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Catholic Church and politics in the United States

Members of the Catholic Church have been active in the elections of the United States since the mid 19th century. The United States has never had religious parties (unlike much of the world, especially in Europe and Latin America). There has never been an American Catholic religious party, either local, state or national.

In 1776 Catholics comprised less than 1% of the population of the new nation, but their presence grew rapidly after 1840 with immigration from Germany, Ireland, and later from Italy, Poland and elsewhere in Catholic Europe from 1840 to 1914, and also from Latin America in the 20th and 21st centuries. Catholics now comprise 25% to 27% of the national vote, with over 68 million members today. 85% of today's Catholics report their faith to be "somewhat" to "very important" to them.[1][2] From the mid-19th century down to 1964 Catholics were solidly Democratic, sometimes at the 80–90% level. From the 1930s to the 1950s Catholics formed a core part of the New Deal Coalition, with overlapping memberships in the church, labor unions, big city machines, and the working class, all of which promoted liberal policy positions in domestic affairs and anti-communism during the Cold War.

Since the election of the nation's first Catholic president in 1960, Catholics have split about 50–50 between the two major parties in national elections. Beginning with the decline of unions and big city machines, increased suburbanization and with upward mobility into the middle classes, Catholics have drifted away from liberalism of the Democratic Party and toward conservatism on economic issues (such as taxes). Since the end of the Cold War, their strong anti-Communism has faded in importance. On social issues the Catholic Church takes strong positions against abortion and same-sex marriage and has formed coalitions with Protestant evangelicals.[3] In 2015 Pope Francis declared that man-made climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels. The Pope stated the warming of the planet is rooted in "a throwaway culture" and the developed world's indifference to the destruction of the planet as it pursues short-term economic gains. However, the Pope's statements on climate change were generally met with indifference among Catholics[4] while Catholic commentaries ranged from praise to dismissal, with some stating that it was not binding or magisterial due to its scientific nature.[5] The Pope's statements on these issues were most prominently laid out in encyclical Laudato si'. The publication by Francis had put pressure on Catholics seeking the Republican Party nomination for president of the United States in 2016, including Jeb Bush and Rick Santorum, who "have questioned or denied the established science of human-caused climate change, and have harshly criticized policies designed to tax or regulate the burning of fossil fuels."[6]

Religious tensions were major issues in the presidential election of 1928 when the Democrats nominated Al Smith, a Catholic who was defeated, and in 1960 when the Democrats also nominated John F. Kennedy, a Catholic who was elected. For the next three elections, a Catholic would be nominated for the vice presidency by one of the two major parties (Bill Miller in 1964, Ed Muskie in 1968, Tom Eagleton and then Sargent Shriver in 1972), but the ticket would lose. Geraldine Ferraro would continue the tradition in 1984, but she also lost, and the non-Catholic vice-presidential streak was broken in 2008. A Catholic, John Kerry, lost the 2004 election to incumbent George W. Bush, a Methodist, who may have won the majority of Catholic vote.[7] The 2012 election was the first where both major party vice presidential candidates were Catholic, Joe Biden and Paul Ryan.

As of January 2023, there are 27 (out of 100) Catholics in the United States Senate, and 122 (out of 435) Catholics in the United States House of Representatives, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.[8] In 2008, Joe Biden became the first Catholic to be elected Vice President of the United States. His successor Mike Pence was raised as a Catholic but he converted to evangelical Protestantism later in his life. In 2020, Biden went on to be elected as the second Roman Catholic president of the United States.

19th century edit

 
Charles Carroll

Before 1840, Catholics constituted a small minority and as a result, they played a relatively minor role in early American history.[9] Catholics only constituted a significant community in Maryland and Baltimore became an early center of Catholicism. From the American Revolution until the end of the 18th century, about 1% of the American population (about 30,000) was Catholic. Still, Catholics were among the Founding Fathers and they were also a part of the First Congress; Daniel Carroll serving Maryland's 6th congressional district,[10] and Charles Carroll of Carrollton serving as the first senator from Maryland.[11][12] Presidential candidates did not seek Catholic votes until Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay did so in 1832.[9]

Catholics and urban America edit

The role of Catholics in American culture and elections dramatically changed as a result of the mass immigration of Catholics from Europe, especially from Germany and Ireland. By 1840, there were about 600,000 Catholics in the United States. In the 1840s, 200,000 Irish immigrated to escape poverty. The Great Famine of Ireland which lasted from 1845 to 1852 caused the Irish population in America to number 962,000, the number doubled in the next ten years.[13] Even larger numbers of immigrants came from traditionally Catholic regions of Germany and traditionally Catholic regions of other parts of Europe. Because most of these new arrivals lived in ethnic communities, they typically joined the local Catholic church that was in communion with Rome through the local diocese; how many of them cut their ties with the Catholic Church is a matter of speculation.[14] The Irish Catholics took controlling positions in the Catholic Church, labor unions, and Democratic organizations in the big cities, thus forming overlapping centers of strength. The sudden new arrival of so many Catholics, charges of political corruption, and fears of papal interference caused anti-Catholicism to grow, including the short-lived Know Nothings party in the 1850s which demanded a purification of elections and statutes from Catholic influence.[9]

Many Catholics served in the Civil War armies, they served in both the North and the South, and the bishops rejected the antiwar and anti-draft sentiments of some Catholics. The rapid rise of the Irish out of poverty, and the continuing growth in membership, especially in industrial and urban areas, made the church the largest denomination in the U.S. Distrusting public schools which were dominated by Protestants, Catholics built their own network of parochial elementary schools (and, later, they built high schools), as well as colleges, and public funding of parochial schools was a controversial issue.[9] As the Bennett Law episode in 1890 in Wisconsin demonstrated, Catholics were willing to cooperate politically with German Lutherans to protect their parochial schools. A distinct Catholic vote existed, however; in the late 19th century, 75% of Irish and German Catholics in America voted for Democratic presidential candidates. [9] The Irish increasingly controlled the Democratic party machinery in major cities.[15]

 
Political cartoon about the use of anti-Catholic sentiment in Hayes' presidential election

Religious lines were sharply drawn in the North in the Third Party System that lasted from the 1850s to the 1890s. (In the South the Catholics voted the same as Protestants, with race as the main dividing line.)[16] Methodists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Scandinavian Lutherans and other Protestant pietists in the North were tightly linked to the GOP. In sharp contrast, liturgical groups, especially the Catholics, Episcopalians, and German Lutherans, looked to the Democratic Party for protection from pietistic moralism, especially prohibition. While both parties cut across economic class structures, the Democrats were supported more heavily by its lower tiers.

Cultural issues, especially prohibition and foreign language schools, became important because of the sharp religious divisions in the electorate. In the North, about 50% of the voters were pietistic Protestants who believed that the government should be used to reduce the pervasiveness of social sins, such as drinking. Liturgical churches comprised over a quarter of the vote and they wanted the government to stay out of personal morality issues. Prohibition debates and referendums heated up elections in most states over a period of decades, as national prohibition was finally passed in 1918 (and it was repealed in 1932), serving as a major issue between the wet Democrats and the dry GOP.[16]

Voting Behavior by Religion, Northern USA Late 19th century
Religion % Dem % GOP
Immigrants
Irish Catholics 80 20
All Catholics 70 30
Confessional German Lutherans 65 35
German Reformed 60 40
French Canadian Catholics 50 50
Less Confessional German Lutherans 45 55
English Canadians 40 60
British Stock 35 65
German Sectarians 30 70
Norwegian Lutherans 20 80
Swedish Lutherans 15 85
Haugean Norwegians 5 95
Natives
Northern Stock
Quakers 5 95
Free Will Baptists 20 80
Congregational 25 75
Methodists 25 75
Regular Baptists 35 65
Blacks 40 60
Presbyterians 40 60
Episcopalians 45 55
Southern Stock
Disciples 50 50
Presbyterians 70 30
Baptists 75 25
Methodists 90 10
Source: Paul Kleppner, The Third Electoral System 1853-1892 (1979) p. 182

Labor union movement edit

The Catholic Church exercised a prominent role in shaping America's labor movement. From the onset of significant immigration in the 1840s, the church in the United States was predominantly urban, with both its leaders and congregants usually of the laboring classes. Over the course of the second half of the nineteenth century, nativism, anti-Catholicism, and anti-unionism coalesced in Republican elections, and Catholics gravitated toward unions and the Democratic Party.[9]

The Knights of Labor was the earliest labor organization in the United States, and in the 1880s, this was the largest labor union in the United States. It is estimated that at least half its membership was Catholic (including Terence Powderly, its president from 1881 onward).

In Rerum novarum (1891), Pope Leo XIII criticized the concentration of wealth and power, spoke out against the abuses that workers faced and demanded that workers should be granted certain rights and safety regulations. He upheld the right of voluntary association, specifically commending labor unions. At the same time, he reiterated the church's defense of private property, condemned socialism, and emphasized the need for Catholics to form and join unions that were not compromised by secular and revolutionary ideologies.[17]

Rerum novarum provided new impetus for Catholics to become active in the labor movement, even if its exhortation to form specifically Catholic labor unions was widely interpreted as irrelevant to the pluralist context of the United States. While atheism underpinned many European unions and stimulated Catholic unionists to form separate labor federations, the religious neutrality of unions in the U.S. provided no such impetus. American Catholics seldom dominated unions, but they exerted influence across organized labor. Catholic union members and leaders played important roles in steering American unions away from socialism.[citation needed]

20th century edit

By 1900, Catholics represented 14 percent of the total U.S. population, soon became the single largest religious denomination in the country.[18] Still, Catholics did not hold many high offices in government. Only one of the first 54 justices on the United States Supreme Court was Catholic, Roger B. Taney, appointed in 1836. From the 1930s to the 1950s Catholics formed a core part of the New Deal Coalition, with overlapping memberships in the church, labor unions, big city machines, and the working class, all of which promoted liberal policy positions in domestic affairs and anti-communism during the Cold War. This New Deal Coalition formed under Franklin Roosevelt was led by his Postmaster General and the nation's first Irish American Roman Catholic Cabinet member James Farley.[19]

Bishops' Program of Social Reconstruction edit

Following World War I, many hoped that a new commitment to social reform would characterize the ensuing peace. The Council saw an opportunity to use its national voice to shape reform and in April 1918 created a Committee for Reconstruction. John A. Ryan wrote the Bishops' Program of Social Reconstruction. Combining Progressive thought and Catholic theology, Ryan believed that government intervention was the most effective means of affecting positive change for his church as well as working people and the poor. On February 12, 1919, the National Catholic War Council issued the "Bishops' Program of Social Reconstruction".

The Program received a mixed reception both within the church and outside it. The National Catholic War Council was a voluntary organization with no canonical status. Its ability to speak authoritatively was therefore questioned. Many bishops threw their support behind the Program, but some, including Bishop William Turner of Buffalo and William Henry O'Connell of Boston, opposed it. O'Connell believed some aspects of the plan smacked too much of socialism. Response outside the church was also divided: labor organizations backed it, for example, and business groups criticized it.

Defense of parochial school system edit

After World War I, some states concerned about the influence of immigrants and "foreign" values looked to public schools for help. The states drafted laws designed to use schools to promote a common American culture.

In 1921, the Ku Klux Klan arrived in Oregon and quickly attracted as many as 14,000 members, establishing 58 klaverns by the end of 1922. Given the small population of non-white minorities outside Portland, the Oregon Klan directed its attention almost exclusively against Catholics, who numbered about 8% of the population.

In 1922, the Masonic Grand Lodge of Oregon sponsored a bill to require all school-age children to attend public schools. With support of the Klan and Democratic Governor Walter M. Pierce, endorsed by the Klan, the Compulsory Education Act was passed by a vote of 115,506 to 103,685. Its primary purpose was to shut down Catholic schools in Oregon, but it also affected other private and military schools. The constitutionality of the law was challenged in court and ultimately struck down by the US Supreme Court in Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) before it went into effect,[20] in a ruling that has been called "the Magna Carta of the parochial school system."[citation needed] The law caused outraged Catholics to organize locally and nationally for the right to send their children to Catholic schools.

Pope Pius XI, in 1929, explicitly referenced this Supreme Court case in his encyclical Divini illius magistri[21] on Catholic education. He quoted in a footnote the part of the case:

The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right coupled with the high duty, to recognize, and prepare him for additional duties.

