Kennedy and the Catholic Vote
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Earlier I speculated about what the death of Ted Kennedy means for conservatives who have relied on him as the stereotypical liberal for roughly 40 years. But there’s another symbolic void created by Kennedy’s absence from the political scene — he was last iconic Irish Catholic Democrat of national renown. There are still plenty of Irish Catholic Democrats, of course, including numerous Kennedys. But none of them have the symbolic resonances that Kennedy had, at least among older Catholics. For some American Irish Catholics, the idea of the Kennedys as a royal house, representing Throne and Altar alike, despite their deviations from the Altar’s teachings, was very powerful. Someone like John Kerry, by contrast, is just another Catholic liberal.
I remember around 1993, when I occasionally listened to Rush Limbaugh, a caller phoned in to say she agreed with Rush about everything but wished he would go easy on Ted Kennedy. She expressed the religious-political reverence that a certain generation held for Joe Kennedys sons. They beat the WASPs at their own game, after all, at a time when that still seemed like it mattered. Now a majority of the Supreme Court, the speaker of the House of Representatives, and the vice president are all Catholic, but nobody thinks this is very remarkable.
Will the death of Ted help move more Catholics toward the GOP? (Assuming, that is, the GOP can ever get its act together — one shouldn’t take that for granted.) The Republicans probably have a better chance of cultivating the next high-profile political Catholic, whoever it might be, since to make the most symbolic impact, the politician has to stand as an avatar of Church as well as State. Catholic Dems today have such a problematic relationship with the Church that I can’t see them filling the gap. (Most of them are no worse on points of Catholic doctrine than Ted himself was, but again, it’s important that Ted was of a time when Catholics of any kind were rare enough in national politics to be metaphorically powerful.) Then again, if the Democrats’ Catholic problem is their party’s secularism, the Republicans’ Catholic problem is their party’s evangelicalism. Evangelicals may not engage in much overt Catholic-baiting these days, but there’s still a very deep, if little articulated, cultural and philosophical divide. Catholics tend not to like the culturally fragmentary and politically expansive tilt of the evangelicals.
Filed under: Politics
The GOP needs a candidate who will be given Communion in every parish of the country.
This is funny. Was having the same conversation after Mass last night with some friends. Well, it was about Irish Catholics Fawning over the Kennedys for so long. I come from an Italian Catholic family, with one side lookin at the Kennedys as the Irish do, and the other side, my Grandmother would spit on her floor when you brought up there names.
But I can see how they looked at them back then. They did beat the WASP’s at there own game. The South and Mid-West (in some ways still do) distrusted Catholics, and the Kennedys showed, that we were Americans too. In their own way. They were also the “sterotypical” Catholic in the Evangelical and WASP’s eyes. “They drink booze, they love women, then they go to Church? Sinners!!” (I’ve heard that before on numerous occasions)
Now for your next point about Catholics going to the GOP. I think it will remain the same numbers. As long as the GOP is hanging out in the Wal-Mart (mega-) Churches, most North-Eastern Catholics will still away.
And for the Dems? As long as Irish/Italian Catholics are in unions, they will have there vote.
If only abortion were a local issue, then Catholics would find it easy to make political choices, they would vote for the Democrats. Instead they’re between a rock and a hard place, the securalist Democrats and WASP, evangelical Republicans.
But in this day and age, is there really a “Catholic” vote anymore? The days when Catholics thought of themselves as an organized bloc of voters has long since past. Catholics are intermarried. They don’t always attend church. The Pope doesn’t say Protestants are evil. Much has passed away in Catholic culture since Jack Kennedy was first elected. And it’s hard to vote Catholic when one party is closer to you on economics and the other closer to your social values. So you’ll find Catholics spread out in different voting blocs than “Catholic” these days.
The Bishops loved Kennedy, even though he was radically pro abortion. Since liberal Vatican II the Church leadership has been doctrinally confused. Sex scandals to Notre Dame to Kennedy’s funneral. . . there is no moral compass for the clergy. Even original sin (the reason Jesus died on the cross – to open the gates of Heaven) is not needed to reach paradise. The people in the pews see their lack of belief and slowly are leaving.
