One of the angles of reaction coming from the election earlier this week is that the Roman Catholic hierarchy, specifically the Bishops’ conference in the US, is increasingly marginalized and ignored by the laity with respect to political matters. Thus, as one observer puts it, “the results do indicate the political impotency of a Catholic hierarchy that has become very strongly identified with politics.”
Meanwhile, it seems evangelicals went for the GOP at a brisk 4:1 clip.
But, as Abp. Chaput pointed out on Election Day in a review of Brad Gregory’s work, The Unintended Reformation, it’s all the fault of the Reformation: Yes, not just for climate change, but perhaps for Catholics ignoring their bishops as well.
My review of Gregory’s book is available here. One of the takeaways, I think, both from Gregory’s book and from Tuesday’s election, in history as well as in politics, is that the blame game is pretty unproductive.
WHITE evangelicals went for Romney 4 to 1. I suspect the results are quite similar for white Catholics who attend mass weekly. How we define the groups we count follows from one’s ecclesiology.
And none of this addresses Archbishop Chaput’s argument.
Chaput’s argument is basically the same as Gregory’s argument, which is neatly summarized in this piece, which all fits rather nicely into the narrative sketched above (e.g. the Reformation is to blame) (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/joeljmiller/2012/11/we-are-all-protestants-now/):
‘Appealing to sola scriptura, Protestants dispensed with most of the church hierarchy and sacraments, scholasticism and the pre-scholastic patristic tradition. While simultaneously misunderstanding the role of tradition (in large measure because of Roman abuses of it), they jettisoned most aspects of it they couldn’t find in the two testaments, including those parts of the first testament they regarded as “Apocrypha” (though, curiously, some inexplicit things like Trinitarianism and Sunday worship were nonetheless retained, though there is no biblical warrant for them).’
And this (http://www.cfmpl.org/blog/2012/11/08/what-now/):
“In the past, when Catholics were more clearsighted, it was a commonplace of our historical and sociological analyses that Protestantism contributed mightily to secularization. Now it appears that we regard Protestants in an entirely uncritical manner simply as allies. In fact, it appears that most active Catholics no longer even dream of a really Catholic culture, but would be content with banning some of the more egregious evils that secular society has thrown up at us over the last forty years or so. But in the past our Catholic brethren dreamed other dreams. They dreamed of a real conversion of this country, indeed of the world, and even if they didn’t entirely understand how much Protestant culture they had unwittingly accepted, they did aim higher than a mere political or cultural papering over of evils.”