Good Catholic info, sort of, but lousy ‘Catholic’ headline

March 12, 2013 By

Right now, editors in major newsrooms are doing everything they can to cover the papal horse race over at the Vatican. It’s crunch time.

Thus, journalists are asking questions such as these:

How will the cardinals vote?

What are they doing to campaign and win votes?

What are the political issues that are being debated?

What are the names of the factions?

Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, based on their stances on the political issues that matter to editors?

Who is most likely to favor the changes in ancient doctrines that the editors would like to see made?

At the heart of all this, as of late, is the drive to understand “what Catholics want” from a new pope. This leads to polls built on the assumption that there are people called “normal Catholics” who can be polled and plugged into the questions listed above.

Oh my. That sound you hear, after reading all of this, is the sound of church-going, active, doctrinally minded Catholics screaming, because framing a papal election in these terms — for them — is kind of like listening to fingernails scraping a chalkboard.

This produces headlines such as the following, care of The Washington Post:

Poll: Majority of U.S. Catholics favor change

The top of the story under this headline is oh so typical:

A majority of American Roman Catholics consider the church out of touch with their views and they want the new pope to usher in policies that reflect more modern attitudes, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

As cardinals gather in the Vatican to select a successor to retired Pope Benedict XVI, the poll suggests most Catholics in the United States hope the next pope will move the church in a new direction that someday could include married priests and female priests.

Yet even as six in 10 Catholics characterize the church as not in sync with their attitudes and lifestyles, 86 percent said it remains relevant, according to the poll, conducted last week. And more than two-thirds of the Catholics polled praise Benedict, saying he did a “good” or “excellent” job.

I am happy to report that, right after this newsy train wreck, the reporting team — as opposed to the headline writing team — got its act together and alerted readers to the reality behind these numbers.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Catholicism, Religion, Same-sex marriage, Sex, Social Issues, World, Worship

Quote of the year on Catholics and American politics

November 30, 2012 By

I don’t know how you feel about anonymous quotes, but, as a rule, I am opposed to them.

However, when faced with an important anonymous quote, one of the first questions I always ask as a journalist is, “Who is the author of the piece and does this person have the kind of authority and access that makes this anonymous quotation believable”?

In this case, the author of the following Our Sunday Visitor column is a person who every religion-beat reporter in her or his right mind just knows has the kind of access to land this killer quote. We are, you see, talking about Russell Shaw, author of one of the essential books for those who work the religion-news beat: “Nothing to Hide: Secrecy, Communication, and Communion in the Catholic Church.”

What does Shaw know about serious discussions that go on behind closed doors when the U.S. Catholic bishops get together? How much does he know about the delicate dance that goes on in the halls of Catholic power, when it comes to dealing with politicians and with reporters? Scan this short biography and tell me. The key is the nearly two decades as a press spokesman and information director for the American bishops.

Several years ago, I used this anecdote to capture some of the lessons Shaw learned about religion news and the Catholic hierarchy. This guy knows things. He also knows what he cannot know.

If you want to cause trouble for American bishops, stick them in a vise between Rome and the armies of dissenters employed on Catholic campuses.

But the bishops had to vote on Ex Corde Ecclesiae (“From the Heart of the Church”). After all, they had been arguing about this papal document throughout the 1990s, trying to square the doctrinal vision of Pope John Paul II with their American reality. Rome said their first response was too weak, when it came to insisting that Catholic schools remain openly Catholic. Finally, the bishops approved a tougher document on a 223-to-31 vote.

Soon after that 1999 showdown, someone “with a good reason for wanting to know” emailed a simple question to Russell Shaw of the United States Catholic Conference. Who voted against the statement?

“There was no way to know. In fact, the Vatican doesn’t know — for sure — who those 31 bishops where,” said Shaw, discussing one of the many mysteries in his book. …

“The secret ballots were destroyed,” he noted. “These days the voting process is even more secret, since the bishops just push a button and they’ve voted. Even if you wanted to know how your bishop voted, or you wanted the Vatican to know how your bishop voted, there’s no way to do that.”

Professionals have learned to read between the lines of debates held in the open sessions that the U.S. bishops choose to schedule. Outside those doors, insiders talk and spread rumors. Some bishops spin the press and others, usually those sending messages to Rome, hold press conferences, publish editorials or preach sermons. But many of the crucial facts remain cloaked in secrecy.

