Source: The New York Times
By
PAOLI, Pa. — Since the election of Ronald Reagan, white Roman Catholics have flocked to Republican nominees for a raft of reasons, including their stances on social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.
But this year, something seems different.
“Trump is the exception to the rule,” Carol Robinson, 67, said as she left an afternoon prayer meeting in this Philadelphia suburb with other enthusiastic supporters of Hillary Clinton. “He’s a loose cannon.”
Roman Catholics are the country’s second-largest religious group after evangelical Protestants, and they are as diverse as the country itself, with young liberals, cultural conservatives and, increasingly, Democratic-leaning Hispanics.
But now, the Clinton campaign senses a rare opportunity to block Mr. Trump’s narrow path to victory by making inroads with a core part of the church: white Catholics, a prized group of voters that has defied predictions this year.
Though a string of polls had shown Mr. Trump opening a lead among white Catholics, a poll released last week by the Public Religion Research Institute showed Mr. Trump hemorrhaging support. The five-day poll, which ended two days after the release of a recording in which Mr. Trump joked about groping women, and before several women came forward to say he had forcibly kissed or touched them, showed him effectively tied with Mrs. Clinton. The poll showed 42 percent of white Catholics supported him, and 46 percent backed her, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points.
“That’s not where Trump wants to be in the homestretch, particularly with a core constituency in Midwestern battleground states,” said Robert Jones, a Public Religion Research Institute pollster. He added that white Catholics, much more than the white evangelicals who have largely remained loyal to Mr. Trump, seemed to be defying theRepublican Party’s customary pull.
Both campaigns see openings: Mr. Trump in hacked emails released last week in which members of the Clinton campaign spoke critically about Catholic conservatism, and Mrs. Clinton in Mr. Trump’s un-churchmanlike behavior and his tussling with Pope Francis.
The pope, on his way home from Mexico in February, suggested that Mr. Trump “is not Christian” if he preferred building barriers to building bridges. Mr. Trump, not one to turn the other cheek, responded that Francis’ remarks were “disgraceful.”
The episode did not hurt Mr. Trump’s standing in the Republican primaries; in fact, many Catholics believed the pope was improperly meddling in American politics.
But Francis may be more quietly influencing the Catholic vote in other ways. He has moved the church to emphasize inclusion and the welfare of the poor over divisive issues like abortion and homosexuality. And his personnel changes have effectively left Mr. Trump’s conservative backers without much support from prominent Catholic clergy members.
“It’s a concern among a lot of Catholics that maybe we’re not going to hear the kind of strong message that we heard in past elections,” said Frank Pavone, a priest who runs an anti-abortion group and is advising Mr. Trump.
Categories: America, Catholic Church, The Muslim Times, USA
Clinton – I told you to read the bible, before you stick your nose into a subject you have proven you know very little about, a little knowledge is worse than no knowledge.