Catholic Worker Movement edit

 
Dorothy Day

The Catholic Worker movement began as a means to combine Dorothy Day's history in American social activism, anarchism, and pacifism with the tenets of Catholicism (including a strong current of distributism), five years after her 1927 conversion.[22]

The group started with the Catholic Worker newspaper, created to promote Catholic social teaching and stake out a neutral, pacifist position in the wartorn 1930s. It grew into a "house of hospitality" in the slums of New York City and then a series of farms for people to live together communally. The movement quickly spread to other cities in the United States and to Canada and the United Kingdom; more than 30 independent but affiliated CW communities had been founded by 1941. Well over 100 communities exist today, including several in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, The Netherlands, the Republic of Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, and Sweden.[23]

Similar houses of hospitality were established by Russian immigrant and Catholic social worker, Catherine Doherty, founder of Madonna House.

National Catholic Welfare Conference edit

1930s edit

Historian John McGreevey notes, "Priests across the country in the 1930s encouraged their parishioners to join unions, and some like Pittsburgh's Charles Rice, Detroit's Frederick Siedenberg, and Buffalo's John P. Boland, served on regional labor boards and played key roles in workplace negotiations." The Catholic Worker Movement and Dorothy Day grew out of the same impetuses to put Catholic social teaching into action.

The Catholic Church encouraged Catholic workers to join the unions such as the Congress of Industrial Organizations "to improve their economic status and to act as a moderating force in the new labor movement".[24] Catholic clergy promoted and founded moderate trade unions, such as the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists and the Archdiocesan Labor Institute in 1939. American Catholics of that era were generally New Deal liberals who actively supported the CIO, viewed government as a positive force for social reform and often participated in non-communist trade unions, becoming a prominent group of the United Auto Workers. According to Colleen Doody, Catholics were the "backbone and the bane of New Deal liberalism".[24]

Catholic Conference on Industrial Problems edit

The Catholic Conference on Industrial Problems (1923–1937) was conceived by Raymond McGowan as a way of bringing together Catholic leaders in the fields of theology, labor, and business, with a view to promoting awareness and discussion of Catholic social teaching. Its first meeting was held in Milwaukee. While it was the venue for important discussions during its existence, its demise was due partly by lack of participation by business executives who perceived the dominant tone of the group as anti-business.

21st century edit

 
U.S. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump meeting with Pope Francis, Wednesday, May 24, 2017, in Vatican City.

Religion plays a part in American elections. Religion is part of the political debate over LGBT rights, abortion, the right to die/assisted suicide, universal health care, workers rights and immigration.

According to Dr. John Green of University of Akron, "There isn't a Catholic vote anymore; there are several Catholic votes." A survey conducted by the Gallup organization in 2009 revealed that, despite the opposition of the church to abortion and embryonic stem-cell research, there is no significant difference between the opinions of Catholics and non-Catholics on these questions.[25]

Voting guides edit

In 2004, Catholic Answers, a private lay Catholic apostolate, published its Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics.[26] It also published Voter's Guide for Serious Christians for non-Catholics.[27] In 2006, it revamped the guides and published them on its Catholic Answers Action web site.[28]

In 2016 another Catholic organization, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, published the Pope Francis Voter Guide to help inform the faithful about their specifically political vocation as Catholics in the United States.

In January 2016, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops produced an updated version of their 2007 voter's guide, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship. It is a summary of the USCCB's public policies based on church teachings.[29]

In September 2016, Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of the Diocese of Phoenix issued the fourth edition of his guide, Catholics in the Public Square. In it, he suggests to politicians supporting abortion that they would need to repent and go to Confession before receiving Holy Communion,[30] in contrast with other bishops such as Cardinals Timothy Dolan and Donald Wuerl, who say that the church does not deny communion over issues of legislation.

Marriage and family edit

The Roman Catholic Church defines marriage as a covenant "by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring."[31] The church teaches that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved."[32] Nevertheless, homosexuals "must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided."[32] Some Roman Catholics take this to mean that voting in favor of "benefits for lifelong partners" is a compassionate act, whereas others see voting in favor of "benefits for lifelong partners" as merely promoting behavior contrary to natural law. According to a 2009 survey, 59% of practicing Catholics oppose same-sex marriage, while those who are not practicing support it by 51%.[33] Cardinal John Joseph O'Connor was an outspoken critic of homosexuality; other prominent Catholics who were outspoken critics have included John Boehner, David Vitter, Paul Ryan, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, Jeb Bush, Bob McDonnell, Marco Rubio, Michael Steele, Donald Carcieri and Sam Brownback. Catholics Rudolph Giuliani, Chris Christie, Tim Kaine, James Martin, Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, Cardinal Blase Cupich, Patrick J. Conroy (Jesuit chaplain to the U. S. House of Representatives), and Bob Casey Jr. have supported gay rights and civil unions but not same-sex marriage. Liberal Catholics have generally supported repeal of sodomy laws that called for jail time for homosexuals and Employment Non-Discrimination laws that would prohibit large employers from firing workers because of sexual orientation. Conservative Catholics have taken the contrary view, rejecting claims that these are examples of "unjust discrimination" and that because homosexual act is an intrinsic evil, it must always be opposed.[34]

Abortion edit

In accordance with its teachings, the Catholic Church opposes abortion in all circumstances and often leads the national debate on abortion.[35] The Roman Catholic Church has been a fierce opponent of liberalized abortion laws and has organized political resistance to such legislation in several Western countries.

Before the Roe v. Wade decision making abortion legal in the United States, the anti-abortion movement in the United States consisted of elite lawyers, politicians, and doctors, almost all of whom were Catholic.[36] The only coordinated opposition to abortion during the early 1970s came from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Family Life Bureau, also a Catholic organization. Mobilization of a wide-scale anti-abortion movement among Catholics began quickly after the Roe v. Wade decision with the creation of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC). The NRLC also organized non-Catholics, eventually becoming the largest anti-abortion organization in the United States.[36] The anti-abortion wing of the Democratic Party was also led by Catholic Robert P. Casey, Sr. other anti-abortion Democrats including, Sargent Shriver, Raymond Flynn and Bob Casey Jr.

Reception of communion by Catholic politicians who support abortion rights is controversial in the United States. Such cases typically involve a bishop who prepares to withhold communion from a Catholic politician, though in some cases excommunication has been suggested,[by whom?] and in others, a bishop has instructed a politician to refrain from receiving communion. The first such case was that of Lucy Killea, though such incidents have subsequently occurred during national elections.

In 2004, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then-prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (who would later become Pope Benedict XVI), instructed American bishops in a confidential memorandum that communion must be denied to Catholic politicians who support legal abortion.[citation needed] However, Cardinals O'Malley, Egan, McCarrick, Wuerl, Mahony and George have said they would not deny communion to a person in public life who supports abortion rights. Cardinal Burke and Charles Chaput, Archbishop of Philadelphia, have shown support for Ratzinger's position, but as of June 2022, neither has followed through on this.

During the 2004 presidential campaign, four bishops planned to deny communion to Catholic politicians who had voted for John Kerry.[37] This provoked a negative reaction, and the Catholic Church took a different approach for the 2008 election. The new message was compiled into a brochure titled "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship," which "emphasized that issues involving 'intrinsically evil' actions could not be equated morally with others," according to the Times. The brochure cites abortion as the "prime example," and it also mentions euthanasia, torture, genocide, unjust war and racism.

In the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, as many as 89 Catholic bishops proclaimed that Catholics should make abortion their defining issue in the election.[38]

In November 2009, Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy disclosed that Thomas Tobin had ordered priests in the diocese to deny him communion because of Kennedy's position in favor of unrestricted abortion.[39]

Michael Humphrey of the National Catholic Reporter viewed the 54-45% majority of Catholic voters choosing Obama in the 2008 presidential election as a repudiation of bishops who had warned that voting for Obama would constitute grave matter.[40] The University of Notre Dame, a Catholic institution, named President Barack Obama commencement speaker at its 2009 graduation and bestowed an honorary doctorate degree on him. The invitation drew criticism from Catholics and some members of the church hierarchy because of Obama's policies in favor of promoting and funding abortion.[citation needed]

Polling results show that a majority of Catholics classify themselves as anti-abortion; a 2009 poll showed a 52% majority identifying as anti-abortion.[41] Pew Research, combining polls from 2011 and 2013, notes that over half (53%) of white Catholics believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, with 41% saying it should be illegal in all or most cases. Among Hispanic Catholics, 43% say it should be legal in all or most cases, while 52% say it should be illegal in all or most cases.[42]

Birth control edit

In 1948, Archbishop Richard Cushing campaigned against a Massachusetts referendum to loosen the state's ban on birth control. While the referendum failed, "deployment of the Church's political muscle," according to historian Leslie Tentler, offended non-Catholics and led Cushing to relax his position when the issue was debated again in the 1960s.[43]

The Catholic church hierarchy forbids birth control such as condoms or the pill because it views them as separating sexual intercourse from its intended consequence of reproduction.[44]

In 2012, when the Obama administration proposed regulations that required employer-provided health insurance plans to cover contraception, Catholic companies such as affiliated universities and EWTN Broadcasting, which believed they should be exempt from the law, sued the government, while Catholic religious leaders campaigned against it in church.[45][46] The regulation was later altered so that an employee of a religious institution which did not wish to provide coverage for reproductive health care could seek it directly from the insurer at no additional cost. Catholic religious authorities continued to oppose the plan, while the Catholic Health Association supported it.[47]

While the pope and the bishops have opposed birth control, the majority of American Catholics disagree with them, and believe the church should change its teaching on birth control. A Pew Research poll conducted in 2013 found that three-quarters of U.S. Catholics (76%) say the church should permit birth control.[48]

Immigration edit

The immigration debate has opened a chasm with Republican hardliners who want restrictions.[49] Some 30% of the Roman Catholic population is Hispanic and that percentage continues to rise steadily. Pope John Paul II advocated that countries should accommodate people fleeing from economic hardship. Cardinal Raymond Burke has been involved in rallies to allow undocumented workers a chance at citizenship. By welcoming migrant workers, many of whom are Catholic, Burke says, "we obey the command of Our Lord, who tells us that when we welcome the stranger, we welcome Christ Himself."[50]

In addressing the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life in 2009, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver discussed the need when talking about reforming immigration law, to do so "... in a comprehensive way, so that justice is done and our borders are protected. It's always both/and; it's not either/or from my perspective."[51] "[N]o one can claim to be Catholic and think it's okay to treat immigrants unjustly or inhumanly. But you can disagree on immigration policies because you think that one works and one doesn't."[51]

Most immigration to the U.S. is from predominantly Roman Catholic nations and about 34 of all lapsed Catholics have been replaced by immigrant Catholics in the United States.[52]

In 2006, Cardinal Roger Mahony announced that he would order the clergy and laity of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to ignore H.R. 4437 if it were to become law.[53] Cardinal Mahony personally lobbied senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein to have the Senate consider a comprehensive immigration reform bill, rather than the enforcement-only bill that passed the House of Representatives.[54] Cardinal Mahony also blamed the Congress for the illegal immigration crisis due to their failure to act on the issue in the previous 20 years, opposed H.R. 4437 as punitive and open to abusive interpretation, and supported the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 (S. 2611).[55][56]

Transgender rights edit

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have openly opposed the Equality Act which serves to address discrimination towards members of the LGBTQ+ community. They claim that the legislation discourages differing opinions on marriage and sexuality and would codify gender ideology in federal law.[57]

Party affiliation edit

Before the 1960s, when cultural changes lead to an incremental liberalization of the Democratic Party, Catholics were seen as staunch Democrats. The Democratic Party ran Al Smith, the first Catholic presidential candidate by a major party, in 1928, and, except when the ticket was headed by a Southern candidate, has nominated a Catholic for president or vice president in every election since 1960 except for 1988 (where a Greek Orthodox, Michael Dukakis, was the presidential nominee).

