malfeasance on the part of the leaders of the American Catholic church. And no amount of fancy spinning is going to diminish the reality of that picture and the data underlying it.

Americablog: Republicans Dictating Who Is and Isn't a Real Catholic

And on the theme about which I've been blogging the past two days--the attempt of the right (and its enablers of the center) to limit the conversation about what constitutes Catholic identity in the public square--John Aravosis's Americablog has an interesting posting today.

It's entitled "Republicans Now Decide Who Is a Real Catholic" (here). The posting links to a Hill.com article discussing a recent statement of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (here) attacking Catholics United for the Common Good as inadequately Catholic.

Yep. That's the point I've been making. What's at stake in these right-driven, centrist-enabled discussions of who is or isn't a real Catholic and whether Obama is alienating real Catholics is an attempt of the right to put American Catholic identity back in the neoconservative box it's been confined in for several decades.

And many of the bishops are working fast and furious along with the political and religious right to effect that confinement. As this happens, it's particularly distressing to see centrist Catholic commentators doing their same old shilling song and dance for the right, playing along with this game of marginalizing the very traditional, powerful justice-oriented voice of religious traditions.

And this game will succeed unless we who continue to struggle to release the Catholic voice from its idolatrous confinement by the religious and political right push back against the push-back. Things are about to get really rocky out there, with a very strong push by right-wing interest groups to reassert their control over the political and religious conversation. We can look for every ugly trick in their considerable grab-bag of tricks to be on display in the weeks to come, from torrents of lies to manipulation of the media to outright bullying and threats of violence.

We need to be prepared, and we need to push back, those of us who want democracy to flourish again in our nation. This is not a time for political naivete and wishy-washy hand-wringing about the possibility that the progressive mandate of the new president may polarize a political and religious right that will be polarized by anything the new administration does.

Robert Parry on the Collusion of Centrist Commentariats with the Right: The Rhetoric of Obama as Polarizer

I blogged yesterday (here and here) about the continuing collusion of centrist American Catholic political commentators with the political and religious right. I noted, in particular, the presently-unfolding attempt of the right, abetted by the center, to spin a discourse about the new president as obtuse to Catholic voters and Catholic concerns. In recent days, a powerful—and carefully planned and massaged—rhetoric about Obama's purported polarization of Catholic voters has begun to plant itself all through the mainstream media.

This rhetoric completely ignores the continued support for President Obama among a majority of American Catholics. It ignores the complexity of Catholic positions on many social and moral issues, including the two identify-defining issues of abortion and same-sex marriage around which a right-wing politics of Catholic identity seeks to construct itself—issues regarding which the Catholic right (aided by the center) refuses to permit any substantive discussion.

As my postings yesterday suggest, this rhetoric is an attempt to consolidate a definition of what it means to be Catholic in the public sphere today which kowtows to the narrowest, most ill-informed, and most politicized positions of some bishops today. The warning that Mr. Obama is polarizing Catholics, and the confinement of “the” Catholic perspective to a rigidly ideological definition of what it means to be Catholic in the public sphere, not only serves the political interests of the right: it also shields the church itself from a necessary and healthy conversation about Catholic identity and Catholic faith at this point in history.

In playing this game, centrists are doing what they have willingly done for some time now: serving the right. For those interested in the broader political context of yesterday’s analysis, I recommend an essay by Robert Parry at Alternet today, on the collusion between the right and the mainstream media in crafting rhetoric of Obama as a polarizer (here). Some choice passages:

By and large, the Washington press corps continues to function within a paradigm set in the 1980s, mostly bending to the American Right, especially to its perceived power to destroy mainstream journalistic careers and to grease the way toward lucrative jobs for those who play ball.

The parameters set by this intimidated (or bought-off) news media, in turn, influence how far Washington politicians feel they can go on issues, like health-care reform or environmental initiatives, or how risky they believe it might be to pull back from George W. Bush’s "war on terror" policies.

