The Catholic Vote

Though it provides pollsters and pundits with fodder to munch, the most important fact about the Catholic Vote in America is that there isn't one.

When John F. Kennedy ran for President, there was a potential Catholic voting block, which in fact materialized in support of his candidacy. It was comprised of mostly Irish, Italian and eastern Europeans, no more than a generation or two removed from the Old Country, mostly working and lower middle class, largely urban. Catholic church membership was at its height in numbers, and Catholic cultural influence was enjoying its last years of prominence---the years of DiMaggio, Bill Mazeroski and Notre Dame football, Frank Capra, Jimmy Durante and Topo Gigio, Sinatra to Perry Como, when songs sung wholly or partly in Italian made the top ten (even when sung by an Irish singer named Rosemary Clooney.)

Both as Catholics and as ethnic minorities, all of these groups had suffered prejudices that at times were nearly as severe as those perennially suffered by black, Latino and Asian citizens. For awhile Italians were considered to be a black race, and some Italians in California were interred as were Japanese during World War II; the jokes substituting Polish for Moron lasted for many more years. These were immigrants recruited for the mines and mills, impoverished peasants seeking a desperate last chance. They often were the backbone of labor union organizing in formative days. Thanks in part to FDR and the New Deal, they were Democrats.

So American Catholics had a lot in common, and lots of reasons to vote and be courted as a block. Kennedy specifically represented them and their aspirations, with his family's history of "No Irish Need Apply" signs in Boston, and their subsequent wealth, power and ascent to the heights of social prominence. The Irish in particular dominated Boston politics and government. But Italian Catholics also began their rise to political prominence in places like San Francisco, New York, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, then Polish and other eastern European Catholics in Chicago, Milwaukee and other cities. Almost always, until the ascent of Frank Rizzo in Philadelphia later in the 60s, they were Democrats.

But these groups, along with Jewish immigrants and their descendants, were already streaming to the suburbs, with good union or white collar incomes. Today they are so variegated that they no longer exist as groups, and certainly not as voting blocks.

The growth in the Catholic church worldwide has been in Africa. In America, Latinos comprise a large proportion now, with a bewildering array of other ethnicities, including Haitians, southeast Asian, Phillipinos, etc. So Catholics are everywhere---north and south, east and west, city and town and suburb---and so more than ever they are a collection of individuals that share church membership in their individual ways.

Catholics have suddenly become a voting category again this year because the Democratic nominee is a Catholic at a time when the positions of the Catholic hierarchy on several prominent "social" or "cultural" issues are closer to the positions of his Republican opponent. With the pronouncements of a few American bishops in particular, the separation of Church and State is again an issue.

According to a recent report, G.W. Bush urged the Pope to instruct U.S. clergy to become more vocal on moral issues, that coincidentally would favor his re-election. Some observers have called this an unprecedented attempt to get the Church to take an official role in the American political process, which the modern Church has learned is an idea better left in the bloody past. There are also reports that the Pope regards Bush as particularly dangerous to the world's future, and in fact he scolded him publicly---in his presence--- for the war in Iraq and the monstrous and officially sanctioned prisoner abuses.

While no group is too small to affect a close election, the number of Catholics who will decide their votes based on whether John Kerry is a Catholic, or whether John Kerry supports the Vatican's exact position on abortion or homosexuality, is likely to be quite small, and may even cancel each other out.

American Catholics, like their forebearers in Ireland, Italy, Latin America and elsewhere, seldom adhere 100% to official Church positions or practice, even when those positions are unambiguous. In particular, the number of Catholics who adhere to the official ban against all forms of contraception is very probably very small. Since the basis for the Church's current position on contraception is nearly identical to its position on abortion, most Catholics accept the need for some inconsistency in their own judgments. That is, they see things in more practical terms, and as more complex. John Kerry's positions on late term abortion (that the law banning them even when the life of the mother is endangered is wrong, but that regulating them in some ways is right) and gay marriage (he is personally against it, but sees the social reality of homosexuals as full citizens and fully human) are probably close to the "average" American Catholic's beliefs.

Right now, the latest polls show that self-described Catholics are about evenly split between supporting Kerry and supporting Bush. However, the one statistic that jumps out in the latest poll is that only a third of the Catholic respondents knew that Kerry is Catholic. This suggests that by election day, Kerry will have an edge. That edge may be further enhanced by Catholics who confront their consciences in the absolute privacy of the voting booth, and look at all the issues that affect their lives and their childrens' futures.