With all of that in mind, please scan the list – click here – of the Americans who are currently cardinals in the Roman Catholic Church.

Then read this recent offering by Shaw, which contains the anonymous quote mentioned at the top of this post. I offer this as part of our ongoing post-2012 election discussions here at GetReligion about why it is unwise for journalists to keep pinning current-day political labels on the foreheads of people whose lives are defined by centuries of religious doctrines.

So here is the soundbite that I think might be the religion-beat quote of the year.

The cardinal looked grim. “This is the situation now,” he said. “One political party is dangerous and the other is stupid.”

Since that was said in a private chat, it wouldn’t be fair for me to name the speaker. But his comment expresses sentiments that probably are widely shared in the American hierarchy today, as indeed they’re shared widely by many Americans. Bipartisan disgust with politics is a sorry byproduct of our recent, toxic election campaign. If the country should actually topple over the infamous fiscal cliff, plenty of people would suppose both parties gave it a shove.

The cardinal’s words also have considerable relevance for the Church, underlining something that’s now more clear than ever. While the Church is obliged to take both deeply flawed political coalitions as facts, it has no natural home in either. No cause for smugness here, though. Before lecturing the parties, the Church needs to face up to internal problems of its own, which requires recognizing what those problems are.

Yes, some of the paragraphs that follow in his column are linked to familiar patterns about the various kinds of “Catholic voters” and how the pronouncements of bishops inspire some of them, primarily those who embrace Confession and other Sacraments, and infuriate many others, especially cultural Catholics who go to Mass one or two times a year, if that. This is old terrain here at GetReligion.

The reason I think Shaw’s column should matter to informed reporters is that he digs into this subject — Catholic life beyond normal political labels — deep enough to end up in a totally logical place, yet a place that few politically-obsessed reporters would end up.

Where is that? Pulpits.

At their fall assembly in November, the bishops approved a document on preaching (.pdf) that makes the familiar point that a typical congregation today includes a lot of people who are “inadequately catechized.” Here is a delicate way of saying even many who go to Mass don’t have a clear notion of what the Church teaches and don’t see how it applies to them. That has deeply negative implications for political behavior and nearly everything else.

If Catholic teaching matters, this needs to change. The bishops should give early attention to a massive, continuing and intellectually serious program — one not directly tied to politics and the election cycle — to educate Catholics in the doctrine of their Church, including social doctrine and doctrine on human life and marriage. Isolated statements in the face of election year passions aren’t enough.

Homilies should be a part of this new effort but only part.

Read it all.

I mean, read all of Shaw’s column or read all of the U.S. Catholic bishops document on preaching. Take your pick or read both. There’s news in there, news that is hard to label.

Filed Under: Catholicism, Journalism, Marriage & family, Politics, Religion, Same-sex marriage, Social Issues Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The day after: The prophet John Green, revisited

November 7, 2012 By

It should be a quiet day on the religion-beat front, in the wake of yesterday’s nail-biters in the real world of politics. If the past repeats itself, as it often does, it will take a few days for the religion elements of the story to emerge, other than the usual “Obama won the Catholic vote (whatever that is)” headlines.

We do know several things for sure, on the day after. The ultimate ties that bind are race and religion, even when those two realities pull in different directions. The map also shows the degree to which many working-class voters in the urban Northeast and Midwest remain in deep, deep pain and many are convinced that the government is their ultimate, if not only, friend. GOP leaders seem to be deaf to their populist cries. (Then again, I am a registered Democrat who just bought a Chevy Cruze).

In its wrap-up analysis, USA Today went back to the map:

The changing U.S. electorate split in two Tuesday — not only along lines of political party and ideology but also by race and ethnicity, gender and marital status, region and religion, education and age. The divisions are even sharper than they were four years ago, when Obama attracted broader support, especially among whites.

But this time the contest was much closer in a country that is undergoing tectonic shifts in its demography. “We have never had a more polarized electorate,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres says.

If there was one thing that seemed to unite the nation, it was a sense that the stakes were high and the election mattered.

The nation froze in place in an amazing state of gridlock. Things pretty much remain the same on the nation’s hot-button moral, cultural and religious issues: The only vote that actually matters, at least for a few years, is that of Justice Anthony Kennedy. It’s his country, but he lets us live here. For church-state insiders, all eyes are on his editing pencil and numerous First Amendment cases (free speech, freedom of association and religious liberty) are headed his way.