Since the 1960s, the Catholic vote has come to reflect the nation as a whole instead of being predominantly Democratic.[9] In the 60s and early 70s, a number of Catholics and Southern whites abandoned their traditional affiliation with the Democratic Party and began to support the Republican Party. This shift is evidenced by the fact that Nixon received 33% of the Catholic vote in the 1968 election compared to 52% in 1972. As a group, Catholics represented a quarter of the nation's electorate and were now one of the nation's largest swing groups. Both parties began to aggressively woo the Catholic voters. Although the Catholic hierarchy could not dictate who Catholics voted for, they did have a substantial influence over the faithful in their dioceses. Politicians were aware that the bishops could direct significant time, energy and money to support the issues that were important to them. From their perspective, the bishops were eager to regain some of the influence that their predecessors had wielded in the earlier part of the 20th century.[58] Since the 1970s non-Hispanic white Catholics have voted majority Republican very reliably while a majority of Hispanic or Latino Catholics have voted Democrat.[59]

In his successful 1980 campaign against Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan won about half of the Catholic vote and a majority of Catholics who were non-Hispanic whites.[60] "Reagan Democrats", many of them non-Hispanic white, blue-collar Catholics, often from a white ethnic background, comprised 25% of the Democrats who voted for Reagan, and formed an important part of his support in 1984 as well. Despite Catholic Geraldine Ferraro's presence on the Democratic ticket as Walter Mondale's vice-presidential running mate that year Reagan won 54 to 61% of the Catholic vote, only slightly different from the overall 59%. Although the majority of Catholics in 1984 remained Democrats, compared to 1980 Catholic votes switched to Reagan at about the same level as most Protestant groups. Reagan's vice president George H. W. Bush won about the same number of votes as Michael Dukakis, making 1988 the third presidential election in a row in which Catholics failed to support the Democratic candidate as they traditionally did.[61]: 186–187, 191–192, 194 

Although about one third of Catholics voted for Bush's reelection in 1992, most Catholic defectors switched to independent Ross Perot, not the successful Democrat Bill Clinton. Unlike previous elections (such as in 1972, when George McGovern's Catholic support was eight percentage points higher than overall) the Catholic vote was not more Democratic than the overall electorate, but split almost identically to it. The trend away from a Democratic dominance of the Catholic vote continued in 1994, when for the first time in history Democrats did not receive a majority of Catholic votes in elections for the House of Representatives; as with 1992, the Catholic vote split resembled that of the overall electorate. White non-Hispanic Catholics however, remained majority Republican.[59] This trend reversed slightly in 1996, when Clinton's share of Catholics in general was four percentage points ahead of overall, and they comprised about half of the margin between him and the unsuccessful challenger Robert Dole. The 1990s ended, however, with Catholics as "the largest swing vote in American politics" and with white non-Hispanic Catholics continuing to vote consistently Republican.[59][61]: 200–201, 207, 218 

Their party independence continued into 2000, and Catholics became the large religious grouping that most closely reflected the total electorate, ahead of mainline Protestants. 50% of Catholics voted for Al Gore versus 47% for George W. Bush in the very close 2000 election. 52% of Catholics voted for Bush's successful reelection compared to 47% for the Catholic John Kerry in 2004, versus 51% to 48% overall.[9] Amongst white Catholics the figure was higher, with George W Bush receiving 56% of white Catholic votes.[62] Barack Obama, who chose the Catholic Joe Biden as his running mate, received 54% of the Catholic vote in 2008 compared to John McCain's 45%, close to the overall 52% to 46%.[63] In 2012 Obama and Biden faced Mitt Romney and the Catholic Paul Ryan. Obama won 50% of the Catholic vote to Romney's 48%, close to their 51% and 47%, respectively, of the overall vote.[64] In 2016 the Republicans' Donald Trump chose Mike Pence—who describes himself as evangelical Catholic—as his running mate, while the Democrats' Hillary Clinton chose the Catholic Tim Kaine as hers. The victorious Trump-Pence ticket received 52% of Catholics' votes compared to Clinton-Kaine's 45%.[65]

In some regions such as the "Mountain West" region, it is estimated that since the 1980s 42% of white Catholics vote Republican whereas only 20% vote Democratic.[66] White Catholics who are registered Democrats are also shown to defect to the Republican party in massive numbers during election years. This was particularly true during both of Ronald Reagan's presidential elections, as well as the Nixon-McGovern race. White Catholics who are registered as Republicans are substantially less likely to defect to the Democrats during election years.[67]

Presidential elections edit

1928 edit

 
Al Smith is the first Catholic presidential candidate in major parties.

In 1928, Al Smith became the first Roman Catholic to gain a major party's nomination for president.[68] His religion became an issue during the campaign and was one of the factors in his loss. Many feared that he would answer to the pope and not the constitution. Another major controversial issue was the continuation of Prohibition. Smith was personally in favor of relaxation or repeal of Prohibition laws despite its status as part of the nation's Constitution, but the Democratic Party split north and south on the issue. During the campaign Smith tried to duck the issue with noncommittal statements. He was also criticized for being a drunkard because of the stereotypes placed on Irish Catholics of the day.[69][70]

Smith swept the entire Catholic vote, which had been split in 1920 and 1924, and brought millions of Catholics to the polls for the first time, especially women. The fact that Smith was Catholic garnered him support from immigrant populations in New England, which may explain his narrow victories in traditionally Republican Massachusetts and Rhode Island, as well as his narrow 2% loss in New York (which previous Democratic presidential candidates had lost by double digits).[71]

1960 edit

 
John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States

Religion became a divisive issue during the presidential campaign of 1960. Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts was vying to become the nation's first Catholic president. A key factor that was hurting Kennedy in his campaign was the widespread prejudice against his Roman Catholic religion; some Protestants believed that, if he were elected president, Kennedy would have to take orders from the Pope in Rome. When offered the opportunity to speak before a convention of Baptist ministers, he decided to try to put the issue to rest.

To address fears that his Roman Catholicism would influence his decision-making, John F. Kennedy famously told the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on September 12, 1960, "I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my Church on public matters — and the Church does not speak for me."[72] He promised to respect the separation of church and state and not to allow Catholic officials to dictate public policy to him. Kennedy also raised the question of whether one-quarter of Americans were relegated to second-class citizenship just because they were Roman Catholic.

Even so, it was widely believed after the election that Kennedy lost some heavily Protestant states because of his Catholicism. His address did not please everyone: many non-Catholics remained unconvinced that a Catholic could be president without divided loyalties; and many Catholics thought he conceded too much in his profession of belief in an absolute separation of church and state. The speech is widely considered to be an important marker in the history of Catholicism (and anti-Catholicism) in the United States.

Kennedy went on to win the national popular vote over Richard Nixon by just one tenth of one percentage point (0.1%) - the closest popular-vote margin of the 20th century. In the electoral college, Kennedy's victory was larger, as he took 303 electoral votes to Nixon's 219 (269 were needed to win). There was a "narrow consensus" among the experts that Kennedy had won more votes than he lost as a result of his Catholicism,[73] as Catholics rallied to Kennedy as an affirmation of their religion and their right to have a Catholic president.

Summary of results edit

This chart shows the estimated Democrat/Republican split of the Catholic vote in elections since 1948. Catholic candidates and elections in which Catholics voted for the national winner are in bold.

Year Election Winner Party D% R% Election Loser Cook PVI Citations
1948 TrumanBarkley Democratic 65 35 DeweyWarren D+26 [7][74]
1952 EisenhowerNixon Republican 51-56 44-49 StevensonSparkman D+18–28 [7][74]
1956 EisenhowerNixon Republican 45-51 49-55 StevensonKefauver D+5–17 [7][74]
1960 KennedyJohnson Democratic 78-82 18-22 NixonLodge D+56–64 [7]
1964 JohnsonHumphrey Democratic 76-79 21-24 GoldwaterMiller D+29–35 [7][74]
1968 NixonAgnew Republican 55-59 33-37 HumphreyMuskie D+19–27 [7][74]
1972 NixonAgnew Republican 37-48 52-63 McGovernShriver R+3–D+19 [7][74]
1976 CarterMondale Democratic 54-57 41-44 FordDole D+8–14 [7][74]
1980 ReaganBush Republican 41-47 41-50 CarterMondale D+1–16 [7][61]: 185 [74]
1984 ReaganBush Republican 39-46 54-61 MondaleFerraro R+4–D+10 [7][74]
1988 BushQuayle Republican 47-52 48-52 DukakisBentsen D+3–13 [7][74]
1992 ClintonGore Democratic 44-50 30-36 BushQuayle D+2–14 [7][61]: 202 
1996 ClintonGore Democratic 53-55 35-37 DoleKemp D+8–12 [7]
2000 BushCheney Republican 50-52 46-49 GoreLieberman D+1–6 [7]
2004 BushCheney Republican 47-52 48-52 KerryEdwards R+3–D+6 [7]
2008 ObamaBiden Democratic 53-57 43-47 McCainPalin R+1–D+7 [7]
2012 ObamaBiden Democratic 50 48 RomneyRyan D+2 [64]
2016 TrumpPence Republican 45 52 ClintonKaine R+9 [65]
2020 BidenHarris Democratic 52 47 TrumpPence D+5 [75]

Representation in government edit

Congress edit

According to the Pew Research Center, Catholics represent 30.5% of the United States Congress as of January 2019. There are 141 Representatives and 22 Senators that are Catholic, which split as 99 Democrats and 64 Republicans.

Edward Kavanagh was nationally noticed as the first Catholic elected from New England in 1830. Kavanagh was elected as a Jacksonian to the Twenty-second and Twenty-third Congresses, serving from March 4, 1831, to March 3, 1835.

On January 4, 2007, Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic, became the first woman elected as the Speaker of the House. She was elected again as Speaker of the House on January 3, 2019, after serving as House Minority Leader for the Democrats from 2003 to 2007 and 2011–2019. Paul Ryan is Catholic as well and served recently as Speaker of the House from 2015 to 2019.

Supreme Court edit

A majority of the Supreme Court has been Catholic since 2005.

The first Catholic Supreme Court appointment was Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, appointed by Andrew Jackson in 1836.[76] The second, Edward Douglass White, joined the Court in 1894 and was elevated to Chief Justice in 1910. He was joined on the Court by Catholic Joseph McKenna in 1898. After White's death in 1921, there became an informally recognized tradition of holding one seat on the Court for a Catholic justice, though not necessarily the same seat.[76]

Pierce Butler was appointed to the Court in 1923 and succeeded by Frank Murphy in 1940. Both were Catholic. During Murphy's time on the Court, he was briefly joined by James F. Byrnes, who was raised Catholic but had converted to Episcopalianism many years before his appointment.

After Murphy died in 1949, he was not succeeded directly by a Catholic. However, President Harry Truman appointed Sherman Minton to a different vacant seat, and his appointment was seen as in keeping with the tradition, as Minton's wife was Catholic.[77] He would convert five years after his retirement from the Court.[78]

Upon Minton's retirement, Cardinal Francis Spellman successfully lobbied Dwight Eisenhower to replace him with William J. Brennan, a practicing Catholic.

The traditional one-seat rule was abandoned by President Ronald Reagan, who nominated two Catholics to serve together: Antonin Scalia in 1986 and Anthony Kennedy in 1988. They joined Brennan to give the Court a then-high of three Catholic justices.

President George H.W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas in 1991. At the time of his appointment, Thomas was a confirmed Catholic attending Episcopalian services, but he has since returned to active Catholicism.[79] He replaced the retiring Catholic Brennan with David Souter, an Episcopalian.

President George W. Bush appointed John Roberts and Samuel Alito, both Catholics, in 2005. Alito's appointment gave the Court its first ever Catholic majority, which it has maintained since.[a] In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed Catholic Sonia Sotomayor, raising the number of Catholic justices to six.[80]

In 2018, President Donald Trump appointed Catholic Brett Kavanaugh to replace Anthony Kennedy. Trump's other appointment thus far, Neil Gorsuch, is a practicing Episcopalian who had attended Catholic Mass and Catholic schools as a child. He joined the Episcopal Church upon marriage to his wife. It is unclear whether he still identifies as Catholic, and he is not typically included among the Catholic justices.[81] In 2020, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died; President Donald Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett, a Catholic, to fill the vacancy; she was subsequently confirmed by the Senate and sworn in to the bench.

Executive branch edit

There have been two Catholic President of the United States, John F. Kennedy and Joe Biden and two Vice Presidents of the United States, Joe Biden and Mike Pence (raised Catholic, self-described Evangelical Catholic).[82]

First Lady Melania Trump was the first Catholic to live in the White House since First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who remained there for two weeks after her husband's death 53 years earlier.[83][84][85]

Cabinet members edit

Past Catholic Postmaster General (formerly a cabinet post) James Farley (1933-1940)[86]

Past Catholic Secretaries of State include Edmund Muskie,[87] Alexander Haig,[88] and John Kerry.[89][90] Secretary James G. Blaine had Catholic roots. Secretary James F. Byrnes was raised Catholic but converted to Episcopalianism.