And:

The commentariat class also has continued to frame the Republican hatred of Obama as Obama’s fault, describing his "failure" to achieve a more bipartisan Washington or -- in its latest formulation -- calling Obama "the most polarizing President ever."

It might seem counterintuitive to call a President with approval ratings in the 60 percentiles "polarizing" -- when that term was not applied to George W. Bush with his numbers half that of Obama’s. But this notion has arisen because Republicans have turned harshly against Obama, while Democrats and Independents have remained supportive.

And finally:

Already a new conventional wisdom is taking shape, that "polarizing" Obama would be wrong to use the "reconciliation" process to enact health-care and environmental programs by majority vote, that he should instead water them down and seek enough Republican votes to overcome GOP filibusters in the Senate, which require 60 votes to stop.

Make no mistake about it: the rhetoric of Obama as a polarizer, with its Catholic corollaries about the new president as a polarizer of Catholic voters, timed as it is to spin out in the same week as the tea-bag protests, is all about stopping necessary conversations regarding significant social issues. It is an attempt to undercut the new president’s mandate for progressive change that a majority of the citizens of the nation—including a majority of Catholics—clearly want.

In the Catholic context, this rhetoric is an attempt to confine the conversation about what it means to be Catholic in the public square today to the rhetoric of the right, and to the narrowest pronouncements of bishops in the pocket of the political and religious right. If American Catholics permit this thwarting of a conversation that many Catholics clearly want, and if they allow the definition of what it means to be Catholic in American culture today to be confined by right-wing interest groups and their centrist collaborators, the Catholic church in the U.S. will succeed in doing further damage to itself at a point at which it is hard to imagine a church that seeks viability sustaining more self-inflicted wounds.

And Furthermore: Obama, Catholic Voters, and Michael Sean Winters

And as the day goes on, I realize there’s more to say about Michael Sean Winters and his argument that Mr. Obama is failing to be a hit with “Catholics” (here).

The end-run Mr. Winters wants to make around the complex question of who these Catholics are—who American Catholics in general are—is an end-run that seeks to circumvent the complex, painful discussion of what Catholics really believe, rather than what Catholics are being told to believe. In much that he writes on this topic, Michael Sean Winters implicitly privileges the voice of the American Catholic bishops, and equates being a real Catholic, a true Catholic, with fidelity to that voice in its most simplistic forms.

This is harmful to American Catholicism, this narrow identity-politics way of handling what it means to be Catholic in the U.S. today. The voice of the bishops, the voice of the pope, the voice of the Vatican, is hardly the Catholic voice.

Important as those institutional voices are, their definition of Catholicism counts for very little, unless what these institutional voices say elicits a response from those addressed by the hierarchy. Catholicism is a dialogue: faith is a process of not only hearing and receiving what is taught, but of internalizing and acting on what is taught. Without that internalization, that active reception, and activity based on it, faith is not faith at all: it is merely a machine-like repetition of “truths” handed down from on high at which robots and parrots do far better than do human beings.

In much that he writes about “the” Catholic voice and “the” Catholic vote, and what “Catholics” believe and think, Michael Sean Winters takes for granted that the defining issues for all Catholics are and should be abortion, stem-cell research, and same-sex marriage. And he takes for granted that what the bishops have to say about these issues—at their narrowest, at their most peremptory and commanding—is the final word about these issues, the rallying cry for faithful Catholics in the public square.

This circumvents a whole world of necessary, healthy discourse about these and other issues, that goes (and needs to go) far beyond what the bishops have to say about them. The bishops have, on the whole, long ago used up their moral capital in the public square precisely because they refuse to have the conversations about these and other issues that are necessary to sustain both vibrant, engaged, mature faith among their flock, and strong public buy-in (both by Catholics and the culture at large) for “the” Catholic position on these issues.

