Setting up shop at the GOP

Human Quest, Nov/Dec 2001 by Miller, Patti

This article first appeared in Conscience: A Newsjournal of Prochoice Catholic Opinion, Vol. XXII, No. 2 (Summer 2001). Copyright 2001 by Catholics for a Free Choice; reprinted with permission. In this special report, Conscience examines the key Catholic players within Bush's inner circle, the various ways in which they are exercising their influence, and what it means. For more information, please visit www.catholicsforchoice.org

Catholics are in fashion in Washington. Catholic voters are being wooed by the Republican Party a full three-andone-half years before the next presidential election. President Bush is spouting Catholic theology and holding up Catholic social activist Dorothy Day as a role model. Catholic thinkers and policy makers are being given influential roles within the Bush inner circle.

For years, Americans concerned about social justice issues, women's right to reproductive health care and the separation of church and state have worried about the influence of the conservative Christian Right on the Republican Party. But an analysis of the recent campaign and Bush's first six months in office makes it clear that there is a new religious power in Washington that is growing in influence in its own right and aligned with the policy priorities of the Christian Right: the Catholic Right. And while they are in the minority among Catholics, these right-leaning Catholics have been catapulted to positions of influence as the result of efforts by the President and the Republican Party to expand the base of the party by attracting Catholics.

Who are these conservative Catholics who are exercising influence and setting priorities for the new administration? In this special report, Conscience examines the key Catholic players within Bush's inner circle, the various ways in which -they are exercising their influence, and what it means.

The thought of an electoral alliance between conservative Catholics and the Christian Right has long had conservatives salivating. A year before the 1996 presidential election, the Christian Coalition, which estimated at the time that 16% of its 1.7 million members were Catholic, launched a spin-off called the Catholic Alliance specifically to capitalize on what it perceived to be significant crossover between conservative Christians and Catholics on issues such as abortion and school prayer.

"[T]hank God that Catholics and evangelicals have found one another. If some people find that scary, it's because they realize the tide is turning," wrote Deal Hudson in Crisis magazine in November of 1995.1 Hudson, a former philosophy professor and Baptist minister who converted to Catholicism, had only recently taken the helm of the conservative Catholic magazine. He would soon play a leading role in the growing alliance between conservative Catholics and the GOP.

In the short run, however, the tide didn't turn fast enough for the Alliance. The effort faltered over the deep divisions between Catholic teaching and conservative Christians on issues such as welfare, the death penalty, health care and immigration. Many members of the Catholic hierarchy were clearly disturbed by the efforts of the Alliance to distribute voter score-cards that were supposedly representative of Catholic stances on issues and took pains to distance themselves from the Alliance. Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahoney told the Los Angeles Times, "I see in it a great deal of danger because it sounds as if it is Catholic and a lot of people I know are confused and think somehow the church position supports it."2

Albany Bishop Howard Hubbard told an executive session of the U.S. bishops annual meeting that he was disturbed both by the "partisan tone" of the scorecard mailed by the

Christian Coalition and its "blatant untruths," as well as "this organization's stated purpose of representing the Catholic community before the Congress, state legislatures and other governmental bodies."3 Richmond Bishop Walter Sullivan told parishioners, "We cannot allow the church to be used for partisan purposes."4

The Christian Coalition tried to dampen the criticism of its Catholic outreach efforts by spinning off the Alliance as a separately incorporated entity in 1997 and appointing a Catholic Board of Directors, which included Deal Hudson, and a Catholic Advisory Board. Among the members of the Advisory Board were Crisis co-founder Michael Novak, a well-known neoconservative thinker associated with the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank that promotes free-market policies, and William Simon, the president of the Olin Foundation, which funds efforts to promote conservative policiesincluding the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

Despite the changes, and the appointment of former Boston Mayor and Vatican Ambassador Ray Flynn to lead the Alliance in 1999, the Alliance never recovered from its initial high-profile clashes with the bishops and was not a major force in either the 1996 or 2000 elections, although it claimed a membership of 125,000 in 1999.5