Past Catholic U.S. Attorneys General include Roger B. Taney,[76] Joseph McKenna,[76] Charles Bonaparte,[91] Frank Murphy, James McGranery, J. Howard McGrath, Robert F. Kennedy, William Barr, and Alberto Gonzales.[92]

Past Catholic Secretaries of Defense include James Forrestal,[93] Leon Panetta, and James Mattis.[94][95] Secretary Chuck Hagel was raised Catholic but converted to Episcopalianism.[96]

Past Catholic Secretaries of Labor include Maurice Tobin,[97] Martin Durkin, James P. Mitchell, Ann McLaughlin Korologos, Alexis Herman,[98] Hilda Solis,[99][100][101] and Tom Perez.[102]

Past Catholic Secretaries of Housing and Urban Development include Moon Landrieu, Henry Cisneros, Andrew Cuomo,[103] Mel Martínez, and Julián Castro.[104][105]

Past Catholic Secretaries of Energy include Bill Richardson.[106]

Secretary of the Treasury and of the Interior Thomas Ewing married a Catholic woman, attended services for many years, and was formally baptized on his deathbed.[107] Treasury Secretary Donald Regan also had Catholic roots, but it is unclear whether he actively practiced while in office.

The Catholic secretaries in the Biden administration are Lloyd Austin (Defense), Deb Haaland (Interior), Gina Raimondo (Commerce), Marty Walsh (Labor), Xavier Becerra (Health and Human Services), and Jennifer Granholm (Energy).[108][109][110][111] Haaland is the first Native American in a presidential cabinet and also the first Native Catholic within it. Granholm converted to Catholicism while at Harvard Law School in the mid-1980s.[112]

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was baptized in the Catholic Church as an infant and he attended Catholic schools, but began to attend the Church of England's Christ Church Cathedral during his term at the University of Oxford and said he felt "more-or-less Anglican" by the time he returned to the U.S.[113] Buttigieg has since been an Episcopalian.[114]

See also edit

Notes edit

  1. ^ For a two-month period following the retirement of Anthony Kennedy on July 31, 2018, there were four Catholic justices on an eight-member Court. However, the Court did not hear any cases during that time.

References edit

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Bibliography edit

  • Casey, Shaun. The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960 (2009)
  • Cochran, Clarke E. and David Carroll Cochran. Catholics, Politics, and Public Policy: Beyond Left and Right (2003)
  • Dolan, Jay. The Irish Americans: A History (2008)
  • Heyer, Kristin E., Mark J. Rozell, and Michael A. Genovese. Catholics and Politics: The Dynamic Tension Between Faith and Power (2008)
  • Marlin, George J., and Michael Barone, American Catholic Voter: Two Hundred Years Of Political Impact (2006)
  • Morris, Charles. American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church (1998)
  • Prendergast, William B. The Catholic Voter in American Politics: The Passing of the Democratic Monolith (1999)
  • Woolner, David B., and Richard G. Kurial. FDR, the Vatican, and the Roman Catholic Church in America, 1933-1945 (2003)

Further reading edit

  • Blanshard, Paul. American Freedom and Catholic Power (Beacon Press, 1949) online, influential Protestant attack on Catholic political power
  • Brenner, Saul. "Patterns of Jewish-Catholic Democratic Voting and the 1960 Presidential Vote." Jewish Social Studies (1964): 169–178. in JSTOR
  • Byrnes, Timothy A. Catholic bishops in American politics (Princeton University Press, 1991)
  • Casey, Shaun A. The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960 (Oxford University Press, 2009) online
  • Cooney, John. The American Pope: The Life and Times of Francis Cardinal Spellman (1984).
  • Flynn, George Q. Roosevelt and Romanism: Catholics and American Diplomacy, 1937-1945 (1976) online
  • Graziano, Manlio. In Rome We Trust: The Rise of Catholics in American Political Life (Stanford UP, 2017), 242 pp.
  • Green, John Clifford. The faith factor: How religion influences American elections (Greenwood, 2007)
  • Heineman, Kenneth J. A Catholic New Deal: Religion and Reform in Depression Pittsburgh (2005) excerpt and text search; online
  • Hennesey, James. American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States (Oxford University Press, 1981), puts politics in context
  • Heyer, Kristin E.; Rozell, Mark J.; Genovese, Michael A. Catholics and politics: the dynamic tension between faith and power (Georgetown University Press, 2008). online
  • Jelen, Ted G. "Catholic priests and the political order: The political behavior of Catholic pastors." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 42.4 (2003): 591–604.
  • McAndrews, Lawrence J. What They Wished For: American Catholics and American Presidents, 1960-2004 (University of Georgia Press; 2014) 503 pages; influence of Catholics on domestic and foreign policy
  • Marlin George J. and Michael Barone. American Catholic Voter: Two Hundred Years Of Political Impact (2006)
  • Moore, Edmund A. A Catholic Runs for President: The Campaign of 1928 (1956) online
  • Noll, Mark A. and Luke E. Harlow. Religion and American Politics: From the Colonial Period to the Present (2nd ed. 2007) online pp 244–66, 345-66
  • Prendergast, William B. The Catholic Voter in American Politics: The Passing of the Democratic Monolith (Georgetown University Press. 1999)
  • Schultz, Jeffrey D. et al. eds. Encyclopedia of Religion in American Politics (1999) online
  • Smith, Gregory Allen. Politics in the Parish: The Political Influence of Catholic Priests (Georgetown University Press, 2008) online
  • Wald, Kenneth D., and Allison Calhoun-Brown. Religion and politics in the United States (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010) wide-ranging
  • Zeitz, Joshua M. White ethnic New York: Jews, Catholics, and the shaping of postwar politics (Univ of North Carolina Press, 2007)

Historiography edit

  • Gleason, Philip. "The Historiography of American Catholicism as Reflected in The Catholic Historical Review, 1915–2015." Catholic Historical Review 101#2 (2015) pp: 156–222. online
  • Thomas, J. Douglas. "A Century of American Catholic History." US Catholic Historian (1987): 25–49. in JSTOR

External links edit

  • United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
  • Catholic Bishops' Conference and Vatican Statements on Abortion
  • NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby

