Biden’s Rising Evangelical Support

While the vast majority of white evangelicals continue to display their abject moral bankruptcy through their support of Donald Trump - a thoroughly immoral individual - some are beginning to shift towards Joe Biden a Catholic for whom his religious beliefs actual mean something. While not large, the shift has instilled panic in the Trump campaign whose game plan is to garner even higher margins of support among those who voted for Trump in 2016 even as Trump continues to alienate the remainder of Americans. The defections among white Catholics who voted fro Trump in 2016 are even larger despite Trump's efforts to paint Biden as a pro-abortion radical. A piece in Politico looks at Trump's growing problems with the so-called religious conservatives. Here are article highlights:

It was June 10, 2008. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama had gathered with dozens of evangelical leaders — many of them fixtures of the religious right — at the urging of campaign aides. If he could offer genuine glimpses of his own abiding faith, they insisted he could chisel away at the conservative Christian voting bloc.

The strategy worked. Obama’s campaign stops at churches, sermonlike speeches and his professed belief in Jesus Christ earned him 24 percent of the white evangelical vote — doubling Democrats’ support among young white evangelicals and gaining 3 percentage points with the overall demographic from the 2004 election.

Now, allies of President Donald Trump worry his 2020 opponent, Joe Biden, can do the same — snatching a slice of a critical voting bloc from Trump when he can least afford departures from his base.

Biden, a lifelong Roman Catholic, has performed better in recent polling among white evangelicals — and other religious groups — than Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton did in 2016 and is widely perceived as more religious than the current White House occupant. A Pew Research study conducted earlier this year showed that a majority of U.S. adults (63 percent) think Trump is “not at all” or “not too religious,” versus 55 percent who said they believed Biden is somewhat or very religious.

Many conservative evangelical leaders have argued that Biden’s positions on cultural issues — like abortion, judges and religious freedom — are disqualifying. Still, anxiety is growing inside Trump’s orbit about the former vice president’s ability to peel off Christian voters who supported Trump in 2016, including the 81 percent of white evangelicals he carried, according to eight administration officials, White House allies and people involved with the Trump campaign.

Such an outcome could deal a fatal blow to [Trump's] the president’s reelection, which largely hinges on expanding his support among religious voters to compensate for enthusiasm gaps elsewhere.

“Here’s the problem for Trump: He needs to be at 81 percent or north to win reelection. Any slippage and he doesn’t get a second term, and that’s where Joe Biden comes into play,” said David Brody, chief political analyst at the Christian Broadcasting Network. “In this environment, with everything from the coronavirus to George Floyd and Trump calling himself the ‘law-and-order president,’ Biden could potentially pick off a percent or 2 from that 81 percent number.”

Some of Biden’s campaign appearances and debate answers have been infused with religious undertones, and his campaign reportedly hosts a weekly call with faith leaders to crowdsource policy and personnel suggestions.

At a CNN town hall in February, Biden said his faith “gives me some reason to have hope and purpose” and praised the “ultimate act of Christian charity” shown by members of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., after they forgave a white supremacist who murdered nine members of their congregation in a 2014 mass shooting.

In an op-ed last December that included references to Scripture and Pope Francis’ second encyclical “Laudato Si,” Biden described “the core concepts of decency, fair play and virtue” that he learned through his Catholic upbringing as guiding principles in his political career.

Even Trump allies recognize Biden has an opening to strike the empathetic and compassionate tone that Trump eschewed in many of his comments about the coronavirus pandemic and nationwide protests over racial inequality.

The president's law-and-order mantra arrived at an already perilous time for his campaign, which has witnessed a steady erosion in support for Trump across key religious demographics and a leftward shift in voter attitudes on issues of race and criminal justice. Trump has already seen double-digit declines in his support from white Catholics, white evangelicals and white mainline Protestants since April — unsettling trends that triggered his recent overtures to conservative Christians, including his visit to St. John’s and an executive order on religious freedom that he signed earlier this month.

“There are evangelicals who didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 who will in 2020, but there are plenty of white evangelicals who are disappointed in his administration’s response to coronavirus and are embracing — for the first time ever — some belief in systemic racism,” said John Fea, a history professor at Messiah College. “They are the ones who are just dying for a reason not to vote for Trump.”

