 "Photo: Photo illustration: Levi Marks/Loyolan; Photos: MCT Campus")
According to the Wall Street Journal in 2004, a majority of Catholics have voted for the popular-vote winner each presidential election since 1972. This pattern seems to suggest that whoever wins the majority of Catholic votes becomes the next president of the United States (with the exception of Al Gore, who won the popular but not the electoral vote in 2000).
Because candidates of both parties have won the presidential election since 1972, this means that Catholics have voted for both Democrats and Republicans in the past three decades, and have thus become a crucial swing vote in the eyes of the candidates. This year in particular, polls are showing that gaining the Catholic vote may be vital to winning the presidential race.
According to the LMU Web site, 45 percent of the student body is Catholic. There are nearly 70 million Catholics in America, which makes up around 22 percent of the electorate. Large populations of Catholics live in swing states, such as New Hampshire, making their voting bloc as a whole that much more important.
Catholic voters also lack a consistent affiliation with either party. The Republicans can generally count on the Evangelical vote, and the Democrats can usually count on receiving the Jewish vote. However, of the four dominant religious voting blocs (mainline Protestants, Evangelicals, Jews and Catholics), Catholics appear to be the most fickle.
Fifty-two percent of Catholics voted for Bush in 2004, while 47 percent voted for Kerry. However, only four years prior, Gore received the majority of Catholic votes. A TIME poll released in July 2008 showed that McCain and Obama were tied among Catholic voters, with the candidates receiving 45 and 44 percent of Catholics’ support, respectively.
What causes all of this flip-flopping? As Fr. John Coleman, S.J., the Charles Casassa Professor of Social Values at LMU, said, “No party [in the U.S.] is an obvious and congenial fit for Catholic teachings and beliefs.”
Coleman spoke at an on-campus forum on Tuesday that focused on how a person’s religious affiliation affects how he or she votes. The forum, entitled “Religion and Voting for Values: Catholic and Evangelical Perspectives,” was hosted by the Center for Religion and Spirituality.
“There is a paradox because neither party is great for Catholics,” he said. “Neither party is complete.”
Take the issues surrounding the sacredness of human life. According to Catholic doctrine, abortion is always wrong based on the belief that all human life is sacred. In a letter released by the U.S. Catholic bishops in 2007 called “The Challenge of Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” the bishops reiterated that abortion is “an intrinsically evil act” that “must always be rejected and never supported.” Following this line of thinking, many Catholics feel they cannot vote for a candidate who is pro-choice, which eliminates almost all Democratic candidates.
On the other hand, the Catholic Church also says that because all human life is sacred, everyone has “a right,” according to “Faithful Citizenship,” to all things required for human decency, such as food, shelter, education and health care. In Tuesday night’s presidential debate, when asked if they believed health care is a privilege, right or responsibility, Obama said he believes health care is a right, while McCain said he believes it is a privilege. On this issue, it appears that Catholics would side with Obama. As mentioned before, however, Obama, a Democrat, is also pro-choice.
This contradiction leads to a paradox for Catholic voters. Both Democrats and Republicans support issues valued by Catholic voters, but both parties also support issues that do not align with Catholic beliefs. So how do Catholic voters decide?
In an article in TIME (“How America Decides: Catholic Voters in 2008,” July 14, 2008), author Amy Sullivan wrote, “Many conservative Catholics consider abortion to be the determining factor in their electoral decisions, and as a result they almost always support Republican candidates. But for other Catholics, social issues can be trumped in times of economic and national insecurity. What’s interesting about this year is that Catholics … are moving from the first group of voters to the second.”
It appears that abortion is waning away as the end-all-be-all issue of Catholic voters this election. In fact, “Faithful Citizenship,” which was released a whole year before the presidential election, explicitly states that Catholics should not support candidates based on only one issue he or she supports.
“As Catholics we are not single-issue voters,” the letter states. “A candidate’s position on a single issue is not sufficient to guarantee a voter’s support. Yet a candidate’s position on a single issue that involves an intrinsic evil, such as support for legal abortion or the promotion of racism, may legitimately lead a voter to disqualify a candidate from receiving support.”
According to Coleman, this is where the virtue of prudence, meaning recognizing what is good but also what is possible, should affect Catholic voters this election.
“It is a matter of prudential judgment as a faithful citizen,” he said.
“As a theologian, this is not a simple situation,” said Dr. Robert Hurteau, the director of the Center for Religion and Spirituality, who organized Tuesday’s forum. “My reading of ‘Faithful Citizenship’ shows that there are other ways to interpret the Church’s position on the sanctity of life than just opposing abortion.”
The decline of single-issue voting seems to extend beyond Catholicism as well.
“More and more we’re seeing people of faith being less predictable and less likely to vote on a single issue or two,” said Tony Alonso, Campus Ministry’s assistant director of liturgy and music. “People of all faiths are thoughtfully considering the choices before them, which are often complex and rarely black and white. I can’t imagine any faithful person thinking that one particular candidate captures their entire value system. So, it’s wonderful and fascinating to see how faith impacts these decisions in a variety of ways and how it can lead faithful people to varying conclusions.”
This phenomenon within Catholic voting patterns will presumably effect the outcome of this year’s election, as well as have an impact among Catholic LMU students’ voting behavior less than one month from now.
To read the U.S. bishops’ letter on “Faithful Citizenship,” visit www.faithfulcitizenship.org.
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