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This article needs more complete citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding missing citation information so that sources are clearly identifiable Citations should include title publication author date and for paginated material the page number s Several templates are available to assist in formatting Improperly sourced material may be challenged and removed July 2017 Learn how and when to remove this template message Members of the Catholic Church have been active in the elections of the United States since the mid 19th century The United States has never had religious parties unlike much of the world especially in Europe and Latin America There has never been an American Catholic religious party either local state or national In 1776 Catholics comprised less than 1 of the population of the new nation but their presence grew rapidly after 1840 with immigration from Germany Ireland and later from Italy Poland and elsewhere in Catholic Europe from 1840 to 1914 and also from Latin America in the 20th and 21st centuries Catholics now comprise 25 to 27 of the national vote with over 68 million members today 85 of today s Catholics report their faith to be somewhat to very important to them 1 2 From the mid 19th century down to 1964 Catholics were solidly Democratic sometimes at the 80 90 level From the 1930s to the 1950s Catholics formed a core part of the New Deal Coalition with overlapping memberships in the church labor unions big city machines and the working class all of which promoted liberal policy positions in domestic affairs and anti communism during the Cold War Since the election of the nation s first Catholic president in 1960 Catholics have split about 50 50 between the two major parties in national elections Beginning with the decline of unions and big city machines increased suburbanization and with upward mobility into the middle classes Catholics have drifted away from liberalism of the Democratic Party and toward conservatism on economic issues such as taxes Since the end of the Cold War their strong anti Communism has faded in importance On social issues the Catholic Church takes strong positions against abortion and same sex marriage and has formed coalitions with Protestant evangelicals 3 In 2015 Pope Francis declared that man made climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels The Pope stated the warming of the planet is rooted in a throwaway culture and the developed world s indifference to the destruction of the planet as it pursues short term economic gains However the Pope s statements on climate change were generally met with indifference among Catholics 4 while Catholic commentaries ranged from praise to dismissal with some stating that it was not binding or magisterial due to its scientific nature 5 The Pope s statements on these issues were most prominently laid out in encyclical Laudato si The publication by Francis had put pressure on Catholics seeking the Republican Party nomination for president of the United States in 2016 including Jeb Bush and Rick Santorum who have questioned or denied the established science of human caused climate change and have harshly criticized policies designed to tax or regulate the burning of fossil fuels 6 Religious tensions were major issues in the presidential election of 1928 when the Democrats nominated Al Smith a Catholic who was defeated and in 1960 when the Democrats also nominated John F Kennedy a Catholic who was elected For the next three elections a Catholic would be nominated for the vice presidency by one of the two major parties Bill Miller in 1964 Ed Muskie in 1968 Tom Eagleton and then Sargent Shriver in 1972 but the ticket would lose Geraldine Ferraro would continue the tradition in 1984 but she also lost and the non Catholic vice presidential streak was broken in 2008 A Catholic John Kerry lost the 2004 election to incumbent George W Bush a Methodist who may have won the majority of Catholic vote 7 The 2012 election was the first where both major party vice presidential candidates were Catholic Joe Biden and Paul Ryan As of January 2023 update there are 27 out of 100 Catholics in the United States Senate and 122 out of 435 Catholics in the United States House of Representatives including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise 8 In 2008 Joe Biden became the first Catholic to be elected Vice President of the United States His successor Mike Pence was raised as a Catholic but he converted to evangelical Protestantism later in his life In 2020 Biden went on to be elected as the second Roman Catholic president of the United States Contents 1 19th century 1 1 Catholics and urban America 1 2 Labor union movement 2 20th century 2 1 Bishops Program of Social Reconstruction 2 2 Defense of parochial school system 2 3 Catholic Worker Movement 2 3 1 National Catholic Welfare Conference 2 4 1930s 2 5 Catholic Conference on Industrial Problems 3 21st century 3 1 Voting guides 3 2 Marriage and family 3 3 Abortion 3 4 Birth control 3 5 Immigration 3 6 Transgender rights 4 Party affiliation 5 Presidential elections 5 1 1928 5 2 1960 5 3 Summary of results 6 Representation in government 6 1 Congress 6 2 Supreme Court 6 3 Executive branch 6 3 1 Cabinet members 7 See also 8 Notes 9 References 10 Bibliography 11 Further reading 11 1 Historiography 12 External links19th century edit nbsp Charles CarrollBefore 1840 Catholics constituted a small minority and as a result they played a relatively minor role in early American history 9 Catholics only constituted a significant community in Maryland and Baltimore became an early center of Catholicism From the American Revolution until the end of the 18th century about 1 of the American population about 30 000 was Catholic Still Catholics were among the Founding Fathers and they were also a part of the First Congress Daniel Carroll serving Maryland s 6th congressional district 10 and Charles Carroll of Carrollton serving as the first senator from Maryland 11 12 Presidential candidates did not seek Catholic votes until Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay did so in 1832 9 Catholics and urban America edit The role of Catholics in American culture and elections dramatically changed as a result of the mass immigration of Catholics from Europe especially from Germany and Ireland By 1840 there were about 600 000 Catholics in the United States In the 1840s 200 000 Irish immigrated to escape poverty The Great Famine of Ireland which lasted from 1845 to 1852 caused the Irish population in America to number 962 000 the number doubled in the next ten years 13 Even larger numbers of immigrants came from traditionally Catholic regions of Germany and traditionally Catholic regions of other parts of Europe Because most of these new arrivals lived in ethnic communities they typically joined the local Catholic church that was in communion with Rome through the local diocese how many of them cut their ties with the Catholic Church is a matter of speculation 14 The Irish Catholics took controlling positions in the Catholic Church labor unions and Democratic organizations in the big cities thus forming overlapping centers of strength The sudden new arrival of so many Catholics charges of political corruption and fears of papal interference caused anti Catholicism to grow including the short lived Know Nothings party in the 1850s which demanded a purification of elections and statutes from Catholic influence 9 Many Catholics served in the Civil War armies they served in both the North and the South and the bishops rejected the antiwar and anti draft sentiments of some Catholics The rapid rise of the Irish out of poverty and the continuing growth in membership especially in industrial and urban areas made the church the largest denomination in the U S Distrusting public schools which were dominated by Protestants Catholics built their own network of parochial elementary schools and later they built high schools as well as colleges and public funding of parochial schools was a controversial issue 9 As the Bennett Law episode in 1890 in Wisconsin demonstrated Catholics were willing to cooperate politically with German Lutherans to protect their parochial schools A distinct Catholic vote existed however in the late 19th century 75 of Irish and German Catholics in America voted for Democratic presidential candidates 9 The Irish increasingly controlled the Democratic party machinery in major cities 15 nbsp Political cartoon about the use of anti Catholic sentiment in Hayes presidential electionReligious lines were sharply drawn in the North in the Third Party System that lasted from the 1850s to the 1890s In the South the Catholics voted the same as Protestants with race as the main dividing line 16 Methodists Congregationalists Presbyterians Scandinavian Lutherans and other Protestant pietists in the North were tightly linked to the GOP In sharp contrast liturgical groups especially the Catholics Episcopalians and German Lutherans looked to the Democratic Party for protection from pietistic moralism especially prohibition While both parties cut across economic class structures the Democrats were supported more heavily by its lower tiers Cultural issues especially prohibition and foreign language schools became important because of the sharp religious divisions in the electorate In the North about 50 of the voters were pietistic Protestants who believed that the government should be used to reduce the pervasiveness of social sins such as drinking Liturgical churches comprised over a quarter of the vote and they wanted the government to stay out of personal morality issues Prohibition debates and referendums heated up elections in most states over a period of decades as national prohibition was finally passed in 1918 and it was repealed in 1932 serving as a major issue between the wet Democrats and the dry GOP 16 Voting Behavior by Religion Northern USA Late 19th centuryReligion Dem GOPImmigrantsIrish Catholics 80 20All Catholics 70 30Confessional German Lutherans 65 35German Reformed 60 40French Canadian Catholics 50 50Less Confessional German Lutherans 45 55English Canadians 40 60British Stock 35 65German Sectarians 30 70Norwegian Lutherans 20 80Swedish Lutherans 15 85Haugean Norwegians 5 95NativesNorthern StockQuakers 5 95Free Will Baptists 20 80Congregational 25 75Methodists 25 75Regular Baptists 35 65Blacks 40 60Presbyterians 40 60Episcopalians 45 55Southern StockDisciples 50 50Presbyterians 70 30Baptists 75 25Methodists 90 10Source Paul Kleppner The Third Electoral System 1853 1892 1979 p 182Labor union movement edit Further information Knights of Labor The Catholic Church exercised a prominent role in shaping America s labor movement From the onset of significant immigration in the 1840s the church in the United States was predominantly urban with both its leaders and congregants usually of the laboring classes Over the course of the second half of the nineteenth century nativism anti Catholicism and anti unionism coalesced in Republican elections and Catholics gravitated toward unions and the Democratic Party 9 The Knights of Labor was the earliest labor organization in the United States and in the 1880s this was the largest labor union in the United States It is estimated that at least half its membership was Catholic including Terence Powderly its president from 1881 onward In Rerum novarum 1891 Pope Leo XIII criticized the concentration of wealth and power spoke out against the abuses that workers faced and demanded that workers should be granted certain rights and safety regulations He upheld the right of voluntary association specifically commending labor unions At the same time he reiterated the church s defense of private property condemned socialism and emphasized the need for Catholics to form and join unions that were not compromised by secular and revolutionary ideologies 17 Rerum novarum provided new impetus for Catholics to become active in the labor movement even if its exhortation to form specifically Catholic labor unions was widely interpreted as irrelevant to the pluralist context of the United States While atheism underpinned many European unions and stimulated Catholic unionists to form separate labor federations the religious neutrality of unions in the U S provided no such impetus American Catholics seldom dominated unions but they exerted influence across organized labor Catholic union members and leaders played important roles in steering American unions away from socialism citation needed 20th century editBy 1900 Catholics represented 14 percent of the total U S population soon became the single largest religious denomination in the country 18 Still Catholics did not hold many high offices in government Only one of the first 54 justices on the United States Supreme Court was Catholic Roger B Taney appointed in 1836 From the 1930s to the 1950s Catholics formed a core part of the New Deal Coalition with overlapping memberships in the church labor unions big city machines and the working class all of which promoted liberal policy positions in domestic affairs and anti communism during the Cold War This New Deal Coalition formed under Franklin Roosevelt was led by his Postmaster General and the nation s first Irish American Roman Catholic Cabinet member James Farley 19 Bishops Program of Social Reconstruction edit Following World War I many hoped that a new commitment to social reform would characterize the ensuing peace The Council saw an opportunity to use its national voice to shape reform and in April 1918 created a Committee for Reconstruction John A Ryan wrote the Bishops Program of Social Reconstruction Combining Progressive thought and Catholic theology Ryan believed that government intervention was the most effective means of affecting positive change for his church as well as working people and the poor On February 12 1919 the National Catholic War Council issued the Bishops Program of Social Reconstruction The Program received a mixed reception both within the church and outside it The National Catholic War Council was a voluntary organization with no canonical status Its ability to speak authoritatively was therefore questioned Many bishops threw their support behind the Program but some including Bishop William Turner of Buffalo and William Henry O Connell of Boston opposed it O Connell believed some aspects of the plan smacked too much of socialism Response outside the church was also divided labor organizations backed it for example and business groups criticized it Defense of parochial school system edit Main article Oregon Compulsory Education Act After World War I some states concerned about the influence of immigrants and foreign values looked to public schools for help The states drafted laws designed to use schools to promote a common American culture In 1921 the Ku Klux Klan arrived in Oregon and quickly attracted as many as 14 000 members establishing 58 klaverns by the end of 1922 Given the small population of non white minorities outside Portland the Oregon Klan directed its attention almost exclusively against Catholics who numbered about 8 of the population In 1922 the Masonic Grand Lodge of Oregon sponsored a bill to require all school age children to attend public schools With support of the Klan and Democratic Governor Walter M Pierce endorsed by the Klan the Compulsory Education Act was passed by a vote of 115 506 to 103 685 Its primary purpose was to shut down Catholic schools in Oregon but it also affected other private and military schools The constitutionality of the law was challenged in court and ultimately struck down by the US Supreme Court in Pierce v Society of Sisters 1925 before it went into effect 20 in a ruling that has been called the Magna Carta of the parochial school system citation needed The law caused outraged Catholics to organize locally and nationally for the right to send their children to Catholic schools Pope Pius XI in 1929 explicitly referenced this Supreme Court case in his encyclical Divini illius magistri 21 on Catholic education He quoted in a footnote the part of the case The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only The child is not the mere creature of the State those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right coupled with the high duty to recognize and prepare him for additional duties Catholic Worker Movement edit Main article Catholic Worker Movement nbsp Dorothy DayThe Catholic Worker movement began as a means to combine Dorothy Day s history in American social activism anarchism and pacifism with the tenets of Catholicism including a strong current of distributism five years after her 1927 conversion 22 The group started with the Catholic Worker newspaper created to promote Catholic social teaching and stake out a neutral pacifist position in the wartorn 1930s It grew into a house of hospitality in the slums of New York City and then a series of farms