“The Supreme Court decision has caused some evangelicals to lose faith in the political playbook that says justices and judges can deliver what we care about,” said Fea, noting that one of Trump’s main appeals to white evangelicals is his record on judicial appointments and his promise to continue appointing conservative judges.

“It’s not going to have a big effect on evangelical support for Trump, but in the mix of all these other things it does add up,” he added.

Fea, who teaches in Mechanicsburg, Pa., added that “hardscrabble working-class Catholics” in the Philadelphia suburbs and across Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan should be a primary target for the Biden campaign. He noted that although Trump won the Catholic vote by a 7-point margin four years ago, his support has wavered far more with Catholic voters than it has with white evangelicals, providing his opponent a ripe opportunity.

“In some ways, just the fact that he is Joe Biden from Scranton, Pa., is going to win him Catholic votes in those states,” Fea said.

Only "Cafeteria Catholics" Can Survive in American Politics

A number of surveys have demonstrated that rank and file American Catholics disagree with the official position of the Vatican on a host of issues ranging from positions on abortion and contraception to same-sex marriage.   In common parlance, such non-conforming Catholics are called "cafeteria Catholics."  Even my late mother, a lifelong Catholic, fell into this category, especially when she said she just ignored the official Vatican position, perhaps most notably on the issue of gays and same-sex relationships.  Now, America finds itself with a Roman Catholic vice presidential candidate and one who was raised Catholic and left the Church for right wing Protestantism.  These candidates take starkly different positions on a host of issues and who also vary from official Church positions on a number of issues. For the record, I support Democrat Tim Kaine's approach to the Vatican dictates as opposed to Republican Mike Pence whose support for the GOP's reverse Robin Hood policies, denial of Climate Change, and throw the poor in the gutter mentality flies in the face of both the Gospel message and the Vatican's approach to the social gospel.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the dichotomy and why only cafeteria Catholics seem to be viable in American politics.  Here are article highlights:

There are lots of ways to be a Catholic public leader in the United States. But the only path that’s impossible, it seems, is to advocate policies that fully follow the Church’s teachings on Jesus. Politicians of both parties have to pick and choose their theology, sticking to party lines that defy the United States Conference on Catholic Bishops’ guide to faithful citizenship. For their part, lay Catholics have largely blended into the general electorate. Far from taking positions that are distinctive to their faith, many hold views that reflect their partisan allegiances.

This is a relatively new dilemma for American Catholicism. Half a century ago, when John F. Kennedy ran for president of the United States, his fellow citizens feared he might prove more loyal to the bishop of Rome than the American people.

Today, it would seem ridiculous to accuse someone like Tim Kaine, who is Catholic and a nominee for vice president, or his rival Mike Pence, who was also brought up Catholic, of trying to give Pope Francis unseemly power over the White House. . . . . But while non-Catholic Americans are much more comfortable with the Church than they used to be, their changing attitudes say less about acceptance than assimilation. The price of Catholics’ admission into public life was a loss of distinctiveness. And the political records of this year’s two vice-presidential candidates—both of whom have openly defied the Church on different issues—illustrate why.

Tim Kaine has touted his Catholic identity on the presidential campaign trail, dropping Bible-verse burns and references to his Jesuit education. On Friday, he spoke in a conference call to a group of Catholic leaders around the country, talking up his faith background and Hillary Clinton’s commitment to empowering families and kids.

At times, though, he has directly challenged the Church’s positions, particularly on social issues. At a September dinner hosted by Human Rights Campaign, the LGBT-rights advocacy group, he said the Church will eventually come to accept same-sex marriage, just as he has . . . . 

On other issues, Kaine has been more conflicted than defiant. During his time as governor, he presided over 11 prisoner executions, despite the Church’s strong opposition to the death penalty. In an interview with C-SPAN this summer, Kaine said the decision to approve the killings was “the hardest thing I had to do … It’s still painful to talk about.” He’s also shifted positions on abortion. . . . For these reasons, Catholic leaders have publicly questioned Kaine’s Catholicism, marking a radical change in how Catholics’ public lives are evaluated.

