Former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend has a provocation styled as argument in Newsweek which holds that Barack Obama better represents the values and aspirations of American Catholics than Pope Benedict XVI.
It’s piffle, yes, but it also shows the shifting ground on which politicians struggle for Catholic votes.
After a years-long trend of Democrats struggling to keep once-solid support among Catholics, Kennedy argues that the core issues are shifting from the bright-line concerns relating to human life and family to the more esoteric concerns relating to economic justice.
Pope Benedict, she suggests, is mean to women and gay people and too slow to start preaching the virtues of socialism, while American Catholics are socially moderate and fiscally liberal:
“Yet polls bear out that American Catholics do not want to be told by the Vatican how to think. Despite the rhetoric of love and truth, the Vatican shows disdain (if not disgust) toward gays. But 54 percent of American Catholics find gay relationships to be morally acceptable, according to a 2009 Gallup poll. Meanwhile, against all scientific evidence and protestations from clergy on the ground, the pope claims that condoms aggravate the spread of AIDS. Seventy-nine percent of American Catholics disagree, according to a 2007 poll by Catholics for Choice.”
Kennedy does not mention the movement among Catholics and non-Catholics alike against abortion on demand. In 2004 when John Kerry was groping for Catholic votes, 43 percent of Catholics identified themselves as pro-life compared to 52 percent in May of this year.
But what Townsend really misses is the shift in what it means to be Catholic.
As Catholics in America get more diverse with each generation — economically, ethnically, geographically — saying they share anything in common other than their faith will be increasingly hard.
Once an expression of and aid to unity in the face of a dominant protestant culture, Catholicism is now the dominant denomination and cultural mobility has eliminated much of the cultural significance.
Arguments about what defines Catholics beyond the ecclesiastical are increasingly hard to make. When Townsend’s grandfather was buying elections, “Catholic” was a catch-all category for recent immigrants, blue collar workers, ethnic sub-groups — people who weren’t in the dominant culture.
Now, just look at the Supreme Court for evidence of how the dominant culture has changed. Or consider the number of adult converts to the faith (e.g. Newt Gingrich, Tony Blair).
A Catholic argument for what government should do is no easy task beyond the basic moral questions. How much welfare is enough? What percentage of the national budget should be devoted to the military? What is the right degree of environmental regulation? A faith can only offer guidance, not answers on these points.
Townsend, like Newsweek, is grasping for relevancy by suggesting that Catholics are with Obama more than Benedict. But a specious argument that will offend many Catholics otherwise open to the idea that social justice should share political priority with issues of life and family can’t be a very good way to find it.