As election night plodded on, I kept thinking about University of Akron scholar John Green and that recent Pew Forum “Nones” study and America’s growing coalition on the secular and religious left. To be specific, I flashed back to a Media Project seminar in the summer of 2009, when Green stood at a whiteboard and described the changes that he was seeing in the landscape of American religion. Everything he said on that day showed up years later, in the 2012 Pew Forum study of the religiously unaffiliated.

On the right side of the American religious marketplace, defined in terms of doctrine and practice, is a camp of roughly 20 percent (maybe less) of believers who are seriously trying to practice their chosen faith at the level of daily life, said Green. Then, on the other end of the spectrum, there is a growing camp of people who are atheists, agnostics or vaguely spiritual believers who define their beliefs primarily in terms of the old doctrines that they no longer believe. This is especially true when it comes to issues of salvation and sex. As the old saying goes, on these issues these spiritual-but-not-religious believers reject all absolute truths except the statement that there are no absolute truths.

In recent national elections this growing camp of secularists and religiously unaffiliated people have formed a powerful coalition with Catholic liberals, liberal Jews and the declining numbers of people found in America’s liberal religious denominations (such as the “seven sisters” of oldline Protestantism). Add it all up, Green said in 2009, and you had a growing camp of roughly 20 percent or so on the cultural left.

The bottom line: This coalition was emerging as the dominant voice in the modern Democratic Party on matters of culture and religion. Just as Republicans have, in recent decades, had to wrestle with the reality — the pluses and the minuses — of the energy found on the Religious Right, leaders in the Democratic Party will now be faced with the delicate task of pleasing the Religious Left and its secular allies. This could, to say the least, shape the party’s relationships with the Catholic Church, Orthodox Jews, Muslims and other major religious bodies.

Here’s what Green had to say, a few weeks ago, after the press gathering announcing the “Nones” report. This is taken from a column I wrote for the Scripps Howard News Service.

The unaffiliated overwhelmingly reject ancient doctrines on sexuality with 73 percent backing same-sex marriage and 72 percent saying abortion should be legal in all, or most, cases. Thus, the “Nones” skew heavily Democratic as voters — with 75 percent supporting Barack Obama in 2008. The unaffiliated are now a stronger presence in the Democratic Party than African-American Protestants, white mainline Protestants or white Catholics.

“It may very well be that in the future the unaffiliated vote will be as important to the Democrats as the traditionally religious are to the Republican Party,” said Green, addressing the religion reporters. “If these trends continue, we are likely to see even sharper divisions between the political parties.”

Sound familiar?

So where does this go? Where will journalists be looking for the next wrinkle in this story?

The reality that trumps many of these religious divisions is, of course, race. At some point, cultural conservatives are going to have to find a way to separate married and religious African-Americans and Latinos from the single adults and secular people in those large ethnic groups. White voters divide alone lines of religious practice (the “pew gap”) and marital status, while black and Latino voters do not.

If cultural conservatives are not able to do this, then do the math.

Meanwhile, here comes the deeper information from the exit polls. If journalists continue to march in lockstep, we are only days away from reports about the growing division between young evangelicals and old evangelicals (whatever the word “evangelical” means).

Filed Under: Atheists & Agnostics, Baptists, Catholicism, Evangelicals, Islam, Judaism, Mainline, Marriage & family, Pentecostalism, Politics, Race, Religion, Same-sex marriage, Sex, Social Issues Tagged With: , , , ,

(Cue: audible sigh) Hunting for ‘Catholic voters,’ again

October 2, 2012 By

The myth of the “Catholic voter” lives on and on and for perfectly logical reasons, even though use of this term adds next to nothing of our understanding of public life in America today.

To understand the power of this vague and largely meaningless term, check out the top of this recent NPR piece:

Since 1972, every single presidential candidate who has won the popular vote has also won the Catholic vote. But with Catholics making up one in every four voters, pinning down what exactly the Catholic vote is becomes tricky.

Catholics no longer reliably vote for any one party, but historically, they have voted Democratic.

Catholics no longer reliably vote for any one party, in large part, because there is no one, united body of Catholic believers in America — with “Catholic” being defined in terms of faith, practice and doctrine. If there is no one Catholic faith, in the pews, then there is no one Catholic vote in voting booths.