This isn’t just a challenge for Democrats. Mike Pence now identifies as an evangelical, but he was raised in the Catholic Church; he met his wife at St. Thomas Aquinas, a parish in Indianapolis, and his grandfather was an Irish-Catholic immigrant. Yet Pence publicly sparred with Indianapolis Archbishop Joseph Tobin over Syrian refugees. When the local Catholic Charities agency agreed to help resettle a family last December, Pence asked Tobin to put a stop to it. The clergyman did not oblige.

Pence’s other positions similarly illustrate the challenges of being a Catholic Republican. The governor is a global-warming skeptic, in contrast to the environmentally conscious pope. While the Church has called for immigration reform “with a special emphasis on legalization,” Pence has struggled to reconcile his past moderate positions on immigration policy with the Trump campaign’s strongly anti-immigrant rhetoric.

This division extends to lay Catholics, as well. An estimated 66 percent of Catholic Republicans think it’s sinful to have an abortion, compared to 48 percent of Catholic Democrats; those are only slightly higher numbers in each party than among Americans generally. Thirty-one percent of Catholic Republicans and 57 percent of Catholic Democrats think the Church should recognize gay marriages; almost a year after same-sex marriage became legal in the United States, Catholics were on average more enthusiastic about the unions than other Americans, despite the Church’s staunch opposition. Only about half of Republican Catholics said there’s “solid evidence” that global warming exists in a June 2015 poll, compared to 85 percent of Catholic Democrats.

Two factors in particular help explain this change. First, white Catholics are no longer newcomers in the United States. When waves of Irish and Italian immigrants arrived in the United States in the late 19th century, they realigned partisan politics, said Sprows Cummings—“specifically Irish Catholics and their overwhelming alliance with the Democratic Party.”

Decades later, that long-standing coalition was deeply shaken. “U.S. Catholics have had no political home since around the Kennedy election,” Sprows Cummings said. . . . . This sense of ideological homelessness is arguably responsible for the loss of distinctive Catholic identity among politicians and voters—and for division within the Church itself. “There’s almost a kind of crisis for the Catholic Church in America today associated with the polarization that comes from our political culture, that’s insinuated itself into our pews,”

Like the country, American Catholicism itself is going through period of great change: Once again, it’s becoming an immigrant Church. The share of Hispanic-American Catholics has risen to one-third over the past decade or so, according to Pew Research Center, and more Catholic Millennials are Hispanic than white.

If Donald Trump’s rhetoric is any indication of what’s ahead from the Republican Party, the increasingly Hispanic Catholic population could once again line up as solidly Democratic.

Trump's Catholic Vote Problem

As a former Roman Catholic, I hold no love for the Church hierarchy composed largely of bitter old men who desperately cling to a 12th century understanding of science and human sexuality, often denying their own sexual orientation due to religious brainwashing or a hunger for power and position.  That said, many rank and file American Catholics differ greatly with the hierarchy's position on LGBT rights, contraception and a many other issues.  Likewise, other than extreme right wing Catholics, a majority of American Catholics reject the hate and fear based religious beliefs so loved by Christofascists and evangelical Christians.  With Donald Trump's self-prostitution of himself to the Christofascists and far right Protestants and his embrace of Catholic Church positions that are favored by a majority of Catholics, Trump has perhaps unintentionally alienated much of the Catholic vote.  Here are excerpts from a piece in Religion Dispatches that looks at the phenomenon:

Catholics now represent the latest demographic challenge for Donald Trump’s presidential ambitions. As the Washington Post recently reported, a poll from the Public Religion Research Institute found that Catholic voters preferred Hillary Clinton to Trump by a crushing 23 percent margin, 55-32. With less than a third of Catholics intending to vote for him, Trump has fallen well below the support GOP candidates typically enjoy from Catholic voters. George W. Bush won the Catholic vote in his 2004 reelection, 52-47. Although John McCain and Mitt Romney both lost among Catholic voters, they still managed to win 45 percent and 48 percent, respectively.