for people to live together communally The movement quickly spread to other cities in the United States and to Canada and the United Kingdom more than 30 independent but affiliated CW communities had been founded by 1941 Well over 100 communities exist today including several in Australia the United Kingdom Canada Germany The Netherlands the Republic of Ireland Mexico New Zealand and Sweden 23 Similar houses of hospitality were established by Russian immigrant and Catholic social worker Catherine Doherty founder of Madonna House National Catholic Welfare Conference edit Main article National Catholic Welfare Council National Catholic Welfare Conference This section needs expansion You can help by adding to it December 2009 1930s edit Historian John McGreevey notes Priests across the country in the 1930s encouraged their parishioners to join unions and some like Pittsburgh s Charles Rice Detroit s Frederick Siedenberg and Buffalo s John P Boland served on regional labor boards and played key roles in workplace negotiations The Catholic Worker Movement and Dorothy Day grew out of the same impetuses to put Catholic social teaching into action The Catholic Church encouraged Catholic workers to join the unions such as the Congress of Industrial Organizations to improve their economic status and to act as a moderating force in the new labor movement 24 Catholic clergy promoted and founded moderate trade unions such as the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists and the Archdiocesan Labor Institute in 1939 American Catholics of that era were generally New Deal liberals who actively supported the CIO viewed government as a positive force for social reform and often participated in non communist trade unions becoming a prominent group of the United Auto Workers According to Colleen Doody Catholics were the backbone and the bane of New Deal liberalism 24 Catholic Conference on Industrial Problems edit The Catholic Conference on Industrial Problems 1923 1937 was conceived by Raymond McGowan as a way of bringing together Catholic leaders in the fields of theology labor and business with a view to promoting awareness and discussion of Catholic social teaching Its first meeting was held in Milwaukee While it was the venue for important discussions during its existence its demise was due partly by lack of participation by business executives who perceived the dominant tone of the group as anti business 21st century edit nbsp U S President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump meeting with Pope Francis Wednesday May 24 2017 in Vatican City Religion plays a part in American elections Religion is part of the political debate over LGBT rights abortion the right to die assisted suicide universal health care workers rights and immigration According to Dr John Green of University of Akron There isn t a Catholic vote anymore there are several Catholic votes A survey conducted by the Gallup organization in 2009 revealed that despite the opposition of the church to abortion and embryonic stem cell research there is no significant difference between the opinions of Catholics and non Catholics on these questions 25 Voting guides edit Main article Catholic Answers The Voter s Guides controversy In 2004 Catholic Answers a private lay Catholic apostolate published its Voter s Guide for Serious Catholics 26 It also published Voter s Guide for Serious Christians for non Catholics 27 In 2006 it revamped the guides and published them on its Catholic Answers Action web site 28 In 2016 another Catholic organization Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good published the Pope Francis Voter Guide 1 to help inform the faithful about their specifically political vocation as Catholics in the United States In January 2016 the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops produced an updated version of their 2007 voter s guide Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship It is a summary of the USCCB s public policies based on church teachings 29 In September 2016 Bishop Thomas J Olmsted of the Diocese of Phoenix issued the fourth edition of his guide Catholics in the Public Square In it he suggests to politicians supporting abortion that they would need to repent and go to Confession before receiving Holy Communion 30 in contrast with other bishops such as Cardinals Timothy Dolan and Donald Wuerl who say that the church does not deny communion over issues of legislation Marriage and family edit The Roman Catholic Church defines marriage as a covenant by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring 31 The church teaches that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered They are contrary to the natural law They close the sexual act to the gift of life They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity Under no circumstances can they be approved 32 Nevertheless homosexuals must be accepted with respect compassion and sensitivity Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided 32 Some Roman Catholics take this to mean that voting in favor of benefits for lifelong partners is a compassionate act whereas others see voting in favor of benefits for lifelong partners as merely promoting behavior contrary to natural law According to a 2009 survey 59 of practicing Catholics oppose same sex marriage while those who are not practicing support it by 51 33 Cardinal John Joseph O Connor was an outspoken critic of homosexuality other prominent Catholics who were outspoken critics have included John Boehner David Vitter Paul Ryan Newt Gingrich Rick Santorum Bobby Jindal Jeb Bush Bob McDonnell Marco Rubio Michael Steele Donald Carcieri and Sam Brownback Catholics Rudolph Giuliani Chris Christie Tim Kaine James Martin Cardinal Joseph W Tobin Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia Cardinal Blase Cupich Patrick J Conroy Jesuit chaplain to the U S House of Representatives and Bob Casey Jr have supported gay rights and civil unions but not same sex marriage Liberal Catholics have generally supported repeal of sodomy laws that called for jail time for homosexuals and Employment Non Discrimination laws that would prohibit large employers from firing workers because of sexual orientation Conservative Catholics have taken the contrary view rejecting claims that these are examples of unjust discrimination and that because homosexual act is an intrinsic evil it must always be opposed 34 Abortion edit Further information Catholic Church and abortion in the United States and Catholic Church and the politics of abortion In accordance with its teachings the Catholic Church opposes abortion in all circumstances and often leads the national debate on abortion 35 The Roman Catholic Church has been a fierce opponent of liberalized abortion laws and has organized political resistance to such legislation in several Western countries Before the Roe v Wade decision making abortion legal in the United States the anti abortion movement in the United States consisted of elite lawyers politicians and doctors almost all of whom were Catholic 36 The only coordinated opposition to abortion during the early 1970s came from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Family Life Bureau also a Catholic organization Mobilization of a wide scale anti abortion movement among Catholics began quickly after the Roe v Wade decision with the creation of the National Right to Life Committee NRLC The NRLC also organized non Catholics eventually becoming the largest anti abortion organization in the United States 36 The anti abortion wing of the Democratic Party was also led by Catholic Robert P Casey Sr other anti abortion Democrats including Sargent Shriver Raymond Flynn and Bob Casey Jr Reception of communion by Catholic politicians who support abortion rights is controversial in the United States Such cases typically involve a bishop who prepares to withhold communion from a Catholic politician though in some cases excommunication has been suggested by whom and in others a bishop has instructed a politician to refrain from receiving communion The first such case was that of Lucy Killea though such incidents have subsequently occurred during national elections In 2004 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith who would later become Pope Benedict XVI instructed American bishops in a confidential memorandum that communion must be denied to Catholic politicians who support legal abortion citation needed However Cardinals O Malley Egan McCarrick Wuerl Mahony and George have said they would not deny communion to a person in public life who supports abortion rights Cardinal Burke and Charles Chaput Archbishop of Philadelphia have shown support for Ratzinger s position but as of June 2022 update neither has followed through on this During the 2004 presidential campaign four bishops planned to deny communion to Catholic politicians who had voted for John Kerry 37 This provoked a negative reaction and the Catholic Church took a different approach for the 2008 election The new message was compiled into a brochure titled Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship which emphasized that issues involving intrinsically evil actions could not be equated morally with others according to the Times The brochure cites abortion as the prime example and it also mentions euthanasia torture genocide unjust war and racism In the 2008 U S presidential campaign as many as 89 Catholic bishops proclaimed that Catholics should make abortion their defining issue in the election 38 In November 2009 Rhode Island Rep Patrick Kennedy disclosed that Thomas Tobin had ordered priests in the diocese to deny him communion because of Kennedy s position in favor of unrestricted abortion 39 Michael Humphrey of the National Catholic Reporter viewed the 54 45 majority of Catholic voters choosing Obama in the 2008 presidential election as a repudiation of bishops who had warned that voting for Obama would constitute grave matter 40 The University of Notre Dame a Catholic institution named President Barack Obama commencement speaker at its 2009 graduation and bestowed an honorary doctorate degree on him The invitation drew criticism from Catholics and some members of the church hierarchy because of Obama s policies in favor of promoting and funding abortion citation needed Polling results show that a majority of Catholics classify themselves as anti abortion a 2009 poll showed a 52 majority identifying as anti abortion 41 Pew Research combining polls from 2011 and 2013 notes that over half 53 of white Catholics believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases with 41 saying it should be illegal in all or most cases Among Hispanic Catholics 43 say it should be legal in all or most cases while 52 say it should be illegal in all or most cases 42 Birth control edit This section needs expansion You can help by adding to it April 2012 In 1948 Archbishop Richard Cushing campaigned against a Massachusetts referendum to loosen the state s ban on birth control While the referendum failed deployment of the Church s political muscle according to historian Leslie Tentler offended non Catholics and led Cushing to relax his position when the issue was debated again in the 1960s 43 The Catholic church hierarchy forbids birth control such as condoms or the pill because it views them as separating sexual intercourse from its intended consequence of reproduction 44 In 2012 when the Obama administration proposed regulations that required employer provided health insurance plans to cover contraception Catholic companies such as affiliated universities and EWTN Broadcasting which believed they should be exempt from the law sued the government while Catholic religious leaders campaigned against it in church 45 46 The regulation was later altered so that an employee of a religious institution which did not wish to provide coverage for reproductive health care could seek it directly from the insurer at no additional cost Catholic religious authorities continued to oppose the plan while the Catholic Health Association supported it 47 While the pope and the bishops have opposed birth control the majority of American Catholics disagree with them and believe the church should change its teaching on birth control A Pew Research poll conducted in 2013 found that three quarters of U S Catholics 76 say the church should permit birth control 48 Immigration edit The immigration debate has opened a chasm with Republican hardliners who want restrictions 49 Some 30 of the Roman Catholic population is Hispanic and that percentage continues to rise steadily Pope John Paul II advocated that countries should accommodate people fleeing from economic hardship Cardinal Raymond Burke has been involved in rallies to allow undocumented workers a chance at citizenship By welcoming migrant workers many of whom are Catholic Burke says we obey the command of Our Lord who tells us that when we welcome the stranger we welcome Christ Himself 50 In addressing the Pew Research Center s Forum on Religion amp Public Life in 2009 Archbishop Charles J Chaput of Denver discussed the need when talking about reforming immigration law to do so in a comprehensive way so that justice is done and our borders are protected It s always both and it s not either or from my perspective 51 N o one can claim to be Catholic and think it s okay to treat immigrants unjustly or inhumanly But you can disagree on immigration policies because you think that one works and one doesn t 51 Most immigration to the U S is from predominantly Roman Catholic nations and about 3 4 of all lapsed Catholics have been replaced by immigrant Catholics in the United States 52 In 2006 Cardinal Roger Mahony announced that he would order the clergy and laity of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to ignore H R 4437 if it were to become law 53 Cardinal Mahony personally lobbied senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein to have the Senate consider a comprehensive immigration reform bill rather than the enforcement only bill that passed the House of Representatives 54 Cardinal Mahony also blamed the Congress for the illegal immigration crisis due to their failure to act on the issue in the previous 20 years opposed H R 4437 as punitive and open to abusive interpretation and supported the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 S 2611 55 56 Transgender rights edit The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have openly opposed the Equality Act which serves to address discrimination towards members of the LGBTQ community They claim that the legislation discourages differing opinions on marriage and sexuality and would codify gender ideology in federal law 57 Party affiliation editBefore the 1960s when cultural changes lead to an incremental liberalization of the Democratic Party Catholics were seen as staunch Democrats The Democratic Party ran Al Smith the first Catholic presidential candidate by a major party in 1928 and except when the ticket was headed by a Southern candidate has nominated a Catholic for president or vice president in every election since 1960 except for 1988 where a Greek Orthodox Michael Dukakis was the presidential nominee Since the 1960s the Catholic vote has come to reflect the nation as a whole instead of being predominantly Democratic 9 In the 60s and early 70s a number of Catholics and Southern whites abandoned their traditional affiliation with the Democratic Party and began to support the Republican Party This shift is evidenced by the fact that Nixon received 33 of the Catholic vote in the 1968 election compared to 52 in 1972 As a group Catholics represented a quarter of the nation s electorate and were now one of the nation s largest swing groups Both parties began to aggressively woo the Catholic voters Although the Catholic hierarchy could not dictate who Catholics voted for they did have a substantial influence over the faithful in their dioceses Politicians were aware that the bishops could direct significant time energy and money to support the issues that were important to them From their perspective the bishops were eager to regain some of the influence that their predecessors had wielded in the earlier part of the 20th century 58 Since the 1970s non Hispanic white Catholics have voted majority Republican very reliably while a majority of Hispanic or Latino Catholics have voted Democrat 59 In his successful 1980 campaign against Jimmy Carter Ronald Reagan won about half of the Catholic vote and a majority of Catholics who were non Hispanic whites 60 Reagan Democrats many of them non Hispanic white blue collar Catholics often from a white ethnic background comprised 25 of the Democrats who voted for Reagan and formed an important part of his support in 1984 as well Despite Catholic Geraldine Ferraro s presence on the Democratic ticket as Walter Mondale s vice presidential running mate that year Reagan won 54 to 61 of the Catholic vote only