To write about the “Catholic vote” today, one must take seriously the doctrinal conflicts between Catholics and, especially, their commitment to the practice of their faith and participation in the Sacraments. At the bare minimum, journalists have to take into account the whole “pew gap” factor, as well as differences between white Catholics and Latinos.

Want to break some ground in a poll? Find out if Latinos who attend Mass once a week or more (and perhaps go to regular Confession) vote differently from Latinos who do not.

Meanwhile, we continue to see plenty of mainstream journalists (this is from a short Religion News Service piece, as carried in The Washington Post) using language such as this:

President Obama’s support among Catholic voters has surged since June, according to a new poll, despite a summer that included the Catholic bishops’ religious freedom campaign and the naming of Rep. Paul Ryan, a Catholic, as the GOP’s vice-presidential candidate.

On June 17, Obama held a slight edge over Mitt Romney among Catholics (49-47 percent), according to the Pew Research Center. Since then, Obama has surged ahead, and now leads 54-39 percent, according to a Pew poll conducted on Sept. 16. … Obama and Romney are essentially tied among white Catholics, which some pollsters call the ultimate swing group. …

From June 21-July 4, the U.S. Catholic bishops held a “Fortnight for Freedom,” with Masses, prayer groups and presentations in dozens of dioceses nationwide. The campaign was directed in part against an Obama administration mandate that requires some religious institutions, such as colleges and hospitals, to provide cost-free contraception coverage to employees.

John C. Green, an expert on religion and politics at the University of Akron in Ohio, said Obama’s surge among Catholic voters does not mean the bishops’ campaign was ineffective. But religious freedom is not the most salient issue for Catholics during an election dominated by economic concerns, he said.

“It’s not the issue that most middle-of-the-road Catholics are responding to,” Green said.

Note, please, Green’s reference to “middle-of-the-road Catholics.”

Yes, it would have been great to have known how he defined that term, since no one knows more about these issues than the sage from Ohio. You can tell that the Pew people know the score, as well, since the following information shows up in a news report published in the more nuanced, niche, context of Catholic World News:

Among Catholics who attend Mass at least weekly, Romney holds a 51%-42% lead. Catholics who attend Mass “monthly” or “yearly” favor Obama by a 53%-39% advantage, while Catholics who attend Mass “seldom” or “never” back Obama by a 61%-32% margin. …

The survey also found that white Catholics favor Obama by a 47%-46% margin.

Protestants favor Romney by a 50%-42% margin; among white evangelical Protestants, the pro-Romney advantage is 74%-19%, while the two candidates are in a 46%-46% dead heat among mainline Protestants.

The political give and take, as usual, seems to be in the tense zone between weekly Mass Catholics and monthly Mass Catholics. But why is this the case? Answer that question and you are chasing the actual Catholic votes that, as a rule, are in play election after election. That’s where the story is, in the pews and, I would argue, at Communion rails. It’s a story about doctrines and the wide arena of Catholic social teachings — all of them.

Over the years, your GetReligionistas have discussed these factors in evolving language that I first heard from a veteran priest here in Washington, D.C. This language fits with the reality that I see deep in the Pew numbers year after year, with the exception of the fourth category, where the poll-slate goes blank.

Once again, these terms define Catholic voters in terms of religion, more than politics, with the emphasis on beliefs and practice:

* Ex-Catholics. While most ex-Catholics are solid for the Democrats, the large percentage that has left to join conservative Protestant churches (perhaps even many Latinos) lean to GOP.

* Cultural Catholics who may go to church a few times a year. This may be an undecided voter … depending on what is happening with the economy, foreign policy, etc. Leans to Democrats.

* Sunday-morning American Catholics. These voters are regulars in the pews and may even fill leadership roles in their parishes. These are the Catholic voters that are really up for grabs, the true swing voters that the candidates are after.

* The “sweats the details” Catholic who goes to Confession, is active in the full sacramental life of the parish and almost always backs the Vatican, when it comes to matters of faith and practice. This is where the GOP has made its big gains in recent decades, but this is a very, very small slice of the American Catholic pie.

Once again, I would argue that one of the most important, but least covered, stories in American life is the status of the Sacrament of Confession in Catholicism today. It’s a religion story, not a political story, but this is an issue that touches many others in Catholic pews and at Catholic altar rails.