Why have Catholic voters rejected Trump? All year Catholic commentators and media outlets have provided their thoughts, but they have largely been overlooked by a mainstream media more fascinated by the story of evangelicals and Trump. As early as August 2015, the independent Catholic news site Crux noted that Trump’s aggressive anti-immigration stance put him at odds with Catholic bishops who were lobbying Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

Writing in National Review earlier this summer, the political scientist Michael J. New commented that Trump’s “Catholic problem” likely stemmed from Trump’s harsh rhetoric on Latino immigrants who many American Catholics see positively as the future of their church, but also because of Trump’s attacks on Pope Francis.

After Trump selected Mike Pence as his running mate, Christopher Hale, the executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, called the Trump-Pence ticket the “most anti-Catholic GOP presidential ticket in modern history” because of not only Trump’s many shortcomings but also Pence’s record of blocking the Catholic Church’s efforts to resettle Syrian refugees in Indiana.

Trump’s poor standing with Catholic voters resembles his “Mormon problem,” as I have written about. Taken together, the Catholic and Mormon rejection of Trump also further spotlights the embarrassment of evangelical support for the Donald.

Mark Rozell argued we were seeing a “splitting apart” of the coalition of evangelicals and conservative Catholics who have voted together for Republican candidates for nearly four decades. If polling patterns hold up in November, 2016 may yield the greatest difference between Catholic and evangelical voting since the 1960 election where at least 75 percent of evangelicals voted for Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy compared to only 18 percent of Catholics.

[A]s I’ve argued in my recent book We Gather Together, the evangelical-Catholic political alliance remained a fragile one, even when results from the ballot box made it appear more solid. Even as conservative Catholics drew to evangelicals on social issues, like abortion, their church often took political stances on matters like welfare and nuclear armament that put them in opposition to the Republican Party. 

Now Trump threatens to disrupt that parity, sending the bulk of Catholic voters to the side of his opponent. What this means for the future of the Republican Party remains uncertain. But for now, Catholic rejection of Trump at least surely offers another withering rebuke of evangelicals’ support of a candidate who is nothing short of unacceptable.

Growing up Catholic one looked down on fundamentalist evangelicals who rightly or wrongly were viewed as ignorant and not true Christians.  Now, with evangelicals flocking to Trump, perhaps that view of evangelicals as ignorant bigots was perhaps accurate after all.  

"Nones" Are Now America's Largest Religious Voting Bloc

On much more positive news, especially compared to the previous post, is that the "Nones" or non-religious are now the largest voting bloc in America.  It's a reality that is apparently lost on the Republican Party which is taking self-prostitution to Christofascists to shockingly new levels.  Indeed, Nones mow make up 21% of registered voters.  The next closest group is Catholics at 20% who tie with far less rational white evangelicals 78% of whom say they would vote for Donald Trump if the presidential election was held today per Pew Research Center.  The same Pew survey found that Nones are rallying to Hillary Clinton.  Stated another way, the evangelicals favor hate, bigotry and religious based discrimination while the non-religious find such misogyny unacceptable.  Here are highlights from the Wonk Blog:

More American voters than ever say they are not religious, making the religiously unaffiliated the nation's biggest voting bloc by faith for the first time in a presidential election year. This marks a dramatic shift from just eight years ago, when the non-religious were roundly outnumbered by Catholics, white mainline Protestants and white evangelical Protestants.

These numbers come from a new Pew Research Center survey, which finds that "religious 'nones,' who have been growing rapidly as a share of the U.S. population, now constitute one-fifth of all registered voters and more than a quarter of Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters." That represents a 50 percent increase in the proportion of non-religious voters compared with eight years ago, when they made up just 14 percent of the overall electorate.

The growth of the non-religious -- about 54 percent of whom are Democrats or lean Democratic, compared with 23 percent at least leaning Republican -- could provide a political counterweight to white evangelical Protestants, a historically powerful voting bloc for Republicans. In 2016, 35 percent of Republican voters identify as white evangelicals, while 28 percent of Democratic voters say they have no religion at all.

