A first look at Catholic voter guides

Michael Sean Winters | Sep. 7, 2016

Now that summer has ended and we head into the final two months of the election cycle, let's look at some voter guides directed specifically at people of faith. The very idea of such guides may strike people as a novelty, but remember that John Adams' campaign explicitly sought the religious vote by labeling Thomas Jefferson an atheist, the entire 1928 election was a referendum on the suitability of a Catholic to become president, and Hubert Humphrey knew exactly what he was doing when, in his 1960 primary fight with John F. Kennedy, he chose as his campaign theme song "Give me that old time religion!" Religion and politics have been all mixed together throughout the history of our secular republic.

Just yesterday, the Paulist Fathers released their reflection on the moral issues facing the country. Like many religious commentators, they misunderstand the history of politics, right off the bat. "Language and methods once considered out-of-bounds for political candidates have been found acceptable by a not-insignificant number of our fellow citizens," the good fathers write. "Prejudices that we hoped dead were merely sleeping. These prejudices have been awakened and given new voice." The idea that in some earlier time our elections were pristine exercises in rational moral discourse, and that ours is a uniquely degraded time, this betrays an ignorance of history. And, it was foolish to think that the prejudices that stalk our nation's psyche, religious, racial and ethnic, had vanished. So, I give the Paulists a D in American history.

The Paulists get an A in moral analysis, however. They begin each section with a quote from Scripture, making the point that the religious believer starts with her faith commitment and then goes in search of a political reality that coheres with that faith commitment, not the other way round. And, who could quibble with their list of important moral issues facing the nation: the rise in bigotry and xenophobia; acts of violence; the sacredness of all human life; economic uncertainty, the middle class and the poor; and care for our common home.

It is good to place the rise in bigotry and xenophobia first, not because it is an issue with more moral weight than, say, war or abortion or even income inequality, but because it is the thing that is different this year. Four years ago, Mitt Romney did not stoke the flames of white nationalism, and Barack Obama did not scratch the anti-Mormon itch. This year, unwilling to risk alienating Trump's supporters, plausible candidates refused to challenge Trump's inflammatory and bigoted harangues.

https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/first-look-catholic-voter-guides