Filed Under: Catholicism, Journalism, Politics, Social Issues, Worship

Bishops are Republicans, Nuns are Catholic

September 1, 2012 By


Archbishop Timothy Dolan has been invited to give the closing prayer at this week’s Democratic Convention in Charlotte. The New York Times reports the New York cardinal will be one of matched pair of high profile Catholics to appear on the podium before the Democratic faithful, with Sister Simone Campbell of “Nuns on the Bus” fame completing the set.

Religion reporter Laurie Goodstein’s story “At Democratic Convention, a Cardinal and an Outspoken Nun” sets the scene and offers a bit of the “why” — but I’ve seen little so far on the “how” — and outside of the religious press, not much on whether this is a good idea at all.

The Times reports the news the:

Democrats are giving a convention speaking slot to Sister Simone Campbell, an outspoken advocate for the poor and elderly, according to an aide with President Obama’s campaign who would speak only on background.

In doing so, the Democratic Party has balanced its own Catholic ticket by showcasing both Sister Campbell, who pushed for the passage of the Obama administration’s health care overhaul, and Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, who is suing the White House over a provision in the health care overhaul that requires employers to cover birth control in their employee insurance plans.

The article is framed in good cop/bad cop terms, but seeks to balance the piece by positing a degree of moral equivalence between the Dolan and Campbell’s political activities.

Cardinal Dolan, who says he is a personal friend of Representative Paul D. Ryan, Mitt Romney’s running mate. has been perceived by many Catholic commentators as being too cozy with Republicans, while Sister Campbell has been seen as being too supportive of Democratic causes. In June, she led the “Nuns on the Bus” tour to call attention to cuts affecting the poor and elderly in the budget proposed by Mr. Ryan.

The two will have different roles at the convention:

Cardinal Dolan will give the closing prayer at the convention, and Sister Campbell will speak but not offer a prayer.

And the story then r0unds off with a few paragraphs about Sister Campbell. All in all a solid story with an editorial voice that favors the nun over the cardinal. The theme of the article is that the liberal Campbell is balanced by the conservative Dolan.

What would have made the story stronger would have been a development of the why and how themes. We have surface story of the Democrats playing “me too”, inviting Dolan because the Republicans did. The import being the Democrats are seeking to curry favor with Catholic voters in the same way the Republicans have. But Campbell?

The Times article notes her support for the President’s healthcare initiative and suggests she is an alternative Catholic voice. Yet is there more? In an Aug 24 story in the New Yorker — before the invitation from the Democrats was given to Dolan, Hendrick Hertzberg wrote:

Dolan, as you may also have heard, heads up the male hierarchy’s drive to portray Obamacare as an attack on freedom of religion and is a leading enforcer in the Vatican-ordered crackdown on women religious who regard ministering to the poor and the sick as more urgent and more admirable than railing against contraception and homosexuality.

He then cites with approval the Aug 24 edition of the Carville – Greenberg Memorandum, where James Carville argues the Democrats should invite Campbell to spite Dolan and exploit the social justice agenda of the church for their political advantage.

And now, a week later, we have Campbell speaking and Dolan praying in Charlotte.  How did we get to this point? Do Dolan and and Campbell represent different wings of the same church, different views of what it means to live a Catholic life? Is it wise for the Catholic Church to allow individuals to become symbols of the conflicting views of its teachings?

Should the Catholic Church allow itself to be used by the national political parties in this way? I am not speaking of separation of church/state issues, but whether the integrity of the church, any church, is damaged when it comes in contact with secular politics. The assumption here is that it is social good for religious organizations — as opposed to religious individuals — to take a stand in the public square. Is that a valid assumption?

And should these issues be raised in the reporting on these questions? Not every story need be an essay on the merits of the marriage of politics and church leaders — but should there not be a voice offered from time to time that sees the arrangement differently? What say you GetReligion readers? Have I strayed into editorializing here by suggesting that clergy might be seen, but not heard at political conventions? Am I pushing my interpretation ahead of the simple facts of who is doing what in Charlotte — or is there a deeper truth that has yet to be revealed in the reporting of these issues?

And the title to this post? It comes from the Carville video –his mangling (deliberate?) of the old saw, “Bishops are Republicans, Nuns are Democrats.”