[Unfortunately] Exit polls of people who actually cast votes -- as opposed to preelection polls of registered voters -- have traditionally shown that the unaffiliated underperform at the ballot box relative to their raw numbers. . . . Smith also points out that the unaffiliated tend to be younger than the religious and that young people tend to vote less than older people.

Still, the Pew study finds other evidence that religion may be becoming a less potent force at the ballot box. In 2008, for instance, 72 percent of voters said it was important for a president to have strong religious beliefs. That number is down to 62 percent today.

Similarly, Americans see religious institutions as playing a smaller role in the public sphere. In 2008, 75 percent said that churches and other houses of worship contributed a great deal to solving social problems. Today, that number has fallen to 58 percent.

Vatican Announces Major Summit On Climate Change

While I continue to doubt that Pope Francis is going to do anything to bring the Roman Catholic Church out of the 13th century when it comes to the issue of gays, the rights of women, and sexual repression, on the climate change front, Francis may cause the climate change deniers in the Republican Party continued headaches.   The Vatican has announced a major climate change summit later this month that may undermine GOP efforts to convince conservative Catholics to drink the GOP Kool-Aid.  Vatican support for the belief that climate change exists could prove a sticking point for religious extremist, Marco Rubio, who is trying to wear Catholicism on his sleeve even as he attends a batship crazy non-Catholic church. Don't expect Francis to make the Koch brothers' favorite persons list!  Think Progress looks at the coming summit.  Here are highlights:

Catholic officials announced on Tuesday plans for a landmark climate change-themed conference to be hosted at Vatican later this month, the latest in Pope Francis’ faith-rooted campaign to raise awareness about global warming.

The summit, which is scheduled for April 28 and entitled “Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity. The Moral Dimensions of Climate Change and Sustainable Development,” will draw together a combination of scientists, global faith leaders, and influential conservation advocates such as Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is slotted to offer the opening address, and organizers say the goal of the conference is to “build a consensus that the values of sustainable development cohere with values of the leading religious traditions, with a special focus on the most vulnerable.”

[A]ttendees hope to offer a joint statement highlighting the “intrinsic connection” between caring for the earth and caring for fellow human beings, “especially the poor, the excluded, victims of human trafficking and modern slavery, children, and future generations.” The gathering will undoubtedly build momentum for the pope’s forthcoming encyclical on the environment, an influential papal document expected to be released in June or July. The Catholic Church has a long history of championing conservation and green initiatives. . . 

The upcoming conference and the release of the encyclical could also have political implications here in the United States. The pope is scheduled to stop by Washington, D.C. during his trip to America in September, where he plans to address a joint session of Congress. Some conservatives have been critical or dismissive of the pontiff’s support for green policies, but if Francis, who is wildly popular among both Catholic and non-Catholic Americans, brings up climate change during his remarks, it could be an uncomfortable moment for many lawmakers.

The poor and the vulnerable are nowhere on the GOP priority list  unless it is to transfer more of their meager assets to the already wealthy. 

Is Pope Francis Driving a Wedge Between Catholics and the GOP?

As noted in a number of posts since Pope Francis ascended to the throne of St. Peter, Francis has regularly condemned much of the GOP agenda, be it his condemnation of unbridled capitalism  - vulture capitalism if you are Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan - or his soon to be released encyclical on climate change.  Some even credit Francis with having a hand in the change in USA-Cuba relations.  Yes, the Vatican remains very anti-gay and has supported GOP backed bans on gay marriage, but on many issues, Francis has charted a course away from the Christofascist/GOP platform.  A piece in The Hill looks at the phenomenon.  Here are excerpts:

Pope Francis is increasingly driving a wedge between conservatives and the Catholic Church.


The magnetic pope has sparked new enthusiasm around the world for the church and has flexed his political muscles internationally, most recently by helping to engineer a new relationship between the United States and Cuba.



But Francis’s agenda, which also includes calls to address income inequality and limit climate change, is putting him at odds with Republicans, including GOP Catholics in the United States.

Hours after President Obama announced moves to ease trade and travel restrictions to Cuba, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a practicing Catholic and potential 2016 presidential candidate, criticized the deal and Francis's role in it.