Today’s American Catholics are de facto pagans who don’t differ on any substantial issue from the population as a whole. The Catholic Church of the JFK era was pre-Vatican Two, pre-Sixties Cultural Revolution and militantly anti-Communist. A few years earlier was the era of Joe McCarthy. He was more popular in MA than any other state and Bobby Kennedy served briefly on his committee staff until Roy Cohn got too much under his skin.
If religion is going to be that important in the next two election cycles, my advice to Rand-not Ron-Paul is to convert to the ROCOR, the denomination Solzhenitsyn belonged to in the US. Just think: no snake-handling or faith-healing televangelists, no very unusual theology like the Mormons and no history of widespread sexual scandal and shoddy compromises with pro-abortion pols like the US Catholic Church.
Um . . . ROCOR is now reconciled with the Russian Orthodox Church, and so no longer a distinct denomination . . .
As to the matter of Catholics not voting as a bloc anymore, I think it most illustrative that, in 2004, running against a “Catholic” candidate, George W. Bush won the Catholic vote by a greater margin than he did in the general population.
Dan McCarthy makes, as usual, interesting and thought-provoking points. They cause me, for one, to note the similarities with (and differences from) the Australian religious-electoral situation today.
From the 1940s until the mid-1980s, the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Liberal Party were, respectively, Catholic and Protestant-Masonic in their voting bases. (The expulsion from Labor of various right-wing Catholics in 1954-1957, these men proceeding to form their own Democratic Labor Party, had little or no effect upon the fundamentally tribal religious allegiances of antipodean politics.)
This changed only a generation ago, with a fairly slight but steady movement of Catholics away from Labor toward the Liberals. In 1996 these Catholics helped put the Liberals, under John Howard, in power; “Howard’s Battlers” were the Australian equivalent of “Reagan Democrats.” (Eleven years later these same Catholics helped throw Howard out.)
But although there are now Catholics – or at any rate soi-disant Catholics – prominently represented among Liberal leaders (federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull describes himself as a Catholic, for instance), any hope which optimistic Australian Catholics might have nurtured of somehow Catholicizing the Liberal Party has been a complete failure. There are at least as many pro-abort, pro-euthanasia, and pro-homosexual-”marriage” types among the Liberals as among the Laborites. Even former Health Minister Tony Abbott, probably the nearest thing to a believing Catholic in the federal parliament today, merely wants abortion to be – Hillary Clinton fashion – “legal and rare.”
Moreover, although Freemasonry is pretty much extinct as a factor in present-day Australian administration, the large and vocal bloc of pro-Liberal Australian snake-handling-style evangelicals continues to regard Catholicism as The Scarlet Woman, The Whore of Babylon, etc. This hostility continually astonishes most Australian Catholics, whose spokesmen for the most part maintain ecumenical delusions of get-togetherism. Since the snake-handler bloc is increasing rather than decreasing, I predict that the present Australian situation will continue, particularly when only a miracle can stop the Liberals from being crushed at the next federal election (due no later than 2010) and probably the federal election after that.
“Um . . . ROCOR is now reconciled with the Russian Orthodox Church, and so no longer a distinct denomination . .”
Reconciled with the Moscow Patriarchate-but still independent of the Orthodox Church in America which was granted autocephaly by Moscow in 1970.
Also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Orthodox_Church_Outside_Russia
“The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (Russian: Ру́сская Правосла́вная Це́рковь Заграни́цей, Russkaya Pravoslavnaya Tserkov’ Zagranitsey), also called the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, ROCA, or ROCOR) is a semi-autonomous part of the Russian Orthodox Church.”
(…)
What does “semi-autonomous” mean?
A church that is autonomous has its highest-ranking bishop, such as an archbishop or metropolitan, appointed by the patriarch of the mother church, but is self-governing in all other respects.