Instead of fostering dialogue, the bishops have chosen to issue orders. Instead of recognizing that there is a legitimate divergence of opinion on many matters among the faithful, the bishops have chosen to weed the flock of all questioners, dissenters—even thinkers—and equate being Catholic with walking lockstep behind them at their point of least moral persuasiveness, where they teach by belligerence and slogan-slinging, rather than by dialogue, thought, persuasion, and, above all, example.

Why do I find Michael Sean Winters’ reflections on what American Catholics think and believe not merely unconvincing but misleading and dangerous? Because they implicitly seek to truncate important dialogues about Catholic identity and Catholic belief in American life today, and in doing so, implicitly lend credence to the definition of Catholic identity offered by some of the least admirable and least morally compelling episcopal leaders in the American church at present.

Obama and Catholic Voters: No Base Hit for Michael Sean Winters

At the America blogsite the past two days, Michael Sean Winters is fretting about Mr. Obama’s obtuseness (in Winters’ view) to Catholic concerns (here and here). In a posting on President Obama’s upcoming appearance at Notre Dame (the second of the two links I’ve just provided), Winters states,

What will the President say? Will he give a speech about foreign policy and ignore the controversy? Or, will he engage the controversy and speak about how he sees the role of religion in the public square? If he chooses the former, he has to make news so that the protests do not win the headlines. If he chooses the latter, he has to hit a home run. Given the poor roll-out of the decisions on embryonic stem cell research and the revocation of the Bush administration’s last minute conscience clause, it is not clear this administration knows how to get a base hit with Catholics let alone swing for the bleachers.

[I]t is not clear this administration knows how to get a base hit with Catholics let alone swing for the bleachers. Really? With 59% of American Catholics reporting satisfaction with the new president’s performance (here), a figure even higher than the 54% of American Catholics who voted for Obama?

What is Mr. Winters talking about? What, for that matter, are all those right-wing commentators and their centrist allies who have recently been madly spinning poll numbers to try to suggest a trend, any trend at all, of Catholics away from Obama talking about?

Clearly Winters is not talking about Catholics, when he states that the Obama administration doesn’t know how to get a base hit with Catholics. He’s talking only about some Catholics, those Catholics (including him) whose voice he appears to believe is the unitary, sole, only correct voice for American Catholics. In using the term “Catholic” in that fallacious (and ultimately deceitful) way in this observation about the new president and Catholic citizens, Michael Sean Winters is tacitly—and strongly—disenfranchising a majority of American Catholic voters.

As if we aren’t Catholic. As if we aren’t good enough to be counted among real Catholics. As if we share his monomaniacal focus on abortion (and same-sex marriage) as defining issues for the Catholic vote.

Something’s not right here. And it needs to be challenged. It needs to be challenged not only because this centrist discourse persistently legitimates the discourse of the far right and allows that discourse to represent itself as real Catholic or real American discourse.

It also needs to be challenged because the idea of church promoted by Winters’ observation is simply untrue to the Catholic vision of church: it’s an anti-catholic vision of church, this insider-outsider church of real, true believers and everyone else. It's a donatist church of the pure and holy, and then rest of us, the unwashed masses whose voices don’t count, whose absence from the tally of church members compiled by the righteous right doesn’t even matter to them as they worship a God who loves and creates everyone.

True Catholicism cares about those absent unwashed brothers and sisters. It does not write them off with a shoulder shrug. It refuses to play political power games with their lives, among the big boys (of both genders) who cut and dice the numbers to assure that they and their ilk will always remain on top.

True Catholicism thinks first and foremost about those at the bottom, those whose lives (and selves) are being cut and diced as the figures are compiled by the big boys (of both sexes). For many of us, imperfect as Mr. Obama is, and imperfect as the theological imagination from which his political choices proceeds might be, Barack Obama is more authentically Catholic than, say, George W. Bush, or Dick Cheney, or Deal Hudson, or Erik Prince, or Maggie Gallagher, or Newt Gingrich.

He is Catholic in a sense we can understand precisely because he appears to think first and foremost about those little folks whose lives are cut and diced by the big boys (of both genders) at the top, in games of political allocation that are all about giving voice only to an elite few, allowing seats at the table for only the privileged, and maintaining the power and privilege of those already at the table.

