COMMUNITARIAN LITE How Catholics draw on their faith to make political choices
Bole, William
COMMUNITARIAN LITE American Catholics & their politics William Bole When President George W. Bush gave the com-mencement speech at the University of Notre Dame in 2001, he did not hesitate to...
...There will be little astonishment that the opinions of American Catholics are not always in line with Catholic social teaching...
...The bishops have their own ideological approach that can move to the left or the right, depending on the issue...
...Somewhat" may begin to look quite different when questions are put to highly religious Catholics, who are-by some measures-alternately liberal and conservative, unlike highly religious Protestants who are more inclined to stay steadily in the conservative corner...
...The ambiguity of these findings undoubtedly has something to do with the way questions are asked...
...One could ruminate on whether this represents a half-full or half-empty glass of Catholic commitment...
...The most important caveat to all this might be culled from Leege's research into developments along gender and generational lines...
...This article is part of the American Catholics in the Public Square project, organized by Commonweal and supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts...
...And so, it's really a race between the stork and the grim reaper," said Leege in an interview, noting that since the New Deal generation of Catholics, each successive generation has been less communitarian-minded in its politics than the previous one...
...The results, although hardly definitive, suggest a high correlation between a communitarian politics (with a social-justice outlook) and characteristically Catholic attitudes, including the importance placed on the Eucharist, following church teaching, and learning more about the Catholic faith, as well as helping those in need...
...We cannot take human life lightly and we tend to take [it] lightly...
...Coming from a different direction, Notre Dame political scientist David Leege probably wouldn't put it that way either...
...Researchers use standard measures like frequency of church attendance and Bible reading, which supposedly work well enough for Protestants...
...As would be expected, those who said they attend church at least every week or that faith is most important to them are most likely to reject abortion...
...The Democrats have no parallel scheme to speak of, but there is another Catholic strategy at play among the American bishops, though it has been rather eclipsed recently by their concerns with clergy sex scandals...
...Leege points out that in the broad middle class, higher income is usually associated with higher rates of churchgoing, and so strictly on that basis, it is not surprising that weekly communicants might be more likely than other Catholics to vote Republican...
...At the core of this approach, however, is a call to Catholics to embrace a communitarian ethic, one that seeks to curb individualistic excess in all quarters of life, from the family to the economy...
...That is topics, but the association was on the whole a modest one...
...More interesting, this identification swings in accord with the category of issues...
...Leege's skepticism has much to do with his reading of religiously active Catholics as not appreciably more sympathetic toward the poor than other Catholics (about which he and others among us will have to agree to disagree, lacking better measures...
...Arguably, this landed them near the conservative camp on that issue...
...Are Massgoers distinctive...
...The undertaking is similar to the Republican wooing of evangelical Protestants in past decades, a project that has to be judged a success: Churchgoing white evangelicals are now almost wholly appended to the party (having given Bush 84 percent of their vote, according to a postelection survey by political scientist John C. Green and colleagues at the University of Akron...
...Although closely divided between self-identified pro-life and pro-choice people, most opposed access to abortion in most circumstances, the two clear exceptions being a threat to the mother's life and fetal deformity...
...The views of these faithful Massgoers are a leading link to the question of whether religion makes a difference in the political attitudes of Catholics...
...Those traits may be strongest in the case of the most active Catholics, who tend to be picky about the conservative causes they support, at least in comparison to committed Protestants, who make fewer distinctions in that regard...
...Among Americans generally, greater faith commitment normally equals greater likelihood of political conservatism-across categories of issues-or at least that is the accepted wisdom...
...They are, as is to be expected, less liberal than black Protestants and Jews...
...They also come across as relatively liberal on race but not on the environment and defense, in research gathered by Andrew Kohut, John C. Green, Scott Keeter, and Robert C. Toth, in The Diminishing Divide: Religion's Changing Role in American Politics (Brookings Institution, 2000...
...So I think we're a little harsh sometimes," a suburban Atlanta parishioner declared...
...It's fought wars and won them...gotten out of depressions...
...Are their views much different from those of other Americans...
...Specifically Catholic indicators-like whether someone sees the Eucharist as pivotal to one's own Catholic identity-are often lacking, however...
...Why else would Bush proclaim at Notre Dame a preferential option for the poor...
...Could it be that Catholics see grace lurking even in the Social Security Administration...
...Catholics are different," she adds...
...More revealing, perhaps, is what happens when Catholics talk it over, albeit in the contrived focus-group setting...