It's not the first time Francis has clashed with conservatives.  Since his papal inauguration in March 2013, the pontiff has publicly made policy remarks about income inequality and the environment that many American Catholics weren't used to hearing coming from the Vatican, and not just from the pulpit.

“Inequality is the root of social evil,” Francis tweeted in March, after months earlier slamming “trickle-down” economics as a “crude and naïve” theory.

Catholics have long been considered an important voting block in American politics and have turned out for the winning presidential candidate in the last three cycles.

A closer look at the Catholic vote reveals that white Catholics have supported the Republican candidate in each of those elections, while Hispanic Catholics have supported the Democratic candidate, according to Pew Research polling.

Progressive Catholics, however, such as Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK, a Catholic social justice organization, are cheering Francis on as he calls for the world's elite to do more to help the poor. 



“Oh my gloria, this is a definite change in tone from being a 'scolder-in-chief' to being the one who identifies with the pain in our world,” said Simone, who organized the “Nuns on a Bus” cross-country tours.

“Pope Francis's message and tone are making Catholic Republicans a little uncomfortable,” Simone said. “He's stirring the concern on issues like poverty and the economy.”

Meanwhile, evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants remain look step with the GOP and diametrically opposed to the true Gospel message.  Their hypocrisy is stunning. 

Yesterday Exposed Five Religious Right Myths

There is definitely some pleasure involved in watching the wailing and gnashing of teeth going on amongst the delusional elements of the GOP and the Christofascists.  Will the stunning defeat of the Christofascists, Tea Party and the billionaires and vulture capitalists burst the alternate universe bubble of the far right?  Probably not.  Nonetheless, yesterday's election results did expose some of the myths put out by the Christofascists as part of the plan to intimidate and dominate the political whores within the Republican Party.  Right Wing Watch looks at the myths that should no longer hold water with rational people.  Here are some excerpts:

Like other conservatives, many Religious Right activists predicted a big victory for Romney and Republicans in the U.S. Senate based on five myths they hold about the electorate:

Myth #1: Americans want a ‘True Conservative’

The Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody called the results a “nightmare for the GOP” and a “colossal disaster.” Of course, right-wing activists will be quick to declare that Mitt Romney, like John McCain, wasn’t conservative enough for voters, and that the self-described “severely conservative” Romney couldn’t effectively articulate or sell conservative principles. Their solution is that the next nominee must be a pure right-wing ideologue who emphasizes social issues, like Mike Huckabee or Rick Santorum. Of course, if voters were seeking to support ultraconservative politicians, then Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock wouldn’t have lost their Senate races  .  .  .  .

Myth #2: Blacks will Defect from Obama over Gay Rights

Black conservative activists such as Harry Jackson, E.W. Jackson, William Owens, Patrick Wooden and Star Parker continue to tell the largely white Religious Right leadership that African Americans are defecting en masse from the purportedly demonic, Baal worshiping, anti-Christian and anti-God Democratic Party and will turn against Obama over the issue of marriage equality. Pat Robertson even said that Democratic support for marriage equality is a “death wish”  .  .  .  .  .  According to exit polls, however, Obama won African Americans 93-6 percent.

Myth #3: Hispanics are ‘Natural Allies’ of the Religious Right

Conservatives claimed that Hispanic voters, especially those who identify as evangelical and Pentecostal, are ripe for supporting Republicans.  .  .  .  .  Romney actually fared worse (27%) than McCain (31%) among Hispanics.

Myth #4: Catholics Abandoning Obama for ‘Declaring War’ on the Church

Heavy politicking from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and growing outreach to Catholics by traditionally evangelical Religious Right groups didn’t stop Obama from once again carrying the Catholic vote.

Myth #5: Evangelical Wave Waiting in the Wings

New groups such as the Faith and Freedom Coalition and United in Purpose/Champion the Vote boasted of grand plans to turn out a wave of evangelical Christians upset about health care reform and marriage equality.  .  .  .  .  Christianity Today notes that in swing states, self-described evangelical turnout was approximately identical or merely slightly larger as it was in 2008, and Romney’s support among evangelicals compared to McCain’s decreased in states like Ohio and Nevada.