Lately, I’ve wondered a lot about whether there’s any point continuing this blog. I’m not sure I’m doing anything that’s particularly new or helpful with the blog—and I feel quite sure that what I do is not done better than other bloggers do it.

For those seeking gay and Catholic perspectives, and from a standpoint that manages to have a quasi-ecclesial stamp of approval even as it pushes the limits (a stamp of approval I will certainly never receive), Wild Reed does a far better job than I do of getting information out. For up-to-date theological analysis with an international focus, Joseph O’Leary is splendid. And no one is better at finding fascinating obscure documents that just happen to illuminate contemporary Catholic conversation, than Colleen Kochivar-Baker’s Enlightened Catholicism blog.

News? There are all kinds of wonderful websites around, including ones with a progressive focus and an interest in the intersection of religion and politics. I can’t compete with them.

What I can do, I suppose—and what reading Michael Sean Winters and other bloggers of the American Catholic center-right convinces me I have to keep trying to do—is to offer a voice for other perspectives and other possibilities in churches and in a culture that try to obliterate any but the officially approved voice. Someone needs to keep describing, as well as possible in season and out of season, the real lives of real human beings who are radically affected by the official voices of the land and of the church.

Because those official voices always obliterate. And in doing so, they misrepresent and even—it has to be said—lie. They lie by suggesting that the official voices comprise all reality and all truth, even when the reality and truth of lives obliterated by those voices speak clearly and loudly in a way that subverts the unitary witness of the official voice.

There are other Catholics out here in the land, Mr. Winters. And for many of us, your statement that Mr. Obama does not know how to get a base hit with Catholics is not only baffling, but it’s insulting. Because it simply writes us out of the picture, of your official picture of what it means to be Catholic, of the official picture written daily by you and other Catholics of the center, whose imaginations seem limited to power elites and power players in a way that’s just not, well, as Catholic as it ought to be.

Thugs Are Thugs Are Thugs: Joan Walsh and Tim Rutten on Cardinal Newman Society

Meanwhile, the Cardinal Newman Society (here) remains the gift that keeps on giving—for bloggers like me, at least; for those of us interested in the interface between religion and politics in the U.S., who think it’s important to track the efforts of right-wing pressure groups to keep American churches in a little box owned exclusively by the right.

Two recent articles comment on the connections between the Cardinal Newman Society and the Republican party—connections I have teased out in my own postings about the Cardinal Newman Society. As Joan Walsh notes in a 1 April Salon article entitled “Right-Wing Catholics vs. Obama” (here), what we’re seeing in the attempt of Cardinal Newman Society to force Notre Dame University to rescind its invitation to President Obama next month is not just any old media scrap, but a well-organized and highly-funded right-wing attempt to punish Catholics who voted Democratic in the past election, and to force Catholic voters back into the Republican fold:

But the growing movement to stop Obama's visit isn't your ho-hum sort of Catholic League media dust-up, where Bill Donohue harumphs on television and then goes away. It's part of a well-funded lobbying effort by a group of right-wing Catholics to run liberal Catholics, and dissenting doctrine, out of the church, and to recruit the remainder of the faithful for the GOP.

This is a group of rabid right-wingers who came together to make sure Catholic universities enforce Catholic doctrine. They publish the work of ultra-right Opus Dei member Rev. C. John McCloskey, who has argued that "for a university to be truly Catholic," its faculty must be "exclusively" Catholic. Operation Rescue fanatic Randall Terry, who converted to Catholicism recently, is bringing his special kind of crazy to the movement. "The faithful Catholic world is justly enraged at the treachery of Notre Dame's leadership," Terry rants. "Notre Dame will rue the day they invited this agent of death to speak." Once a thug, always a thug.