slightly different from the overall 59 Although the majority of Catholics in 1984 remained Democrats compared to 1980 Catholic votes switched to Reagan at about the same level as most Protestant groups Reagan s vice president George H W Bush won about the same number of votes as Michael Dukakis making 1988 the third presidential election in a row in which Catholics failed to support the Democratic candidate as they traditionally did 61 186 187 191 192 194 Although about one third of Catholics voted for Bush s reelection in 1992 most Catholic defectors switched to independent Ross Perot not the successful Democrat Bill Clinton Unlike previous elections such as in 1972 when George McGovern s Catholic support was eight percentage points higher than overall the Catholic vote was not more Democratic than the overall electorate but split almost identically to it The trend away from a Democratic dominance of the Catholic vote continued in 1994 when for the first time in history Democrats did not receive a majority of Catholic votes in elections for the House of Representatives as with 1992 the Catholic vote split resembled that of the overall electorate White non Hispanic Catholics however remained majority Republican 59 This trend reversed slightly in 1996 when Clinton s share of Catholics in general was four percentage points ahead of overall and they comprised about half of the margin between him and the unsuccessful challenger Robert Dole The 1990s ended however with Catholics as the largest swing vote in American politics and with white non Hispanic Catholics continuing to vote consistently Republican 59 61 200 201 207 218 Their party independence continued into 2000 and Catholics became the large religious grouping that most closely reflected the total electorate ahead of mainline Protestants 50 of Catholics voted for Al Gore versus 47 for George W Bush in the very close 2000 election 52 of Catholics voted for Bush s successful reelection compared to 47 for the Catholic John Kerry in 2004 versus 51 to 48 overall 9 Amongst white Catholics the figure was higher with George W Bush receiving 56 of white Catholic votes 62 Barack Obama who chose the Catholic Joe Biden as his running mate received 54 of the Catholic vote in 2008 compared to John McCain s 45 close to the overall 52 to 46 63 In 2012 Obama and Biden faced Mitt Romney and the Catholic Paul Ryan Obama won 50 of the Catholic vote to Romney s 48 close to their 51 and 47 respectively of the overall vote 64 In 2016 the Republicans Donald Trump chose Mike Pence who describes himself as evangelical Catholic as his running mate while the Democrats Hillary Clinton chose the Catholic Tim Kaine as hers The victorious Trump Pence ticket received 52 of Catholics votes compared to Clinton Kaine s 45 65 In some regions such as the Mountain West region it is estimated that since the 1980s 42 of white Catholics vote Republican whereas only 20 vote Democratic 66 White Catholics who are registered Democrats are also shown to defect to the Republican party in massive numbers during election years This was particularly true during both of Ronald Reagan s presidential elections as well as the Nixon McGovern race White Catholics who are registered as Republicans are substantially less likely to defect to the Democrats during election years 67 Presidential elections edit1928 edit Main article 1928 United States presidential election nbsp Al Smith is the first Catholic presidential candidate in major parties In 1928 Al Smith became the first Roman Catholic to gain a major party s nomination for president 68 His religion became an issue during the campaign and was one of the factors in his loss Many feared that he would answer to the pope and not the constitution Another major controversial issue was the continuation of Prohibition Smith was personally in favor of relaxation or repeal of Prohibition laws despite its status as part of the nation s Constitution but the Democratic Party split north and south on the issue During the campaign Smith tried to duck the issue with noncommittal statements He was also criticized for being a drunkard because of the stereotypes placed on Irish Catholics of the day 69 70 Smith swept the entire Catholic vote which had been split in 1920 and 1924 and brought millions of Catholics to the polls for the first time especially women The fact that Smith was Catholic garnered him support from immigrant populations in New England which may explain his narrow victories in traditionally Republican Massachusetts and Rhode Island as well as his narrow 2 loss in New York which previous Democratic presidential candidates had lost by double digits 71 1960 edit Main article 1960 United States presidential election nbsp John F Kennedy 35th President of the United StatesReligion became a divisive issue during the presidential campaign of 1960 Senator John F Kennedy of Massachusetts was vying to become the nation s first Catholic president A key factor that was hurting Kennedy in his campaign was the widespread prejudice against his Roman Catholic religion some Protestants believed that if he were elected president Kennedy would have to take orders from the Pope in Rome When offered the opportunity to speak before a convention of Baptist ministers he decided to try to put the issue to rest To address fears that his Roman Catholicism would influence his decision making John F Kennedy famously told the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on September 12 1960 I am not the Catholic candidate for President I am the Democratic Party s candidate for President who also happens to be a Catholic I do not speak for my Church on public matters and the Church does not speak for me 72 He promised to respect the separation of church and state and not to allow Catholic officials to dictate public policy to him Kennedy also raised the question of whether one quarter of Americans were relegated to second class citizenship just because they were Roman Catholic Even so it was widely believed after the election that Kennedy lost some heavily Protestant states because of his Catholicism His address did not please everyone many non Catholics remained unconvinced that a Catholic could be president without divided loyalties and many Catholics thought he conceded too much in his profession of belief in an absolute separation of church and state The speech is widely considered to be an important marker in the history of Catholicism and anti Catholicism in the United States Kennedy went on to win the national popular vote over Richard Nixon by just one tenth of one percentage point 0 1 the closest popular vote margin of the 20th century In the electoral college Kennedy s victory was larger as he took 303 electoral votes to Nixon s 219 269 were needed to win There was a narrow consensus among the experts that Kennedy had won more votes than he lost as a result of his Catholicism 73 as Catholics rallied to Kennedy as an affirmation of their religion and their right to have a Catholic president Summary of results edit This chart shows the estimated Democrat Republican split of the Catholic vote in elections since 1948 Catholic candidates and elections in which Catholics voted for the national winner are in bold Year Election Winner Party D R Election Loser Cook PVI Citations1948 Truman Barkley Democratic 65 35 Dewey Warren D 26 7 74 1952 Eisenhower Nixon Republican 51 56 44 49 Stevenson Sparkman D 18 28 7 74 1956 Eisenhower Nixon Republican 45 51 49 55 Stevenson Kefauver D 5 17 7 74 1960 Kennedy Johnson Democratic 78 82 18 22 Nixon Lodge D 56 64 7 1964 Johnson Humphrey Democratic 76 79 21 24 Goldwater Miller D 29 35 7 74 1968 Nixon Agnew Republican 55 59 33 37 Humphrey Muskie D 19 27 7 74 1972 Nixon Agnew Republican 37 48 52 63 McGovern Shriver R 3 D 19 7 74 1976 Carter Mondale Democratic 54 57 41 44 Ford Dole D 8 14 7 74 1980 Reagan Bush Republican 41 47 41 50 Carter Mondale D 1 16 7 61 185 74 1984 Reagan Bush Republican 39 46 54 61 Mondale Ferraro R 4 D 10 7 74 1988 Bush Quayle Republican 47 52 48 52 Dukakis Bentsen D 3 13 7 74 1992 Clinton Gore Democratic 44 50 30 36 Bush Quayle D 2 14 7 61 202 1996 Clinton Gore Democratic 53 55 35 37 Dole Kemp D 8 12 7 2000 Bush Cheney Republican 50 52 46 49 Gore Lieberman D 1 6 7 2004 Bush Cheney Republican 47 52 48 52 Kerry Edwards R 3 D 6 7 2008 Obama Biden Democratic 53 57 43 47 McCain Palin R 1 D 7 7 2012 Obama Biden Democratic 50 48 Romney Ryan D 2 64 2016 Trump Pence Republican 45 52 Clinton Kaine R 9 65 2020 Biden Harris Democratic 52 47 Trump Pence D 5 75 Representation in government editCongress edit According to the Pew Research Center Catholics represent 30 5 of the United States Congress as of January 2019 There are 141 Representatives and 22 Senators that are Catholic which split as 99 Democrats and 64 Republicans Edward Kavanagh was nationally noticed as the first Catholic elected from New England in 1830 Kavanagh was elected as a Jacksonian to the Twenty second and Twenty third Congresses serving from March 4 1831 to March 3 1835 On January 4 2007 Nancy Pelosi a Catholic became the first woman elected as the Speaker of the House She was elected again as Speaker of the House on January 3 2019 after serving as House Minority Leader for the Democrats from 2003 to 2007 and 2011 2019 Paul Ryan is Catholic as well and served recently as Speaker of the House from 2015 to 2019 Supreme Court edit A majority of the Supreme Court has been Catholic since 2005 The first Catholic Supreme Court appointment was Chief Justice Roger B Taney appointed by Andrew Jackson in 1836 76 The second Edward Douglass White joined the Court in 1894 and was elevated to Chief Justice in 1910 He was joined on the Court by Catholic Joseph McKenna in 1898 After White s death in 1921 there became an informally recognized tradition of holding one seat on the Court for a Catholic justice though not necessarily the same seat 76 Pierce Butler was appointed to the Court in 1923 and succeeded by Frank Murphy in 1940 Both were Catholic During Murphy s time on the Court he was briefly joined by James F Byrnes who was raised Catholic but had converted to Episcopalianism many years before his appointment After Murphy died in 1949 he was not succeeded directly by a Catholic However President Harry Truman appointed Sherman Minton to a different vacant seat and his appointment was seen as in keeping with the tradition as Minton s wife was Catholic 77 He would convert five years after his retirement from the Court 78 Upon Minton s retirement Cardinal Francis Spellman successfully lobbied Dwight Eisenhower to replace him with William J Brennan a practicing Catholic The traditional one seat rule was abandoned by President Ronald Reagan who nominated two Catholics to serve together Antonin Scalia in 1986 and Anthony Kennedy in 1988 They joined Brennan to give the Court a then high of three Catholic justices President George H W Bush nominated Clarence Thomas in 1991 At the time of his appointment Thomas was a confirmed Catholic attending Episcopalian services but he has since returned to active Catholicism 79 He replaced the retiring Catholic Brennan with David Souter an Episcopalian President George W Bush appointed John Roberts and Samuel Alito both Catholics in 2005 Alito s appointment gave the Court its first ever Catholic majority which it has maintained since a In 2009 President Barack Obama appointed Catholic Sonia Sotomayor raising the number of Catholic justices to six 80 In 2018 President Donald Trump appointed Catholic Brett Kavanaugh to replace Anthony Kennedy Trump s other appointment thus far Neil Gorsuch is a practicing Episcopalian who had attended Catholic Mass and Catholic schools as a child He joined the Episcopal Church upon marriage to his wife It is unclear whether he still identifies as Catholic and he is not typically included among the Catholic justices 81 In 2020 Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died President Donald Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett a Catholic to fill the vacancy she was subsequently confirmed by the Senate and sworn in to the bench Executive branch edit There have been two Catholic President of the United States John F Kennedy and Joe Biden and two Vice Presidents of the United States Joe Biden and Mike Pence raised Catholic self described Evangelical Catholic 82 First Lady Melania Trump was the first Catholic to live in the White House since First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy who remained there for two weeks after her husband s death 53 years earlier 83 84 85 Cabinet members edit This list is incomplete you can help by adding missing items August 2020 Past Catholic Postmaster General formerly a cabinet post James Farley 1933 1940 86 Past Catholic Secretaries of State include Edmund Muskie 87 Alexander Haig 88 and John Kerry 89 90 Secretary James G Blaine had Catholic roots Secretary James F Byrnes was raised Catholic but converted to Episcopalianism Past Catholic U S Attorneys General include Roger B Taney 76 Joseph McKenna 76 Charles Bonaparte 91 Frank Murphy James McGranery J Howard McGrath Robert F Kennedy William Barr and Alberto Gonzales 92 Past Catholic Secretaries of Defense include James Forrestal 93 Leon Panetta and James Mattis 94 95 Secretary Chuck Hagel was raised Catholic but converted to Episcopalianism 96 Past Catholic Secretaries of Labor include Maurice Tobin 97 Martin Durkin James P Mitchell Ann McLaughlin Korologos Alexis Herman 98 Hilda Solis 99 100 101 and Tom Perez 102 Past Catholic Secretaries of Housing and Urban Development include Moon Landrieu Henry Cisneros Andrew Cuomo 103 Mel Martinez and Julian Castro 104 105 Past Catholic Secretaries of Energy include Bill Richardson 106 Secretary of the Treasury and of the Interior Thomas Ewing married a Catholic woman attended services for many years and was formally baptized on his deathbed 107 Treasury Secretary Donald Regan also had Catholic roots but it is unclear whether he actively practiced while in office The Catholic secretaries in the Biden administration are Lloyd Austin Defense Deb Haaland Interior Gina Raimondo Commerce Marty Walsh Labor Xavier Becerra Health and Human Services and Jennifer Granholm Energy 108 109 110 111 Haaland is the first Native American in a presidential cabinet and also the first Native Catholic within it Granholm converted to Catholicism while at Harvard Law School in the mid 1980s 112 Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was baptized in the Catholic Church as an infant and he attended Catholic schools but began to attend the Church of England s Christ Church Cathedral during his term at the University of Oxford and said he felt more or less Anglican by the time he returned to the U S 113 Buttigieg has since been an Episcopalian 114 See also edit nbsp Catholicism portal nbsp Politics portal nbsp United States portalAnti abortion movement Anti Catholicism Anti Catholicism in the United States Catholic Church in the United States History of the Catholic Church in the United States Catholic Democrats Christianity and politics Christianity in the United States History of Christianity in the United States Identity politics Jewish views and involvement in US politics Latino vote Political Catholicism Religion in politics Religion in the United States Freedom of religion in the United States History of religion in the United States Religious discrimination in the United States Third Way centrism Notes edit For a two month period following the retirement of Anthony Kennedy on July 31 2018 there were four Catholic justices on an eight member Court However the Court did not hear any cases during that time References edit CARA s New Book Identifies Trends in U S Catholic Church Archived February 26 2006 at the Wayback Machine Catholicism USA The Official Catholic Directory 2009 Donald T Critchlow Intended Consequences Birth Control Abortion and the Federal Government in Modern America 2001 p 196 Davis Nicola October 24 2016 Pope Francis s edict on climate change has fallen on closed ears study finds The Guardian Retrieved November 22 2019 Can a good Catholic dissent from Laudato Si June 24 2015 Davenport Caral June 16 2015 Pope s Views on Climate Change Add Pressure to Catholic Candidates New York Times Retrieved June 18 2015 a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q CARA Presidential Votes of Catholics Estimates from Various Sources PDF Retrieved November 22 2019 Diamant Jeff January 3 2023 Faith on the Hill PDF Pew Research Center a b c d e f g h Silk Mark Walsh Andrew November 3 2008 A Past Without a Future America Retrieved March 26 2011 CARROLL Daniel 1730 1796 Biographical Directory of the United States Congress United States Congress Retrieved October 3 2008 Breidenbach Michael D 2016 Conciliarism and the American Founding The William and Mary Quarterly 73 3 467 500 doi 10 5309 willmaryquar 73 3 0467 JSTOR 10 5309 willmaryquar 73 3 0467 S2CID 148090971 CARROLL Charles of Carrollton 1737 1832 