During one of the presidential elections during my decade teaching in Washington, D.C., there was more than the usual chatter about the importance of the so-called “Catholic vote” and its impact in swing states.

Now, that fact alone tells you that the election was more than a decade ago, before the national press decided that (#AllTogetherNow) White evangelical Protestants were the only voters worthy of critical study and reporting. You know, it’s the whole “81% of White evangelicals just love Donald Trump” thing. The reality, in the crushing vise of a two-party binary system, is more complex than that.

America’s most crucial swing voters, in the battleground states, have almost always been “Catholic voters.” Thus, during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast, we looked (quite literally) at two symbolic Catholic acts of prayer during this summer’s Republican and Democratic national conventions.

My question: Could we learn anything (maybe even in the news coverage) about the Catholic swing voters being courted by the Republicans and the Democrats?

Now, at this point I want to flash back to that election year I mentioned earlier. At that time, I went to the Catholic Information Center near the White House and spent an hour talking to a veteran priest. He laughed when I asked about the “Catholic vote” and stressed that there is no such thing. Instead, he described four different Catholic votes. I have tweaked his typology a bit from previous GetReligion.org versions.

(1) Ex-Catholics. While most ex-Catholics are solid Democrats, the large chunk that has joined evangelical and Pentecostal churches (especially Latinos) now leans to GOP.

(2) Cultural Catholics who go to church a few times a year. Most are Democrats or perhaps undecided voters, depending on what is happening with the economy, foreign policy, etc.

(3) Sunday-morning American Catholics. These voters are regulars in the pews and may even fill leadership roles in parishes. This is the true Catholic “swing vote” and in recent elections has backed the GOP.

(4) The “sweats the details” Catholic (that’s the retired priest’s phrase) who goes to Confession, is active in the full sacramental life of the parish and almost always backs the Catholic Catechism. This is where the GOP has made its biggest gains in recent decades, but this is a very small slice of the American Catholic pie.

Writing at Religion Unplugged, religion-beat patriarch Richard Ostling addressed the “Catholic vote” question, while adding context about crucial voting blocs in the two parties:

Today’s nonreligious and anti-religious voters are crucial for Democrats. Biden did well with atheists (39% negative) but less so with agnostics (48% negative), and with the larger body of other Americans lacking religious affiliation, he posted a surprisingly high 58% negative.

This writer repeatedly asserts that political journalists over-cover evangelicals, who automatically give Republicans lopsided majorities, and under-cover Catholics, classic swing voters who’ve long been trending Republican. Catholicism has by far the largest denominational membership in each of the … [swing] states except Georgia.

Let’s handle this situation in three steps.

First step: What were the big religion-based issues heading into the Democratic National Convention? Let’s see, at The New York Times that could be summed up like this — abortion, abortion, abortion and, well, that’s about it. See this report on the party platform: “Democrats Unveil Convention Platform With Familiar Themes.” No need to read the later coverage of the event — it was all about vibes.

Also, the Democrats’ vibes and joy had a distinctly liberal mainline Protestant flavor, with a strong emphasis on the more culturally liberal half of America’s Black churches. See this Religion News Service report: “Faith abounds at the Democratic National Convention, but don’t be surprised.”

Now, contrast all of that with a doctrinally conservative Catholic point of view, care of The Catholic Register. What you get there is abortion, in vitro fertilization, marriage, “gender-affirming care” and religious liberty.

One more thing: In the hours before the convention opened, there was this highly symbolic story captured in this USA Today headline: “Abortions at the DNC? Planned Parenthood bus providing no-cost service and vasectomies.”

Step two: The convention invocation by Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, a powerful leader among progressive Catholics everywhere. Click here for his full text. The key points: No traditional God language, in terms of the Holy Trinity and Jesus. The emphasis was on hope, hope, hope and more hope (however, with zero “joy” branding). Here are two key passages:

We pray that you help us to truly understand and answer the sacred call of citizenship. We are a nation composed of every people and culture, united not by ties of blood, but by the profound aspirations of life, freedom, justice, and unbound hope. These aspirations are why our forebears saw America as a beacon of hope. And, with your steady guidance, Lord, may we remain so today.

Also, here is the crucial language in the final paragraphs:

Guide us, Lord, in taking up our responsibility to forge this new chapter of our nation’s history. Let it be rooted in the recognition that for us, as for every generation, unity triumphing over division is what advances human dignity and liberty. …

And let this new chapter of our nation’s history be filled with overwhelming hope, a hope that refuses to narrow our national vision, but rather, as Pope Francis has said, “to dream dreams and see visions” of what by your grace our world can become.

Key questions: Is the “new chapter of our nation’s history” the 2024 election in general or the Democratic National Convention, to be specific? Also, why avoid the donkey in the convention center — the “life” issues from conception to natural death? The Catholic left may note: The Democrats dropped their opposition to the death penalty. And that Planned Parenthood van?

Meanwhile, look at the visuals. A prince of the Roman Catholic Church has the option of, shall we say, wearing some impressive threads that announce who and what he is, ecclesiastically speaking. This cardinal is dressed as a priest, with his pectoral cross hidden away in a pocket. There is no “red” anywhere in his garb.

I will ask: Was the goal to not offend atheists, agnostics, the religiously unaffiliated, liberal Protestants and ex-Catholics?

Step three: What happened at the Republican National Convention? From a Catholic point of view, the key prayer was the invocation by Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki (full text here). Also note that he came to the microphone dressed as, well, a Roman Catholic archbishop.

The headline grabbing issue before that convention was, as this Politico headline noted: “RNC committee approves dropping national limits on abortion from party platform.”

Did Listecki play it safe — in a manner similar to Cupich — by avoiding the “life” component of Catholic moral theology? Here is the opening of the prayer:

Lord, we thank you for our nation. Our Founding Fathers held the truth self-evident that all are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

For 248 years, we have sustained this vision to guard the dignity of every life from conception to natural death, to protect their liberty especially to speak freely and to worship you and to support their pursuit of happiness through this life to the next.

Note the added reference to free speech and religious liberty, key components of the old liberalism found in the First Amendment.

Also, Listecki ended with this:

In the words of George Washington: “Almighty God, keep the United States of America in your holy protection and incline the hearts of the citizens to a brotherly affection and love for one another,” through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Conservative Catholic commentator Phil Lawler, writing at the Catholic Culture website, noted that the archbishop gracefully, but directly, addressed the elephant in the convention center:

The GOP platform for 2024 is missing the strong right-to-life language that previous conventions had adopted. But at least the archbishop had made an appeal to the consciences of the conventioneers. He had followed up, too, with a prayer for the protection of religious freedom: a prayer that sounds more pointed today, as Congress weighs legislation that would eliminate “conscience clause” protection for religious believers.

Lawler added this interesting passage, which addressed other essentially theological components of the two prayers:

The “hope” that Cardinal Cupich seeks here is not recognizable as the theological virtue of hope, oriented toward the fulness of life in Jesus Christ. It seems instead to be a vision of what “our world can become” — that is, an encouragement for political leaders to build a better future. And while there is nothing wrong with that aspiration, one expects a religious leader to make at least some passing reference to our eternal destiny: to the City of God, which surpasses any expectations we might set for the City of Man. Thus in his prayer for the Republican convention, Archbishop Listecki referred to the “pursuit of happiness through this life to the next.

So, with his words and appearance, who was the audience for the Listecki prayer? I am referring both to “Catholic voters,” as well as the throngs of evangelical and Pentecostal believers in the hall. Was the archbishop careful not to offend anyone in particular?

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