Tim Rutten offers a similar analysis in an op-ed piece on 28 March in the Los Angeles Times (here). In Rutten’s view, what Cardinal Newman Society and its allies are trying to do with this protest is “fresh and consequential”:

There are a couple of things about this culture-warfare-as-usual controversy that are fresh and consequential enough to be of interest. The first is the protesters and their connections. Many are part of a vocal, Internet-savvy lobby that has been agitating to coerce the church's prelates into denying Communion to Catholic officeholders who deviate from a rigidly "pro-life" line. Made up of a number of smaller groups, this lobby has campaigned to keep other pro-choice officeholders (of any religion) from speaking at Catholic schools. Its supporters also have been vociferously active in the movement to use abortion as a wedge to lever Catholics into the religious right.

The effort turns on convincing Catholics -- for decades now, the principal swing voters in presidential elections -- that they're obliged to vote on the basis of moral issues important to the right wing of the church, such as abortion, stem cell research and, more recently, marriage equality.

As Rutten notes, this is an effort that has a clear partisan political objective—to convince Catholics and the culture at large that being Catholic and voting Republican are synonymous:

The Newman Society is linked to two organizations -- CatholicVote.org and the Fidelis Center -- whose programs are clearly geared toward bringing Catholics into the Republican Party.

Both Rutten and Walsh note that the Cardinal Newman Society (and the U.S. Catholic bishops who buy into this partisan political agenda) are working against certain odds. Polls indicate a majority of American Catholics satisfied with Obama’s leadership, and they also indicate that on the hot-button issues of abortion, same-sex marriage, and sexual ethics, American Catholics may even be to the left of the American mainstream. The response of Notre Dame students to the attempt to force their school to disinvite the president is also running heavily in favor or the decision to bring President Obama to the campus.

By allying themselves with groups who are using the church for partisan political purposes, some bishops are turning their backs on the majority of American Catholics and the culture in which those Catholics live. One wonders how those bishops justify such a decision on pastoral grounds.

I note one other interesting point in Walsh’s and Rutten’s articles. Both note that, in inviting the new president as its commencement speaker this year, Notre Dame is carrying on a long tradition of inviting the newly elected president to its graduation the spring following each election. Notre Dame invited Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush to speak following their elections, and there was not a whisper of protest—even though Bush opposes abolition of the death penalty, a position contrary to Catholic teaching about the sanctity of life.

I’m interested in this tidbit of news, because several bloggers at centrist Catholic websites that have recently held discussions of the Obama invitation have speculated that Mr. Obama deliberately accepted the Notre Dame invitation in order to consolidate Catholic support. I wonder why that malicious motive would be attributed to him if he is following in the footsteps of predecessors who accepted Notre Dame’s invitation because Notre Dame has a longstanding practice of inviting the new president to its commencement?

Clearly, there is, in some Catholic minds, a Catholic exceptionalism regarding President Obama. I wonder why that is the case? I wonder on what basis we are to conclude that, say, George W. Bush clearly represents Catholic values, whereas Mr. Obama does not do so?

Something about the new president seems to strike fear into the hearts of Catholics of the right and of many Catholic bishops, who appear to have thought that the Republican party had locked up the Catholic vote in perpetuity. What is that something, I wonder?

More on Strategies to Support Notre Dame Against Assault of Right-Wing Bullies

I apologize for trying readers' patience with yet another posting today.

But, since a posting by Tom Mattzie on Huffington Post today dovetails with mine earlier today calling for readers to support Notre Dame against its assault by Cardinal Newman Society and other right-wing pressure groups trying to undermine President Obama (here), I want to link to that post now (here).

Tom Mattzie makes several points I made in my posting earlier today:

1. This is a right-wing political attack masquerading as a Catholic theological one: "This is an effort by a small cabal of ultra-conservative partisans to separate Catholicism from its calling for social and economic justice and peace. A Republican operative who has simultaneous roles at other Right-Wing groups founded the group attacking Notre Dame."