Biographical Directory of the United States Congress United States Congress Retrieved October 3 2008 Immigrants and Immigration Americans at War Macmillan Reference USA Roger Finke and Rodney Stark The Churching of America 1776 1990 Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy 1993 p 273 Apart from the formation in 1897 of a Polish National Catholic Church there were no alternative Catholic denominations formed for immigrants By contrast the Lutherans formed numerous denominations in the U S Steven P Erie Rainbow s end Irish Americans and the dilemmas of urban machine politics 1840 1985 1990 a b Kleppner 1979 Rerum novarum Vatican va Retrieved November 22 2019 Terry Matthews Catholicism in Nineteenth Century America Archived May 29 2001 at archive today Lectures for Religion Wake Forrest University GPO CRECB 1933 PDF Retrieved June 3 2021 Howard J Paul Cross Border Reflections Parents Right to Direct Their Children s Education Under the U S and Canadian Constitutions Archived October 29 2008 at the Wayback Machine Education Canada v41 n2 p36 37 Sum 2001 Pope Pius XI December 31 1929 Divini illius magistri Archived from the original on September 23 2010 Retrieved August 17 2010 Dorothy Day Prophet of Pacifism for the Catholic Church Archived September 27 2008 at the Wayback Machine from Houston Catholic Worker newspaper October 1997 List of Catholic Worker Communities Archived from the original on December 20 2008 Retrieved November 30 2008 a b Doody Colleen 2011 Grappling with Secularism Anti Communism and Catholicism in Cold War Detroit American Communist History 10 1 53 71 doi 10 1080 14743892 2011 561953 S2CID 163015502 Catholics Similar to Mainstream on Abortion Stem Cells March 30 2009 Retrieved February 9 2010 Voter s Guide for Serious Catholics Archived from the original on September 27 2008 Retrieved September 18 2008 Voter s Guide for Serious Christians Archived from the original on April 15 2009 Retrieved September 18 2008 Catholic Online Some issues morally non negotiable says 06 Catholic voter s guide Catholic Online Catholic org Archived from the original on June 6 2011 Retrieved September 3 2010 An Assessment of the New USCCB Document Faithful Citizenship January 6 2016 Kevin Jones A Phoenix bishop s plea to voters and politicians no votes for abortion Catholic News Agency September 20 2016 CIC 1055 1 Archived from the original on December 31 2008 a b Libreria Editrice Vaticana ed Catechism of the Catholic Church pp 2357 2359 Retrieved July 22 2009 Majority Continues To Support Civil Unions The Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life October 9 2009 Peddicord Richard 1996 Gay and Lesbian Rights A Question sexual Ethics Or Social Justice Rowman amp Littlefield p ix ISBN 978 1 55612 759 5 Retrieved October 22 2012 Pro Life Activities The Catholic Church is a Pro Life Church USCCB Retrieved September 3 2010 a b The making of anti abortion activists how social movement mobilization works By Ziad W Munson Goodstein Laurie May 20 2004 Democrats Criticize Denial of Communion by Bishops The New York Times Retrieved July 11 2010 89 Catholic Bishops Speak Out In This Election Abortion is the Defining Issue Press release ChristianNewsWire Patrick Kennedy Denied Holy Communion by Catholic Church November 22 2009 Retrieved February 7 2010 Humphrey Michael November 7 2008 The Catholic Vote Complex significant but no realignment National Catholic Reporter Retrieved April 24 2009 More Americans Anti Choice Than Pro Choice for First Time Gallup com May 15 2009 Retrieved September 3 2010 Majority of U S Catholics opinions run counter to church on contraception homosexuality Pew research Sept 19 2013 Meehan Seth March 15 2012 Catholics and Contraception The New York Times Birth Control Grady Denise January 29 2012 Ruling on Contraception Draws Battle Lines at Catholic Colleges The New York Times Cassata Donna February 9 2012 Obama Birth Control Mandate Divides Democrats The Associated Press Newcomb Alyssa February 11 2012 Contraception Compromise Doesn t Please Bishops ABC News Majority of U S Catholics opinions run counter to church on contraception homosexuality Pew research Center Sept 19 2013 Rachel Zoll Immigration Reform Splits Catholics GOP The Associated Press April 22 2006 Zoll Immigration Reform Splits Catholics GOP April 22 2006 a b The Political Obligations of Catholics Pew Research Center Pewforum org March 17 2009 Retrieved November 22 2019 Pew Forum February 2008 U S Religious Landscape Survey Religious Affiliation Diverse and Dynamic PDF Catholicism has experienced the greatest net losses as a result of affiliation changes While nearly one in three Americans 31 were raised in the Catholic faith today fewer than one in four 24 describe themselves as Catholic These losses would have been even more pronounced were it not for the offsetting effect of immigration The Landscape Survey finds that among the foreign born adult population Catholics outnumber Protestants by nearly a two to one margin 46 Catholic vs 24 Protestant among native born Americans on the other hand Protestants outnumber Catholics by an even larger margin 55 Protestant vs 21 Catholic p 6 the Catholic share of the U S adult population has held fairly steady in recent decades at around 25 What this apparent stability obscures however is the large number of people who have left the Catholic Church Approximately one third of the survey respondents who say they were raised Catholic no longer describe themselves as Catholic This means that roughly 10 of all Americans are former Catholics These losses however have been partly offset by the number of people who have changed their affiliation to Catholicism 2 6 of the adult population but more importantly by the disproportionately high number of Catholics among immigrants to the U S p 7 Kerwin Donald May 8 2006 Immigration reform what the Catholic Church knows Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc Archived from the original on April 21 2007 Retrieved May 11 2007 John L Allen Jr April 14 2006 Mahony on immigration National Catholic Reporter Archived from the original on September 27 2007 Retrieved April 11 2007 Cardinal Mahony speaks out on immigration reform Day to Day National Public Radio March 29 2006 Retrieved April 11 2007 Catholic Church officials spurn immigration reform plan American Morning CNN March 29 2006 Retrieved April 11 2007 Truth about the Equality Act United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Retrieved April 4 2021 Heyer Kristin E Rozell Mark J Genovese Michael A 2008 Catholics and politics the dynamic tension between faith and power Georgetown University Press p 17 ISBN 978 1 58901 215 8 Retrieved 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the Greater Houston Ministerial Association American Rhetoric Archived from the original on September 11 2007 Retrieved September 17 2007 New York Times November 20 1960 Section 4 p E5 a b c d e f g h i j George J Marlin and Michael Barone American Catholic Voter Two Hundred Years Of Political Impact 2006 Exit Poll Results and Analysis for the 2020 Presidential Election Washington Post December 14 2020 a b c d Hitchcock James Catholics and the Supreme Court An Uneasy Relationship June 2004 from Catalyst magazine Indiana Man Is Nominated for U S Court Post Kentucky New Era Associated Press September 15 1949 Religious affiliation of Supreme Court justices Justice Sherman Minton converted to Catholicism after his retirement James F Byrnes was raised as Catholic but became an Episcopalian before his confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas visits Conception Seminary College Archived March 21 2008 at the Wayback Machine Winter 2001 Paulson MichaelCatholicism Sotomayor would be sixth Catholic May 26 2009 Boston Globe Daniel Burke March 22 2017 What is Neil Gorsuch s religion It s complicated CNN com Springer said she doesn t know whether Gorsuch considers himself a Catholic or an Episcopalian I have no evidence that Judge Gorsuch considers himself an Episcopalian and likewise no evidence that he does not Gorsuch s younger brother J J said he too has no idea how he would fill out a form He was raised in the Catholic Church and confirmed in the Catholic Church as an adolescent but he has been attending Episcopal services for the past 15 or so years What it means that Mike Pence called himself an evangelical Catholic The Washington Post July 18 2016 Retrieved November 22 2019 Wellington Elizabeth May 25 2017 Melania Trump only the second Catholic first lady to meet a pope Philadelphia Media Network Retrieved May 25 2017 Trump s father was a member of the Communist party in Slovenia which meant the family were officially atheists Donald Trump is Presbyterian the couple married in an Episcopal church US First Lady Melania Trump is Catholic spokeswoman confirms Catholic Herald UK May 25 2017 Archived from the original on April 3 2019 Retrieved May 25 2017 Sieczkowski Cavan May 25 2017 Melania Trump Will Be The First Catholic To Live At The White House Since JFK Huffington Post GPO CRECB 1933 PDF Retrieved June 3 2021 Witherell James L March 28 2014 Ed Muskie Made in Maine The Early Years 1914 1960 Thomaston Maine Tilbury House Publishers ISBN 9780884483922 Haig s Future Uncertain After a Shaky Start Anchorage Daily News April 11 1981 Retrieved December 22 2009 Caldwell Deborah Not a Prodigal Son beliefnet com JK hotel needs Archived from the original on April 18 2010 Recipients The Laetare Medal University of Notre Dame Retrieved August 2 2020 Alberto Gonzales June 3 2005 Living the American Dream Interview Interviewed by Academy of Achievement New York City Archived from the original on April 3 2007 Retrieved May 6 2007 Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley Driven Patriot The Life and Times of James Forrestal Naval Institute Press 1992 page 7 Jaffe Greg deGrandpre Andrew July 28 2017 In John Kelly Trump gets a plain spoken disciplinarian as his chief of staff The Washington Post ISSN 0190 8286 Archived from the original on June 12 2018 Retrieved June 16 2018 Trump s Catholic Warriors National Catholic Register Archived from the original on June 17 2018 Retrieved June 16 2018 cached excerpt from Charlyne Berens biography Chuck Hagel which refers to Hagel s parents as pillars of their Catholic church Hagel s father Charles Hagel had converted to the Catholic faith of his wife Page 17 of the same work refers to Hagel as now an Episcopalian Eleonora W Schoenebaum ed Political Profiles The Truman Years 1978 p 554 Wines Michael May 12 1997 Alexis Herman Friends Helped Labor Nominee Move Up Then Almost Brought Her Down partners nytimes com Retrieved January 15 2018 Merl Jean December 28 2000 Solis Prepares to Take Another Step Up Los Angeles Times Los Angeles California Retrieved March 12 2009 CQ Politics in America Profile Hilda Solis Congressional Quarterly June 24 2010 Archived from the original on March 10 2009 Retrieved December 22 2008 House Democrats Release Historic Catholic Statement of Principles Congresswoman Rosa L DeLauro February 28 2006 Archived from the original on February 18 2012 Retrieved December 19 2008 If Clinton wins Thomas Perez does too Only question What job does he get Washington Post July 5 2016 Retrieved February 11 2017 A Cuomo Who Is Catholic but Hardly Theological New York Times March 18 2011 What does Julian Castro believe Where the candidate stands on 8 issues PBS NewsHour January 12 2019 Retrieved January 22 2019 Desjardins Lisa January 12 2019 What does Julian Castro believe Where the candidate stands on 8 issues PBS Newshour Retrieved June 27 2019 Fairchild Mary Presidential Candidate Bill Richardson About com Retrieved June 22 2010 I feel that through my Roman Catholic beliefs Lewis 33 34 609 10 Gstalter Morgan January 19 2019 Haaland condemns students behavior toward Native elder at Indigenous Peoples March The Hill Archived from the original on April 4 2019 About the Governor Gina Raimondo Rhode Island Office of the Governor Archived from the original on November 13 2018 Early struggles gave Martin Walsh a solid underpinning Boston Globe September 2 2013 Joe Biden s very Catholic Cabinet National Catholic Reporter January 19 2021 Rice Lewis September 24 2002 Catch a Rising Star Harvard Law Bulletin Beck Father Edward April 2 2019 Pete Buttigieg on faith his marriage and Mike Pence CNN Wren Adam December 16 2018 Pete Buttigieg has his eye on the prize Indianapolis Monthly Bibliography editThis section includes a list of references related reading or external links but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations Please help to improve this section by introducing more precise citations November 2019 Learn how and when to remove this template message Casey Shaun The Making of a Catholic President Kennedy vs Nixon 1960 2009 Cochran Clarke E and David Carroll Cochran Catholics Politics and Public Policy Beyond Left and Right 2003 Dolan Jay The Irish Americans A History 2008 Heyer Kristin E Mark J Rozell and Michael A Genovese Catholics and Politics The Dynamic Tension Between Faith and Power 2008 Marlin George J and Michael Barone American Catholic Voter Two Hundred Years Of Political Impact 2006 Morris Charles American Catholic The Saints and Sinners Who Built America s Most Powerful Church 1998 Prendergast William B The Catholic Voter in American Politics The Passing of the Democratic Monolith 1999 Woolner David B and Richard G Kurial FDR the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church in America 1933 1945 2003 Further reading editThis section includes a list of references related reading or external links but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations Please help to improve this section by introducing more precise citations November 2019 Learn how and when to remove this template message Blanshard Paul American Freedom and Catholic Power Beacon Press 1949 online influential Protestant attack on Catholic political power Brenner Saul Patterns of Jewish Catholic Democratic Voting and the 1960 Presidential Vote Jewish Social Studies 1964 169 178 in JSTOR Byrnes Timothy A Catholic bishops in American politics Princeton University Press 1991 Casey Shaun A The Making of a Catholic President Kennedy vs Nixon 1960 Oxford University Press 2009 online Cooney John The American Pope The Life and Times of Francis Cardinal Spellman 1984 Flynn George Q Roosevelt and Romanism Catholics and American Diplomacy 1937 1945 1976 online Graziano Manlio In Rome We Trust The Rise of Catholics in American Political Life Stanford UP 2017 242 pp Green John Clifford The faith factor How religion influences American elections Greenwood 2007 Heineman Kenneth J A Catholic New Deal Religion and Reform in Depression Pittsburgh 2005 excerpt and text search online Hennesey James American Catholics A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States Oxford University Press 1981 puts politics in context Heyer Kristin E Rozell Mark J Genovese Michael A Catholics and politics the dynamic tension between faith and power Georgetown University Press 2008 online Jelen Ted G Catholic priests and the political order The political behavior of Catholic pastors Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 42 4 2003 591 604 McAndrews Lawrence J What They Wished For American Catholics and American Presidents 1960 2004 University of Georgia Press 2014 503 pages influence of Catholics on domestic and foreign policy Marlin George J and Michael Barone American Catholic Voter Two Hundred Years Of Political Impact 2006 Moore Edmund A A Catholic Runs for President The Campaign of 1928 1956 online Noll Mark A and Luke E Harlow Religion and American Politics From the Colonial Period to the Present 2nd ed 2007 online pp 244 66 345 66 Prendergast William B The Catholic Voter in American Politics The Passing of the Democratic Monolith Georgetown University Press 1999 Schultz Jeffrey D et al eds Encyclopedia of Religion in American Politics 1999 online Smith Gregory Allen Politics in the Parish The Political Influence of Catholic Priests Georgetown University Press 2008 online Wald Kenneth D and Allison Calhoun Brown Religion and politics in the United States Rowman amp Littlefield Publishers 2010 wide ranging Zeitz Joshua M White ethnic New York Jews Catholics and the shaping of postwar politics Univ of North Carolina Press 2007 Historiography edit Gleason Philip The Historiography of American Catholicism as Reflected in The Catholic Historical Review 1915 2015 Catholic Historical Review 101 2 2015 pp 156 222 online Thomas J Douglas A Century of American Catholic History US Catholic Historian 1987 25 49 in JSTORExternal links editUnited States Conference of Catholic Bishops USCCB Catholic Bishops Conference and Vatican Statements on Abortion NETWORK A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Catholic Church and politics in the United States amp oldid 1184036105, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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