...The surveys conducted by CARA took a stab at such measures...
...Pointedly, he argues that committed Catholics are trading in their traditional social-justice orientation, which he derides as "an ideology of victimization," for a "social renewal" orientation that targets declining moral standards...
...If that is the drift, it is a distinct contribution...
...So, Catholics may be different, but why they would be is less easy to assess...
...At Notre Dame, Bush was enacting what has been dubbed the "Catholic strategy," the courting of churchgo-ing Catholics by his administration...
...He allows only that religiously minded Catholics are ever so slightly more likely than less religious ones to sympathize with the poor and favor antipoverty programs, based on data he has analyzed (in "The Catholic Voter," a paper delivered to the joint consultation of Commonweal and the Faith & Reason Institute, June 2000, www.catholicsinpublicsquare.org...
...Wagner, the Republican pollster, believes Catholics are making public space for their faith, but that increasingly this space is reserved for moral conservatism or restoration...
...They would come off sounding less like Pope John Paul II and the bishops, and more like Alan Greenspan...
...An opening question is whether Catholics are at all taken with the idea of folding faith into their political choices...
...How many are attracted to either the wall-to-wall conservatism of Republicans (with room, at least occasionally, for references to compassion), or to the bishops' more communitarian stance...
...If they are more likely than other Americans to view the world through a communitarian lens, is that because of a distinctive Catholic sensibility...
...As Democrats or Republicans, Catholics may well be prodding the parties to curb their respective dogmas of exaggerated individualism...
...Yet party operatives must also think Catholics are somehow different...
...That too might be expected, given the church's social teachings...
...Having put that and other political projects on hold after September 11, the Republican National Committee now says it will renew its outreach to Catholics during this midterm election year...
...Meanwhile, the CARA findings provide hints that Catholics are open to the other Catholic strategy, the one gleaned from the bishops' communitarian agenda...
...On this empirical trail we find the usual suspects, those who attend church weekly or more often: these Catholics were the ones most influenced by sermons touching on the poor and social justice...
...There is another precinct to be heard from on this matter...
...Leege agrees that Catholics in general look at the world through a more communitarian lens, but he sees pale evidence that this translates into greater zeal for social justice among religiously active Catholics...
...They were also more likely than other Catholics to sympathize with the plight of the poor and to support a social assault on poverty...
...Are their political values any reflection of Catholic teaching and tradition...
...What stirred these thoughts in a president known for his political conservatism and support for big business...
...The more frequently they heard such homilies (in their recollection), the more likely they were to see government programs to help the needy as very important...
...Perhaps when the questions get too close to the pocketbook, too specific about taxes and spending (and thus removed from general sentiments about helping the poor), middle-class Mass-going Catholics back off...
...The idea was not to see which voting levers Catholics pull or to count their dimpled chads, but to bring to light their underlying values and attitudes toward the connection of their faith to public life...
...Other research has revealed Catholics as being somewhat to the left of other Americans on bread-and-butter issues and to the right on lifestyle questions...
...William Bole is a freelance journalist in Massachusetts, and an associate fellow of the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University...
...Nor are they true believers in the consistent ethic of life, which threads through causes such as the rights of the unborn and justice for the poor as well as an end to capital punishment...
...Among weekly communicants or those who say that faith is most important to them, 70 percent said that society was responsible...
...Consider a pair of findings from the second telephone survey of twelve hundred Catholics in September 2000...
...Republican pollster Steve Wagner of QEV Analytics in Washington probably wouldn't put it that way, but even he urges President Bush and others in the Republican Party not to use blanket antigovernment rhetoric "within earshot of Catholic voters" (advice rendered on his Web site, www.qev.com...
...A more interesting possibility has to do with the basic matter of who gets counted as "highly religious...
...These leanings can seem weightier among highly religious Catholics...
...Hard numbers, too, tell of a soft communitarianism or "consistent-ethic lite...
...They come to recognize a social Catholicism as something that affects their lives in the public square...
...Surveys conducted for the Public Square project signal what could be called a "consistent-ethic lite" or soft com-munitarianism among Catholics...
...They are often seen shifting in one direction when pressing for government assistance to the needy and in another direction when advocating traditional moral norms regarding birth, death, family, and society...
...This is a stiffer standard than the measures of opinion on different issues, measures revealing more of a soft communitarianism...
...Admittedly, the findings about daily-bread liberalism can be open to different interpretations in these and other studies...