2. A minority of right-wing Catholic political operatives continue to try to represent themselves as "the" voice of American Catholicism, though a majority of American Catholics reject this right-wing political agenda: "These Obama and Notre Dame critics are not speaking for a serious number of the tens of millions of American Catholics who voted for Barack Obama--nor even probably most of those who voted for John McCain."

3. We need to rally behind Notre Dame because the right-wing groups spearheading such efforts are loud, well-organized, and well-funded. Mattzie notes that the right-wing Catholics involved in this effort have now gotten right-wing evangelicals involved: "They have a tremendous organizing capacity that is matched on the other side only by secular groups who won't instinctively weigh into a debate like this."

As a practicing Catholic, Tom Mattzie concludes, "They should be dismissed for what they are--a radical ultra-conservative cabal driving a political agenda through Catholicism."

And he calls for action. His posting includes the following address for Notre Dame's president:

Contact:

Rev. John Jenkins,
CSC400 Main Building
Notre Dame, IN 46556
(574) 631-8261
president@nd.edu

The Catholic Right as Republican Mouthpiece: Frank Cocozzelli's Analysis

As an appendix to my discussion of the Catholic right's capitulation to the political right--its subordination of Catholic belief and values to extreme-right political ideologies--I'd like to point to a source that readers interested in these themes may wish to read.

Frank Cocozzelli, Director of the Institute for Progressive Christianity, has done yeoman's work for years now tracking and exposing the Catholic right. His ongoing multi-part series on the Catholic right at the Talk to Action website is must-reading for anyone concerned about collusion of nasty right-wing money and the Catholic right, and the effects of that collusion on our political process. A chronological listing of all his articles and postings at that site is here.

In a 6 Sept. posting last year, Cocozzelli specifically addresses Martino and his "transparently factious" and overt political attempts to "unduly influence the American political process" (here and here). Some select quotes from that article:

Outside of a handful of issues such as abortion, stem cell research and LGTB civil rights, Palin has little in common with the Vatican and substantially less with the majority of American Catholics. But this narrow band of commonality will nevertheless be the pretext on which Catholicism will be defined [by the Catholic right], for political purposes as almost solely about abortion.

Some such as Bishop Charles Chaput of Denver are downright belligerent about it. Chaput has said that Senator Biden should refrain from Communion because of his stance on abortion rights and Bishop Joseph F. Martino of the Diocese of Scranton (Biden's birthplace) has made it clear that he would deny Senator Biden Communion because, in his words, "I will not tolerate any politician who claims to be a faithful Catholic who is not genuinely pro-life." . . .

When members of the Catholic hierarchy and their allies resort to such tactics, they cease being a legitimate voice in a ongoing debate and instead become transparently factious entities seeking to unduly influence the American political process. Such behavior is the difference between contributing to the national discourse and trying to dominate it. . . .

In short, Chaput, Martino and other such strident clergymen have a severely limited understanding of "pro-life issues." . . .

As I wrote this piece I searched in vain on for any evidence of just one demand by Bishops Chaput or Martino that universal healthcare be provided to all Americans. If they have publicly advocated for universal health care, they must have hidden it well, since my research turned up nothing from either of these otherwise high profile prelates. When I linked their two names to "universal healthcare" all I could find were endless pronouncements on banning abortion and euthanasia.

As Cocozzelli's analysis here demonstrates, what is driving Chaput, Martino, and their supporters in the American Catholic church is not so much the desire to outlaw abortion, as the drive to impose one political viewpoint and one political party on all Americans, in the name of "orthodoxy." The overt, grotesque use of the episcopal office and the sacraments to try to whip Catholics into line--into a political line--has not ended with the election of Obama.

Indeed, it is only beginning. In coming weeks, particularly with the choice of Governor Sebelius as the Health Secretary of the new administration, we can look for this strident, politicized, divisive behavior on the part of the Catholic right to be stepped up. And for many more attempts to grandstand with cooked-up stories about the "decline" of Catholicity in American Catholic universities, as they seek to planted these false reports everywhere they . . . .