Religion & Law

. . . but on social policy, everyone now speaks Catholic," suggests Jody Bottum.  I (deliberately) held off on posting this until the pre-election-type discussions were over (or, at least, moot), because I think Bottum's claim is an interesting one, wholly and apart from how one thinks Catholics should vote in today's election.  After noting that Catholic voters seem to vote like, well, pretty much everyone else, he continues:

Which is not to deny the distinctiveness of Catholicism?the Catholic system of thought. Elections, in one sense, involve nothing more than the attempt to translate moral authority into political power, and the Catholic hierarchy has little moral authority left on the national scene. After the priest scandals and the constant attack from the nation?s press, the Catholic church as an institution is weaker now than anytime since the great waves of Catholic immigration in the 1880s first brought it real power in America. 

The major role, perhaps the only role, that Catholicism genuinely plays on the American stage anymore is as a source of the vocabulary for phrasing moral issues. If you had to describe a typical member of the new generation of Republican candidates, it would be a former military officer, now a local businessman, who attends a center-right Evangelical church and never ran for public office before. Which makes it all the more astonishing that, typically, he speaks the Catholic language of moral issues so seamlessly and well. . . .

. . . the vocabulary of Catholicism, that way of bringing religiously grounded moral claims into the public square, and doing so nonreligiously: It?s simply here in American electoral politics. Here in 2010, and for a good long while to come. 

Interesting.