Filed Under: Catholicism, Journalism, Politics

Catholic Health Association switches sides on HHS mandate

June 17, 2012 By

Why does huge news frequently drop on a Friday? It’s an old political trick to get bad news out in the Friday Night News Dump. Reporters loathe these as they want nothing more than to head to the bar (or whatever) and begin the weekend.

This year has seen quite a few Friday news releases affecting religion reporters, mostly related somehow to the HHS mandate requiring religious groups to purchase insurance coverage that may violate their religious beliefs. And this Friday fit into that pattern with some pretty big news about one of the key players in this debate switching sides. Here’s how the Washington Post put it:

The White House has lost perhaps its most prominent Catholic ally in its controversial effort to expand contraception coverage, with the huge Catholic Health Association saying Friday that the mandate for most religious employers to offer coverage would not “adequately meet the religious liberty concerns.”

The change of position at the association, the country’s largest group of nonprofit health care providers, comes as polls show President Obama and Mitt Romney tied among registered Catholic voters. In the last four of five presidential races, the candidate who won Catholics won the presidency.

Ah politics. Something tells me, however, that we won’t see the same types of stories about CHA that we were seeing in recent weeks about the Catholic bishops and other opponents of the mandate having a secret partisan plot against the current chief executive. I liked how this paragraph explained the situation in laymen’s terms:

The mandate that employers, including most religious ones, offer employees a variety of preventative services including contraception without any out-of-pocket charge, has been controversial among some from the start, particularly Catholic bishops. Actual houses of worship were exempted, but not other faith-based institutions like schools or hospitals that don’t primarily employ or serve people of the same faith.

It might also be nice to point out the abortion drug and sterilization issues, which are also of concern. The short blog post didn’t mention something I found interesting from the group’s letter, which is that they suggested the federal government might just use taxpayer dollars to fund these services (if they really think these things are important to provide at no cost to employees) rather than get religious employers directly involved. I was curious how that suggestion matched up with Catholic teaching. A writer at Commonweal picked up on the CHA proposal and had some interesting thoughts about it, if you’re interested. So did this writer at National Catholic Register.

Which reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to write about but probably won’t because the moment has passed. A few weeks ago there was a story that got quite a bit of play in the media alleging that bishops (although only one was named) were “divided in legal battle against Obama birth control mandate.” The one guy on the record, Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of the Diocese of Stockton, immediately clarified. He said “I stand solidly with my brother bishops in our common resolve to overturn the unacceptable intrusion of government into the life of the Church by the HHS Mandate.”

And when I was reading his overall comments, I was struck by how his initial comments weren’t actually that different from his clarification. He seemed worried that some people might exploit the bishops’ legal arguments or treat them as partisan. He wanted to make sure that didn’t happen precisely because he thought the issue was so important. It was a pretty nuanced and subtle position but you can see how it can easily be manipulated by media and advocates who want to cast someone’s position one way or the other.

And believe it or not, I think that something similar happened with Sister Carol Keehan, the head of the Catholic Health Association. Yes, it’s true that her statement in support of the suggested modification was highlighted by the White House in advance of President Obama’s statement on same and that her language was pretty effusive. But later that same day, she came out in a different direction, saying:

CHA and its members were profoundly disappointed to learn that the definition of a religious employer was not going to be broadened in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ rules for preventive services for women.

The impact of being told we do not fit the new definition of a religious employer and therefore cannot operate our ministries following our consciences has jolted us.

It is her first statement — and not the later — that made it into so many news stories the next few days, weeks and months. I don’t think the media have done a good job of accurately portraying CHA’s opposition to the suggested modification.

Yes, this is a big change of official position, but CHA’s history on this mandate is more complex than you’ve probably been told.

Anyway, even though this was a Friday night news dump, I don’t think it will stay a Friday night news story. It’s big. In the meantime, here’s an initial story in the Wall Street Journal, another from the Associated Press, Religion News Service here, and thoughts from Michael Sean Winters at National Catholic Reporter. Let us know what additional news stories you see that are particularly good or bad.

Angelfish picture via Shutterstock.

Filed Under: Catholicism, Journalism, Politics

Gay marriage and the French Catholic vote

May 17, 2012 By

In light of the media’s fascination with interplay between sex, the Catholic Church and politics, I am always surprised at its lack of curiosity when these worlds collide overseas.