...One is tempted to say that if this trend sharpens in certain directions, the picture painted here may change radically, as far as a broad engagement of American Catholic identity with public life is concerned...
...Nearly a third of those surveyed reported attending Mass weekly or more often, and 18 percent saw Catholicism as the most important part of their lives...
...In addition, he notes that when it comes to the Catholic vote, the steadiest gains for Republicans have been among younger Catholics, who are less churchgoing than older ones...
...Priest-sociologist-author Andrew Greeley has limned a Catholic imagination or sensibility that sees "grace lurking everywhere," as he styles it in The Catholic Imagination (University of California Press, 2000...
...Older Catholics are also more Democratic in party affiliation, though gender is another factor...
...Creatively ambiguous By and large, research for the Public Square project shows that Catholics do have some distinctive ideological traits...
...The research conducted by CARA digs further into these somewhat different political positions, priorities, and self-understandings...
...Are Catholics in the United States tilting toward either of these strategies...
...That pattern doesn't hold among Catholics," explains Sister Mary E. Bendyna, a political scientist who supervised the data collection and analysis for CARA with sociologist Paul M. Perl...
...Such "hard" communitarians constituted only 10 percent of those questioned, but, all tallied, they scored highest in distinctively Catholic measures (see sidebar 1...
...Some original data and useful measures have been compiled as a result of the three-year-long American Catholics in the Public Square project initiated in 2000 by Commonweal and the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, with support from The Pew Charitable Trusts...
...COMMUNITARIAN LITE American Catholics & their politics William Bole When President George W. Bush gave the com-mencement speech at the University of Notre Dame in 2001, he did not hesitate to invoke the legacy of Dorothy Day, the patron saint of American Catholic radicalism, and proclaim "God's special concern for the poor...
...Some polling (by Greeley and others) has teased this out, but Leege of Notre Dame is among those who demand harder evidence that religiosity tilts Catholics in this direction...
...Still, indications of liberal sympathy on bread-and-butter issues leap out enough to suggest that while Americans may have been more upbeat about the intervening role of government after September 11, practicing Catholics have been well ahead of that political curve...
...That is nearly 20 points higher than among less committed Catholics...
...As for self-identified liberals and moderates, both groups outnumbered conservatives on social welfare issues (the Ls just barely), but neither came close to doing so on moral issues...
...Put another way, Wagner argues that religiously active Catholics are ripe for Bush's Catholic strategy, which emphasizes moral restoration...
...A police officer in a suburban Phoenix parish, speaking ambiguously about capital punishment, said, "On the other hand, as I get older, I also see the pope's perspective...
...If so, are they different for religious reasons, because of their faith and exposure to the Catholic ethos...
...A review of transcripts of the eighteen sessions, held in fifteen cities, reveals an interesting pattern: though parishioners often started out hazy or contrary on the given subject, faith connections grew as they tossed around the topics...
...For now, the Public Square studies offer evidence that faith is steering many Catholics to a creatively ambiguous place, in but not of the political-ideological worlds...
...The project commissioned the Center for Applied Research in the Apos-tolate (CARA) at Georgetown University to conduct focus groups nationwide and two national telephone surveys during election year 2000 (this CARA survey can be found on: www.cara.georgetown.edu / forgeria/ Public_Square.pdf...
...Sixty-two percent favored "improving government services such as education and health care, even if it means higher spending...
...Consistent-ethic language resonated even with some parishioners who seemed ambivalent about one life issue or the other...
...In any case, the finding suggests these Catholics pursue a distinctive path in American politics...
...When it comes to identifying themselves ideologically, Catholics, not surprisingly, are like most Americans more at peace with the conservative label than with the "L" word...
...Catholic men and women in their twenties and thirties tend to have thinner ties to the institutional church than other Catholics, and some studies intimate that young men and women are moving politically apart from each other and the church...
...In that spirit, Washington Post columnist and Brook-ings Institution scholar E. J. Dionne believes Catholics can act as a "ginger group, a kind of leaven" in each party, as he said at the Public Square consultation in June 2000...
...From a larger point of view, the pressing question is whether the 60-million-plus Americans who call themselves Catholic make a distinct contribution to public life...
...He is far more impressed by generational factors, including the fact that older Catholics, churchgoing and non-churchgoing alike, tend to be more liberal in these matters than younger Catholics...
...When you look at it, government's done pretty good...
