Explaining The Papist Vote

By Kleinheider Posted on April 18, 2008 at 1:11 pm

David Oatney gives us the benefit of his expertise on the Catholic vote in America:

Allow me to educate those of you who are regular readers but who are not Catholic about the nature of the Catholic vote in 2008. The national media tends to speak of the “Catholic vote” as though that is a singular thing and Catholics are a monolith. Catholics are not only an extremely diverse group of people, but there is a vast difference in the voting patterns of “Catholics” who identify themselves as such but don’t regularly attend Mass or make frequent use of the sacraments, and those who are weekly (or greater) Mass-attendants, receive the Eucharist, go to Confession, and observe to the best of their ability the precepts of the Church. Among the latter group, there has been an extremely sharp right turn in the last 30 years. While the Church in the U.S. isn’t big on getting involved in national elections, observant Catholics were sent an indirect but clear signal in 2000 that Al Gore was not acceptable. There was never any love lost between the Vatican and the Clintons, and it was presumed that Gore was more of the same.

permalink | Comment on this post

Tags: Catholics, Clinton, Gore, Holy See, The Vatican