More on the relationship between the ROCOR and the MP:
http://community.beliefnet.com/go/thread/view/43851/13378739/?pg=last
(…)
Dec 13, 2008 – 1:07AM #3
Huson
Huson
Posts: 44
If I understand you correctly, the ROCOR and the Moscow Patriarchate exist as separate jurisdictions in the U.S. According to SCOBA Jurisdictions, Bishop Mercurius of Zaraisk is the Representation of the Moscow Patriarchate . Does this Bishop also represent the ROCOR?
If not, is the ROCOR a member of SCOBA? Who represents them?
Huson
9 months ago :: Dec 13, 2008 – 10:57AM #4
SeraphimR
SeraphimR
Posts: 1220
[QUOTE=Huson;953569]If I understand you correctly, the ROCOR and the Moscow Patriarchate exist as separate jurisdictions in the U.S. According to SCOBA Jurisdictions, Bishop Mercurius of Zaraisk is the Representation of the Moscow Patriarchate . Does this Bishop also represent the ROCOR?
If not, is the ROCOR a member of SCOBA? Who represents them?
Huson[/QUOTE]
ROCOR is not a member of SCOBA
The ROCOR still seems rather independent according to certain sections of the Act of Canonical Communion:
http://www.russianorthodoxchurch.ws/synod/engdocuments/enmat_akt.html
(…)
2. That the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia is independent in pastoral, educational, administrative, management, property, and civil matters, existing at the same time in canonical unity with the Fullness of the Russian Orthodox Church.
3. The supreme ecclesiastical, legislative, administrative, judicial and controlling authority in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia is her Council of Bishops, convened by her Primate (First Hierarch), in accordance with the Regulations [ Polozheniye ] of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.
(…)
Snake Handlers? The snake-handler bloc is increasing rather than decreasing?
FYI – There are less than 50 churches in the United States that practice snake handling. If your going to insult Protestants, there are far better ways to do so.
Also, it’s probably not the best strategy to complain about Protestants being hostile to the Catholic Church and then turn around and call them “Snake Handlers.” Pretty counterproductive eh?
Increasing in Australia, not the US.
@Dan McCarthy, Once in a while we see a very well done article, about an important subject, that provokes intelligent comment. Good job.
In the pre-liberal 1950’s Oregon, when all the adults were conservative, and all the students I ever met were the future’s liberals, I don’t remember the Catholicism question as being so much political.
There was the very real functional question: If you believe the Pope infallible, and he tells the President of the US that he is going to hell if he doesn’t vote a certain way, will this effect us? I look back on that concern and laugh, but then it was a very real concern.
What the otherwise well written column and current responses miss is the fact that the Church, itself took a severe left hand turn when the “Nouvelle Theologie” and “Ostpolitik” swamped into power via Vatican II.
Essentially the people condemned by St. Pius X and who were stifled by Pius XI and Pius XII began their own October Revolution after 1958.
The local hierarchies, clergy, laity and pols sniffed the air as the Church is a top down institution!
I agree with Donoso’s mid 19th Century assertion and the late 20th Century assement of Solzhenitsyn i.e “All political problems are at bottom, religious ones”
In that case, the duty of lay and clerical orthodox Caholics is simple. We must reunite the Church with the Faith!
In what I wrote earlier, I wasn’t wishing to insult Protestants or to insult anyone else. Had insolence been my aim, I’m sure that TAC’s moderators would have intercepted my comment (and quite rightly so) before it could appear on the blog.
My reference to snake-handling churches indicated a general extremist-Protestant tendency, not a literal comment about the exact number of such churches there are in America (I was, after all, mainly writing not about America but about Australia). One can – as I tried to indicate – have the general snake-handling mentality without having the practice itself. Plenty of extremist-Protestant churches in Australia have (at least in the eyes of outsiders) just such a mentality. If I can be shown up as mistaken regarding the Australian religio-political situation, I’ll happily stand corrected.