The 6 May 2012 French presidential election is a case in point. Socialist Party (PS) candidate François Hollande captured 18 million votes to incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy’s 16.8 million: 51.64 per cent to 48.36 per cent. The role religion played in the election has received little play in the U.S. save for conservative bloggers, who reported that 93 per cent of France’s 2 million Muslim voters went for Hollande.

Some liberal blogs are warning of the resurgence of a Catholic far right. Writing in the Huffington Post, Eric Margolis argued the National Front was one of the winners in the election, as a Socialist government would invigorate the conservative fringe parties at the expense of Sarkozy’s center-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) party.

But the National Front — xenophobic, racist, violently anti-Muslim and anti-Europe — is poison to moderate French and many members of the UMP. To no surprise, UMP may split, or disintegrate, over the issue of joining forces with the National Front, seen by many French as a reborn fascist movement. In fact, it’s not really fascist, but an avatar of the old 1940 far-right, ultra-conservative, ultra-Catholic movement.

It may very well transpire that a Socialist victory will empower the parties of the far right, but I believe Margolis is off the mark in lumping the far-right with the ultra-Catholic movement (and what exactly is the ultra-Catholic movement anyway?). As I noted in a pre-election post, the French Catholic Church did not endorse any one candidate for the election, but it made it clear that the policies of the National Front were not supported by the Church.

The first article I have seen that looked into how Catholics voted came in the Catholic weekly, La Vie — and its results were a surprise as they closely matched observations made by the editor of GetReligion Terry Mattingly about the American Catholic vote.

Roman Catholics who “go to mass as least once a month” voted 4 to 1 in favor of Sarkozy: 79 per cent to 21 per cent, according to a poll commissioned by Le Vie and conducted by the Harris Institute. Catholics who went to Mass less than once a month, voted 62 per cent to 38 per cent for Sarkozy. Those who self-identified as Catholics but who did not attend mass  showed the same voting patters as the French population at large. Those who identified themselves as atheists voted 70 per cent to 30 per cent in favor of Hollande.

In an odd twist to the conventional media wisdom, Sarkozy increased his margins among mass-going Catholics in this election form 70 per cent in 2005 to 79 per cent this month. What was odd about this increase was that Hollande campaigned on a theme of personal probity — fostering a dour frugal image in contrast to the flamboyant  Sarkozy.

Gay marriage was one of the reasons for the Catholic rejection of Hollande, the survey found.  In an interview with the French gay-oriented glossy magazine TÊTU Hollande stated he would honor the PS’s campaign promise to legalize gay marriage and gay adoption — measures rejected by the UMP-dominated French parliament in 2011. The Harris survey found that mass-going Catholics were not keen on France’s new Socialist President because he was “in favor of same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples.”

Last month the LA Times reported that:

A recent poll for the Journal du Dimanche newspaper found that 64% of French disapproved of Sarkozy. That’s higher even than the rating for the unpopular Valery Giscard d’Estaing during his tenure. Giscard was the last president to lose his reelection bid, in 1981.

The truth is that Sarkozy, 57, has never succeeded in shaking off the negative impression he made at the beginning of his five-year term, that the conservative leader was the “president of the rich.” That image plays badly, especially given that a few months after he took office, the global recession hit, leading to belt-tightening measures.

Before the 2007 election, he had hinted that he would go into retreat in the days before the transfer of power to consider how to lead France. Instead, he threw a party at Fouquet’s, one of the most ostentatious restaurants in France. Then he spent a few days vacationing in the Mediterranean on the yacht of a billionaire businessman friend.

Sarkozy, the French were told, had no hang-ups about celebrity or money; instead of reassuring them, however, the flashy watches and aviator sunglasses simply cemented his reputation as the “bling-bling” president.

Distaste among French voters concerned with social values — the segment where most mass-going Catholic voters can be found — for Sarkozy’s lifestyle appears not to have translated into more votes for Hollande.

La Vie explained the “massive” move to the right by practicing Catholics by stating:

Among the many factors to consider – sociological, economic and cultural – should undoubtedly include anthropological and ethical convictions of these strong Christians.

And for French Catholics gay marriage appeared to be key amongst these convictions. The American Catholic voter matrix created by Tmatt — with the Catholic vote divided amongst Ex-Catholics, Cultural Catholics, Sunday-morning American Catholics and “Sweats the details” Roman Catholic — appears to hold true for France also. 