The lesson? When  you hear politicians admitting that they fear the wrath of the Christofascists, you need to take the time to educate them on the objective reality of the world.   Increasingly, they are a paper tiger and their batshitery needs to be directly challenged.

Catholics Flee Romney As Catholic Bishop States a Vote for Obama Jeopardizes One's Soul

Click image to enlarge

Watching the seemingly faltering Romney/Ryan campaign and the Roman Catholic bishops' efforts to endorse Romney is like watching a train wreck in slow motion.    I'm sure Romney believed that by selecting Paul Ryan who was parroting the anti-woman, anti-gay, and anti-contraception mantra of the Catholic bishops he would lock up the Catholic vote.  The latest polls show that the exact opposite is in fact happening.  So what do the Catholic bishops - or at least some of them - do?  They, in the person of Bishop Thomas John Paprocki (pictured below), issue a statement that a vote for Barack Obama may subject one's soul to eternal damnation.  First these thoughts from Andrew Sullivan on the flight of Catholics from the Romney/Ryan ticket:

 National Catholic Reporter finds something remarkable in a new poll from Pew:

On June 17, Obama held a slight edge over Mitt Romney among Catholics (49 percent to 47 percent), according to the Pew Research Center. Since then, Obama has surged ahead, and now leads 54 percent to 39 percent, according to a Pew poll conducted Sept. 16. Among all registered voters, Obama leads Romney 51 percent to 42 percent, according to Pew.

Obama's total Catholic vote against McCain was where he is now: 54 percent. But Romney has only 39 percent compared with McCain's 45.

A small word of thanks to Cardinal Dolan, Robert George and K-Lo for helping shift the Catholic vote massively toward Obama with their summer campaign for religious liberty. And special thanks to Paul Ryan. No actual Catholic could ever find anything but puerile cruelty in the works of Ayn Rand, or rally to the idea that home-care for the elderly should be sacrificed to reduce tax rates for the super-rich. Paul Ryan believes that the basic principles of Rand can be compatible with Catholicism. American Catholics are just not that dumb or confused about their faith.

The poll, though just released, was conducted on September 16. The polls have shifted slightly in his favor since. The 47 percent tape - about as anathema to Catholic social teaching as is possible to express in its contempt for the poor - cannot have helped.  

Catholics may not be as dumb as Romney and Ryan think they are, but the Catholic bishops continue to view their flock as complete cretins.   As noted above, faced with a flight of Catholics to Obama, the Catholic bishops apparently plan on scaring would be Obama voters by saying that they will be damned to Hell if the pull the Democrat lever.  Here are highlights from Raw Story on this insane batshitery:

A Catholic bishop from Springfield, Illinois is warning that the stakes for the 2012 election are even higher than most people think because voting for President Barack Obama could damn “you own soul” to hell.
In a column and video posted by the official newspaper of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois and obtained by Right Wing Watch on Wednesday, Bishop Thomas John Paprocki called out the Democratic Party for temporarily removing God from their platform, supporting abortion and recognizing that “gay rights are human rights.” 

“There are many positive and beneficial planks in the Democratic Party Platform, but I am pointing out those that explicitly endorse intrinsic evils,” the bishop explained. “My job is not to tell you for whom you should vote. But I do have a duty to speak out on moral issues. I would be abdicating this duty if I remained silent out of fear of sounding ‘political’ and didn’t say anything about the morality of these issues. People of faith object to these platform positions that promote serious sins.”

“So what about the Republicans? I have read the Republican Party Platform and there is nothing in it that supports or promotes an intrinsic evil or a serious sin,” Paprocki added. 

“Again, I am not telling you which party or which candidates to vote for or against,” he concluded, “but I am saying that you need to think and pray very carefully about your vote, because a vote for a candidate who promotes actions or behaviors that are intrinsically evil and gravely sinful makes you morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your own soul in serious jeopardy.”

I can only wonder how many sexual predator priests Paprocki has enabled or protected.  Where is the IRS?  The Catholic Church needs to lose its tax exempt status NOW.