...They seem partial to sociologist John E. Tropman's explanation, in The Catholic Ethic in American Society (Jossey-Bass, 1995), that there is a Catholic ethic that values sharing and mutuality above achievement and self-reliance, as well as to Gree-ley's Catholic-imagination thesis...
...Most Catholics are not card-carrying communitarians, who (if there were such a club) could be counted on to espouse an antilibertarian attitude or ideology...
...Many other, less committed Catholics also like to think of themselves as drawing to some extent on their faith in making political choices...
...This is a tangled "if...
...Individualist creeds are fueling these developments, more noticeably among men than women...
...Is there a 'Catholic' ethic...
...Basically, Catholics split their ideological vote in the January-February 2000 poll...
...This, however, isn't hermetic proof that religious faith is shepherding these Catholics into the GOP...
...Other papers and reports can be found at www.catholicsinpublicsquare.org...
...Discussions often began with the usual put-downs of politicians and government, before settling into neutral or thankful sentiments...
...In the aggregate, Catholics, especially males, would come across as less communitarian than libertarian in their sociopolitical priorities...
...For example, on a cluster of questions related to the scope of government, other data have shown committed Catholics registering as more liberal than liberal Protestants and secular Americans, not to mention evangelicals and other Catholics...
...Some groups warmed to Catholicism's cordial view of political community, with scarcely a nudge from facilitators...
...Bendyna, Perl, and other CARA researchers would likely say yes...
...The focus group participants sounded more Catholic when they had time to consider and shade their first reactions...
...Only 38 percent of all those polled thought "cutting taxes and reducing government spending" were more important...
...Unexpectedly, a fair number of Catholic Republicans (41 percent) held that view...
...This, he argued at a June 2000 consultation of the American Catholics in the Public Square Project, is propelling them irreversibly into the Republican coalition...
...Half-full or half-empty Despite the intermittent buzz about Catholic strategies or, a few years ago, about a "Catholic moment," research about the political sympathies of Catholics, especially the religious factor in those sympathies, is surprisingly sparse or tentative...
...One question asked whether the responsibility for getting poor people out of poverty rests primarily with "poor people themselves" or with society...
...Wagner's latest exhibit A, as presented in the January 2001 issue of Crisis, is the 2000 presidential election, in which weekly churchgoing Catholics went for Bush, noticeably though not dramatically, according to several surveys (see sidebar 2...
...Catholics were categorized here as communitarian if they explicitly identified themselves as conservative on moral issues and explicitly admitted to being liberal on social welfare issues...
...The focus groups indicate further that parishioners are able to see, when given a chance for reflection, that there is a connection between what they believe personally and collectively as Catholics, and the ways in which they live as citizens and voters...
...In the telephone survey taken in January and February 2000, 2,635 adult (self-identified) Catholics were asked how much they draw on their faith and values in making political decisions...
...Without that sort of empirical lens, we could have too narrow a view of how Catholic identity acts upon Catholics in the public square...
...While religious commitment pulls Catholics in conservative directions on moral and cultural issues, it frequently routes them in liberal directions on social welfare as well as capital punishment and immigration, as Bendyna showed in her illuminating doctoral dissertation at Georgetown two years ago...
...This may be a generational difference that transcends religious denominations...
...Some strategists believe active Catholics are ready to imitate evangelicals in this regard, moving to the Republican Party because of its political conservatism and promises of moral restoration, including its opposition to abortion...
...Most Catholics are not clones of their bishops, whose rare political blood type reads liberal on economic and international issues and conservative on moral and cultural issues such as abortion...
...About one-quarter replied "very much" and 21 percent said "not at all," with the largest portion (38 percent) giving a "somewhat" response and the smallest (14 percent) saying "not much...
...Leege has found that young adult Catholic men are increasingly attracted to the Republican Party out of devotion to rugged conservative economics, while young adult Catholic women are trending Democratic, lured partly by moral-cultural liberalism ("choice" in reproductive and lifestyle matters) as well as the old lunch-bucket liberalism...
...Many Catholics do, however, nurse sympathies in these directions...
...That would certainly pass as a religious influence on social-justice thinking...
...So Catholics were most likely to think of themselves as conservative on "moral issues like abortion" (42 percent) and least likely to say they are conservative "when it comes to social welfare programs that help the poor and needy" (29 percent...
...On social welfare issues and the role of government, however, they cruised toward the liberal side...
Vol. 129 • September 2002 • No. 15