It may be that the sort of article that looks at the big picture of values voters is beyond a newspaper and lies in the realm of a monthly. However, I would welcome an acknowledgement in the American press that the issues that animate our political debates are not unique to these shores.

What say you GetReligion readers? Is this merely interesting ephemera, or a news angle that should be developed further?

Filed Under: Catholicism, Got news?, Journalism, Marriage & family, Politics, World

And now, the myth of the “Jewish voter”

April 12, 2012 By

What would your GetReligionistas do without the many faithful readers who constantly send us URLs for stories that raise issues relevant our work here?

We simply can’t read everything that’s out there in the mainstream press, no matter how hard we try to keep up with the essentials. But readers see lots of things and often connect the dots that are needed to link news items back to the journalistic terrain that we try to cover.

For example, consider this recent New York Times piece on religion and politics. Here’s the top of the story:

A poll of American Jewish voters shows that they overwhelmingly support Barack Obama for president, just as they did four years ago, and that Israel and Iran rank low on their list of priority issues in the presidential election.

The results cast doubt on the claim that Mr. Obama has alienated a significant swath of Jewish voters because of his rocky relationship with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We show no slippage in Jewish support for President Obama,” said Robert P. Jones, chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute, an independent research group based in Washington D.C., which conducted the poll of 1,004 Jewish adults from Feb. 23 to March 5. The margin of error is plus or minus five percentage points.

Support for Mr. Obama is still higher among Jews than among the general electorate, with 62 percent of Jewish voters saying they would like to see him elected, and 30 percent saying they preferred the Republican candidate.

A Jewish reader sent us this email with a note posing this question: Is it possible that a “pew gap” can be seen emerging among American Jews, one similar to that found among the alleged “Catholic voters” and the American population in general? Might the whole concept of a unified “Jewish vote” now be a myth?

In particular, this reader wondered if the divisions among Jewish voters might resemble those found in that familiar GetReligion typology about four camps among “Catholic voters.” You remember the one:

* Ex-Catholics. While most ex-Catholics are solid for the Democrats, the large percentage that has left to join conservative Protestant churches (including some Latinos) may lean to GOP.

* Cultural Catholics who may go to church a few times a year. This may be an undecided voter … depending on what is happening with the economy, foreign policy, etc. Leans to Democrats.

* Sunday-morning American Catholics. This voter is a regular in the pew and may even play some leadership role in the parish. This is the Catholic voter that is really up for grabs, the true swing voter that the candidates are after.

* The “sweats the details” Roman Catholic who goes to confession. Is active in the full sacramental life of the parish and almost always backs the Vatican, when it comes to matters of faith and practice. This is where the GOP has made its big gains in recent decades, but this is a very, very small slice of the American Catholic pie.

Everything starts with questions about worship attendance.

Thus, note in particular that the Times says that Obama commands a rock-solid 60-plus percent of the “Jewish voters,” while 30 percent prefer various Republican options.

Those percentages may sound familiar, for those who follow the debates about the declining number of American Jews who regularly or semi-regularly attend worship services. It’s hard to pin down a specific number, but various surveys have found that somewhere between 25 and 15 percent of American Jews attend worship services on a weekly basis.

While, clearly, there are religious Jews who remain dedicated Democrats, is it possible that the 30 percent of American Jews who lean right politically are also more traditionally religious and, thus, tend to take part in worship services more often? If so, pollsters need to start inserting questions about worship attendance into surveys seeking insights into the future of the mythical, monolithic “Jewish vote.”

This issue actually came up here at GetReligion last year, linked to another mainstream news report. At that time, I wrote:

Obviously there are secular Jews, there are cultural Jews (who go to High Holy Days services and that’s about it), there are doctrinally liberal Jews who frequent pews, there are several varieties of Orthodox Jews, etc., etc. I would assume that Obama is doing better with voters in some of these camps than in others. …

If you are a Democratic Party fieldworker, will you get a warmer welcome at a Jewish community center or an Orthodox synagogue?

So, other than worship attendance, what are the other cultural and doctrinal issues that pollsters need to probe to better understand the emerging trends among the various kinds of Jewish voters? Ideas anyone?

Filed Under: Journalism, Judaism, Politics, Worship