Catholics Are Paying the Price For Selling Their Souls to Evangelicals

In addition to being a former Republican I am also a former Catholic.  My departure from Catholicism was prompted by several things, including the horrific sex abuse scandal that continues to reverberate across the globe with few if any bishops and cardinals having received punishment for aiding and abetting sexual predators.  Other reasons include the Church's continued embrace of 12th Century beliefs on sexuality and the lie that one can "pray away the gay," something I tried for decades with zero success, but much self-hate and self-loathing along the way.   Add to this the Church's continued anti-gay jihad.  Only a sick masochist  would remain Catholic if they are gay.  Despite these criticisms of the Church, I always respected the Church's social gospel teachings, something that seemingly is devoid among the majority of evangelical Christians.  As some Catholics have aligned themselves with evangelicals and embraced today's Republican Party, they have rejected the Church social gospel and, in my view, embraced moral bankruptcy.  Paul Ryan perhaps best personifies this, but there are many others.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the moral price ties to evangelicals has taken on Catholics and, I believe, Catholicism.  Here are excerpts:

In 1994, 39 church leaders and scholars — some Catholics, some evangelical Protestants — published a statement of reconciliation. . . . . These were the leaders and the elites: the pastors and priests, professors and bishops, notables and worthies from each side of the great schism. Together, and for what they saw as the greater good, they would overcome the old hostilities dividing rank-and-file pew-sitters.

They had a reason for dramatic measures. For decades, evangelicals and Catholics had struggled to work together even on political issues both groups took seriously, such as abortion and prayer in schools. Old animosities divided them, and mistrust poisoned attempts at cooperation. 

But a new generation of rightward activists, intellectuals and politicians mobilized during the culture wars, attracting Catholics and evangelicals to their ranks. Eventually, thanks to the work of groups like ECT and the pressure of ongoing polarization, relations between Catholics and evangelicals grew so warm that it now seems hard to recall these struggles. But the political pact between evangelicals and Catholics also came with significant hazards. It has, especially recently, become a source of anxiety for the Catholic leaders who helped convene the alliance in the first place. For all their success building a new coalition on the right, evangelical and Catholic doctrines are still distinct. Working together meant that one party would have to make concessions to the other. And so far, Catholic teaching has given the most ground.
 Today, working with evangelicals, a group that identifies overwhelmingly with the Republican Party , means that Catholics must operate within the political agenda of the GOP.

The close quarters produced a new breed of politically evangelicalized Catholic candidates and officeholders who have little use for the church’s social teaching (which includes support for organized labor , immigrants and the poor) but adhere vehemently to its teaching on issues related to sexuality. 
 Among these new Catholics, seemingly custom-made for the GOP, are House Speaker Paul Ryan, a onetime fan of the intensely anti-religious, free-market thinker Ayn Rand; former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, who radically shrank his state’s nutritional assistance program and rebuffed Louisiana bishops’ attempt to halt an execution scheduled for Ash Wednesday ; and Rep. Dave Brat, a Virginian who describes himself, dizzyingly, as Catholic, Calvinist and libertarian . This brand of Catholic, a perfect fit with America’s conservative movement, would supposedly “remake” the GOP.

But instead of carrying Catholicism’s compassionate approach to social programs into the party, the Catholics who’ve joined the Republican ranks seem to have adjusted their faith to the party’s interests, at least where economic matters are concerned. Church authorities have taken notice. Though Ryan has enjoyed some support from more conservative church leaders, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has repeatedly issued letters of correction to Ryan’s austere budget proposals, urging Congress in a 2012 letter to remember that “a just spending bill cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor and vulnerable persons.” 

Similar statements have increasingly come from Republican politicians seeking to distance themselves from Pope Francis’s teachings in order to remain closer to GOP orthodoxy. During the 2016 presidential primaries, disavowing the pope became a kind of ritual for Catholic candidates.
It’s one thing to insist, as Kennedy did, that church and state are simply separate; it’s another to add that the church is in fact wrong and the state right.
 In July, the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a close confidant of Pope Francis and a top Vatican official, indicted such evangelical-Catholic collaboration in an article published with a Protestant co-author in La Civilta Cattolica, a Jesuit journal reviewed by the Vatican before publication. . . . His article was widely read to mean that the church hierarchy had become disillusioned with the 24-year-old political cooperation pact, and Vatican-watchers saw the hand of the pope.