President Trump’s campaign is increasing its efforts to court Catholic voters with a new campaign coalition, Catholics for Trump, by focusing on the president’s support for such issues as religious freedom and opposition to abortion.
The coalition, which was set to launch in Milwaukee next week, seeks to rally Catholics behind the Trump administration’s vision of “the common good,” as it relates to Catholic teaching on social issues that right-leaning Catholics have long championed. The launch event has been postponed because of fears of a coronavirus outbreak, and a campaign spokesperson told the Washington Examiner it has not yet been rescheduled.
Pandemics notwithstanding, many Catholic leaders say they are excited to throw their support behind Trump in 2020. That mood is much different than in 2016, when many Catholics supported Trump, “despite a big question mark in their minds,” said Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life who served on Trump’s Catholic Advisory Group in 2016. Pavone became a controversial figure directly before the 2016 election, when he delivered a sermon about abortion while after placing what he claimed was an aborted baby on an altar.
“They weren’t quite sure what they were going to get,” Pavone said. “What they were more sure about is what they would not be getting by rejecting Hillary. Now, however, the question mark has changed into an exclamation point.”
For Pavone, who is expected to help lead Catholics for Trump, that exclamation point is Trump’s expressive support for the anti-abortion movement, manifested most recently in his speech at the 2020 March for Life — the first such presidential in-person appearance at the anti-abortion rally. Other exclamation points include Trump’s Supreme Court appointments and his Cabinet member picks, which include a number of practicing Catholics, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Attorney General William Barr among them.
Appointments such as Barr, as well as the possibility of a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, are part of what should drive Catholics to Trump, Pavone said, adding that these are the ways Trump has proven that he is friendly to “the Catholic vision of things.”
Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote.org, an organization supporting Trump, but officially unaffiliated with the campaign coalition, extended that endorsement.
“This is the most Catholic administration we’ve had in American history, both at a policy level and at a personnel level,” he told the Washington Examiner, citing Trump’s support for the “sanctity of life, the family as the foundational social unit, and the necessity of religious liberty.”
Barr, in particular, has pleased Catholics supporting Trump. Under him, the Department of Justice seeks to defend religious freedom “zealously,” officials told reporters during a Monday press briefing. Since Barr assumed his post in February 2019, the Justice Department has filed statements of interest in many cases involving Catholic and otherwise religious institutions over religious liberty issues.
In September 2019, the department rose to the defense of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, which had fired a married gay employee at a Catholic high school. Amid the outcry, the archdiocese had stated that, per Catholic teaching on marriage, its schools cannot employ a person who is openly in a same-sex marriage and identifies as a Catholic. When the teacher sued, the Justice Department spoke in favor of the archdiocese, saying that the Catholic Church has the right to decide how it enforces its doctrines because of the First Amendment.
Barr has also stirred controversy in his speeches, speaking out against the “militant” and “growing ascendancy of secularism and the doctrine of moral relativism” last year at the University of Notre Dame. Barr delivered a similar speech in February at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Tennessee. He is also set to speak at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast at the end of March, where he will receive an award for his “long history of dedicated public service and his commitment to the defense of the vulnerable and religious liberty.”
The Trump administration has only earned such plaudits from Catholic leaders after several years. Early in the 2016 campaign, Trump had faced serious opposition from many Catholic leaders, especially after he called Pope Francis “disgraceful” for questioning his stance on border security. CatholicVote.org was skeptical and opposed him during the primaries, pointing to his lack of “clear guiding principles, and a history of unpredictability.” The group was one of the many that called upon Trump to step down after the Access Hollywood tapes leaks in October showed Trump making lewd comments about women.
“If Donald Trump is unwilling to step aside, the Republican National Committee must act soon out of basic decency and self-preservation,” the organization wrote at the time.
But once elected, Trump’s presidency proved encouraging, and CatholicVote.org warmed to him. Even before Catholics for Trump was announced, CatholicVote.org already was organizing, along with the nonprofit Knights of Columbus, to register and inform voters about their choices in November.
Polling data from RealClearResearch shows that practicing Catholics support Trump much more than nonpracticing or lapsed Catholics. These people, many of whom live in the heavily Catholic and electorally pivotal states of Wisconsin and Michigan, could be key to reelecting Trump, Burch said.
“We believe this represents an enormous opportunity, particularly in an election that’s anticipating historic turnout, where both campaigns are going to be looking for sources of new votes,” Burch said. “And we think a largesse of those votes, especially in the Upper Midwest, are in our churches every Sunday.”
Explicit support for Trump among practicing Catholics has not been universal, however. The Archdiocese of Milwaukee on Wednesday distanced itself from the campaign initiative before the launch was postponed.
“The mission of the Church is religious, not political,” Archbishop Jerome Listecki wrote in an open letter. “For reasons that are both theological and legal, the Church’s involvement in public life does not extend to endorsing candidates for election to public office nor calling for their defeat.”
Other bishops have offered more pointed criticisms of the president. After a mass shooting in August 2019, Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, Texas, called upon Trump to “examine himself and the kind of rhetoric that contributes to the hatred of a whole group of people,” as many people blamed the president’s rhetoric for inciting violence. Trump’s rhetoric on immigration has also not encouraged support from Hispanics, many of whom are Catholics. In 2018, many bishops in largely Hispanic dioceses criticized Trump’s family separation policy at a United States Conference of Catholic Bishops meeting.
But even with these obstacles, the Trump campaign’s outreach efforts to Catholics in 2020 is much more organized than its push in 2016, which, in the beginning, was nonexistent. That changed, however, when Deal Hudson, the director of Catholic Outreach for George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns, convinced the Trump campaign to begin courting Catholic voters in 2016 through a series of tweets and meetings with Catholic leaders.
Once Trump secured the nomination, the campaign organized a Catholic Advisory Committee, including Pavone, former Sen. Rick Santorum, and Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union. The group promised to steer Trump on religious liberty, abortion, and Supreme Court issues.
In 2020, the campaign plans to continue increasing that outreach to Catholics, according to former Rep. Tim Huelskamp, a senior adviser at CatholicVote.org, who is expected to be involved with Catholics for Trump.
“Catholics were of secondary importance to the Trump campaign in 2016, behind evangelicals,” Huelskamp said in January. “That hasn’t changed, but there is at least an effort to reach this community now.”
