The Catholic factor

Some bishops, perhaps ambitious for Vatican approval, have announced that they will deny the sacraments to Kerry because of his attitudes on abortion and civil unions for gays. It may seem odd that men who have lost all credibility and respect for the sexual-abuse mess they have created are willing to expose themselves to the charge of blatant hypocrisy just now. However, if they make denial of sacraments a big deal in the election campaign, they will certainly contribute to a possible Kerry victory. If voters see that the senator is banned from speaking, let us say, at the University of Notre Dame, that will infuriate just enough Catholics to decide a close election. If he approaches the altar in Boston and is waved away, it will notably improve sympathy among Catholics who also have been waved away when they demand a full accounting for the sexual-abuse mess.

A more important wild card is Latino voters. Despite Karl Rove's grandiose plans, the Latinos are not likely to align themselves with the rednecks who are their natural enemies, and will tend to be loyal to the Democrats with whom they agree on social welfare issues. President Bush's attempts at immigration reform are too patently an election ploy to have much impact.

The issue about the Latino voters (I actually prefer the term Latins) is not whether they are Democrats, but whether they will vote. For reasons of culture and history they are not politically mobilized. (Whether they are less likely to be mobilized than Italians were a century ago is an interesting question.)

Here in Arizona (where I teach some of the time) a slight increase in their voting rates helped Clinton to win in 1996. If the Democrats could mobilize most of the Latinos in the state, it would become permanently Democratic (and the East Valley Mormons who currently run it would be swept out of office and my colleagues at the university would win a long-overdue raise).

The increase of the Latino proportion in the country and their propensity (in part because of Catholic communalism) to be Democrats is one of the great long term assets for the Democratic Party if it is able to make the most of the opportunity. Whether the Kerry candidacy will be able to accomplish such a mobilization remains to be seen. However, and with some exceptions, the Latinos (as every other ethnic group) are likely to turn out and vote for one of their own. Hence a vice presidential candidate like Gov. Richardson of New Mexico might appeal to many Latinos. The Kerry team would be making a serious mistake if they ignore that possibility.

Would the presence of two Catholics on the ticket turn off some Protestant voters? Those who might be offended are not likely to vote for Kerry anyway, but it would be a calculated risk.

There is a final dimension of the "Catholic factor" which must be whispered: There is a certain visceral dislike among many Catholics for some forms of evangelical enthusiasm -- the demand to know whether one "has been saved," the implication that Catholics are not "Christian," challenges of "Mary worship," denunciation with biblical quotes. Some of this antipathy dates to Catholic servicemen's first encounter with fundamentalism in World War II camps in the South. With the presently available data there is no way to quantify such dislike. However, if the appeal to Bush's "base" should become more blatantly evangelical (like a visit to Oral Roberts University) there could be a Catholic backlash.

In sum, Catholics are different because they have different views of reality than do other Americans -- more communal rather than individualist, and more sacramental rather than secular. After all these years those different views should be obvious to candidates, their media advisors, political pundits and editorial writers. This ignorance of the Catholic factor suggests that nativist bigotry may still have a grip on the cultural elite.

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