OPINION POLLING is rank pseudo-science of the most obvious kind, there being no way to check the most basic act of it, "data" collection for accuracy or even honesty. There is little more control over the honesty or validity of the method of structuring questions and asking them and anyone who has looked at the industry and its practices over the past half a century who came away without suspecting the various companies rig those to get results that those paying them to do it want is a chump. Such chumps comprise most of the corporate media, much of the non-corporate media and huge numbers of those who should know better.
Still, for reasons of argument and because I think there is a real and dangerous phenomenon behind this, I'm going to assume the reliability of this recent Harris Poll which shows that the Catholic Church and Catholics have a fascism problem, at least in so far as a small majority of white Catholics goes.
Catholic voters in seven battleground states favor Donald Trump over Kamala Harris by 5 percentage points, but the vice president leads the Republican nominee overwhelmingly among Hispanic and Black Catholics in those swing states, according to a new poll conducted by the National Catholic Reporter.
With just more than three weeks to the election, Trump leads Harris 50% to 45% in the closely watched battleground states, a margin that could be an important factor given the closeness of the contest. Most polls say the race is too close to predict, and margins are extremely narrow in the decisive states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Among Hispanic and Black Catholics in the battlegrounds, Harris has an advantage over Trump with nearly seven out of 10 Hispanics and more than three-quarters of Blacks favoring the sitting vice president. The lead among Blacks and Hispanics stems from a strong aversion to Trump as well as an alignment with the vice president on values and key social issues, the poll shows.
That anywhere near 45% of Catholics of any identity could support Donald Trump in 2024 is proof of a complete failure in the morality of Catholics, when you concentrate on the fact that that 45% is identified as "white" focuses the problem even more on a particular part of the Catholic population. As someone who would be identified as a "white Catholic" that fact troubles me a lot. What is it about the past half a century of the Catholic Church that has led to something I'd have found bizarre back then when most of the Catholics of my experience were Democrats, most of them very solidly Democratic voters.
I would expect the long papacy of the arch-conservative John Paul II would have a lot to do with it, along with the long reign of the even more right-wing "Mother Angelica" at her ETWN, which was sort of a Catholic FOX "News" before FOX "News" was much of anything. The influence of that putrid outlet on the Trumpization of a large number of Catholics cannot be overestimated. After her death it has, if anything, become even worse than it was when she ran it.
I would like to know how much of that 45% are products of the affluent Catholic prep to Ivy Equivalent system. I saw a little of that back in the 1960s as one of my sisters attended a Catholic Women's College where she was one of the few non-nun blue-collar students there. I recently looked at the program of her graduating class and of those I knew something of, all the others were what might have been called "Catholic American Princesses." At least one of whom was rumored to be the daughter of a mobbed up father. I know at least a few of them were College Republicans. More recently there is the current Republican-fascist majority on the Supreme Court with at least five Catho-fascists arguably from that class, I will always remember Charlie Pierce pointing out that the prep that Kavanaugh went to was nothing like the blue-collar Catholic schools that those of my class attended. I'm not unhappy that there was none in my town so I am a product of the public schools.
What has happened to Catholic formation that could have produced such support for the most amoral materialist, overtly pagan to have ever run as a major party candidate? One with his track record of mortal sin and crime, reveling in violence, reveling in theft and grift and the secular sins of treason and, that most serious of mortal sins hardly considered to be one LYING AND BEARING FALSE WITNESS. How could that many millions of Catholics, no doubt considering themselves the genuine article favor him over Kamala Harris. If other polls are to be believed a majority of that 45% would not have their support hinge on anti-abortion because a majority of it almost certainly doesn't hold the official US Catholic Conference of Bishops line on that one issue - they certainly don't fall in line with that line when it comes to their own sex lives and reproductive choices - as Trump certainly never has. I mean, he's on record as having encouraged what became his second wife to have an abortion when she became pregnant, that is certainly relevant to any consistent anti-abortion voter, you'd think.
The papacies of John Paul II and his chosen successor Benedict XVI were pastoral disasters, both globally and in the United States in particular. Their appointments as bishop were notable for their incompetence, their pastoral indifference, their legalism and their unconcern with local parishes (which they shut down more than built) and the religious formation of Catholics. The current make-up of the U.S. Conference is a moral catastrophe in many regards, including its support for Republican-fascism. They embody the old anti-Catholic accusation that Catholic majority countries have a better record of producing fascism than democracy.
It's not only white Catholics which produce these problems and questions, it's white Americans, especially white-male Americans, a group which, as it climbed in affluence went farther right, following other white sub populations in that. Only you can't have it both ways, you can't both be an adherent to the Gospel and a Trump supporter. You certainly can't claim to be faithful to Catholic social teaching and support the Republican-fascist party in 2024.
Good Pope Francis has recently added Cardinal electors to the College of Cardinals, most of which will vote for his successor, some are pointing out he is doing so as a means of getting ready for that event which will come sooner than later, most likely. He has now appointed a very large percentage of them. He is also replacing bishops here as the appointees of JPII and BXVI either die or reach the age of retirement. That change, if it is change for the better, can't come soon enough. I go back and look at the American bishops of the 1970s, many appointed by the disappointing Paul VI and it looks like an age of moral light instead of clerical darkness today. His successor will be faced with the problem of the billionaire-millionaire AstroTurf anti-Francis establishment that is both well financed and entrenched, ETWN being only one part of that. They will also have to address the Catho-fascists who have been installed in the Judiciary and who are in the Congress, now. Many of those are the kind of converts who are about as sincere in their Catholicism as Henry VI of France. Newt Gingrich, Candice Owen, J.D. Vance, etc.? There was a push to get fascists to convert and the reason had nothing to do with the Social Teaching of the Church. The crypto-fascist priests and others involved with that should certainly be investigated. A similar take-over effort has marred American Orthodoxy, which the Orthodox philosopher and theologian David Bentley Hart laments may as well be an arm of the Southern Baptists, now.
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