Bulletin material from the USCCB: Catholics Care. Catholics Vote.

The publication pasted above, from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), appeared in last weekend's edition of our parish bulletin as a two-page spread.  I admit I don't read our bulletin every single week as assiduously as I probably should, but in my 30+ years in the parish, I don't recall previously seeing anything in the bulletin that was as explicit about our duty as Catholics to vote.

I recognize the the image above is probably too small to read.  If you're interested in seeing the original, it's here at the USCCB website: 

https://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/faithful-citizenship/parishes-and-schools/upload/catholics-care-catholics-vote-bulletin-insert.pdf

Below the break, I'll retype some of the content, and then offer a few comments.

On the left side, the pamphlet states, "While there are many moral issues before us, every issue is not equal."  Below that statement, it lists six issues the bishops presumably wish to highlight.  I've retyped those six bullets verbatim:

• Issues that directly affect human life - such as abortion and euthanasia - are fundamental and demand serious consideration.
• Our Constitution heralds religious liberty in the First Amendment, yet increasingly people of faith are having to fight to retain this basic right.
• There is a move in the nation to redefine marriage.  The marriage of a man and a woman is the foundation of the family and an essential core element of a flourishing society.
• The growing disparity between rich and poor means most of the world's resources are in the hands of a small percentage of its people.  The federal budget is a moral document and must prioritize the poorest and most vulnerable among us.
• The millions of undocumented persons living in the United States deserve our compassion.  There is an immigration problem, and we need a humane solution to it.
• War, terror and violence have caused thousands of lost lives.  We must work for just solutions to conflict in the Holy Land, throughout the Middle East, and beyond.

I say that the bishops "wish" to highlight these issues, in the present tense, but in fact this publication is not hot off the press: the fine print at the bottom of the second page states that the copyright year for this content is 2012.  

This list of six issues probably made sense at that time.  2012 wasn't so long ago, but politically and perhaps historically, it seems like a different era.  That year, President Obama was running for re-election.  The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) legislation had been passed several years earlier (despite the bishops' opposition), and the proposed details of that legislation's contraceptive mandate had been announced in 2012.  2012 also was the year the American bishops inaugurated their Fortnight for Freedom to try to build support to defend religious liberty in the face of the contraceptive mandate.  2012 also was three years before the Supreme Court's Obergefell decision legalized same-sex marriage nationally.  And of course, in 2012, Roe v Wade was very much the law of the land; the Dobbs decision was still a decade away.

Here are my quick comments on the six highlighted issues, from the perspective of 2024:

• Abortion: even though Roe v Wade has been overridden, abortion obviously is still an unsettled political question, and continues to be a motivating issue for American voters.  At the same time, the politics of abortion has changed as the makeup of the two parties has shifted: the GOP is no longer the pro-life stalwart it was a decade ago.  It seems likely enough that the US is heading toward an abortion "settlement" with two possibilities: either the country will continue down the state-by-state path in which blue and purple states establish a right to abortion, with a minority of red states continuing to limit abortion; or Democrats will succeed in passing federal legislation that reimposes a uniform national right to an abortion.
• Religious liberty: the bishops never quite succeeded in elevating religious liberty to the top of mind of American voters.  Still, the courts have largely been friendly to the bishops' concerns, and consequently, my sense is that this issue has receded in importance, even for the bishops.
• Same-sex marriage: I think it's fair to say this ship has sailed.  The Obergefell decision made same-sex marriage legal in all states.  It appears that LGBTQ advocates have moved on to other issues, notably transgender rights.  I don't sense that there is any appetite among religious conservatives for rear-guard action to restrict same-sex marriage.  The GOP as a party, despite its heavy reliance on religious conservative voters, has no discernible desire to make same-sex marriage a political issue.  The same is true of IVF and, increasingly, abortion.
• Disparity between rich and poor: the bishops may have been a bit ahead of the curve on this issue.  Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the 21st Century was published the following year, in 2013.  And since that era, American politics has taken a significantly more populist turn.  This is especially true of the GOP: recall that, in 2012, the Republican ticket was Mitt Romney (the alleged plutocrat) and Paul Ryan (the alleged Ayn Rand acolyte).  To be sure: it's possible that the rhetoric has become more populist, but the underlying reality has not changed much.
• Undocumented immigrants: This is the issue that has moved most dramatically to the top of the national conversation since 2012, albeit probably not in the way the bishops would have wished.  President Trump's most significant political accomplishment has been to turn immigration into a high-valence issue.  It is scarcely an exaggeration to note that immigration has become for the Trump-era GOP today what abortion has been for Democrats: the issue that, more than any other, unites and motivates its base.
• Violence in the Holy Land and the Middle East: Another issue which has taken on greater urgency since 2012.  

Finally, we might consider this USCCB publication, not only by what it includes, but also in light of what it doesn't address.  In 2012, very few people had foreseen the rise of a disruptive and divisive political leader such as Donald Trump.  With his hostile takeover of the Republican Party, his subsequent bending the great majority of GOP elected officials to his will, and his attempts to overturn the 2020 election (another possibility that virtually nobody imagined in 2012) Trump has made himself and his 2024 presidential candidacy one of the most important issues in national politics.  It might be argued that a Catholic document on faithful citizenship which doesn't provide a Catholic view on preserving what is good about the experiment known as the United States of America is overlooking one of the fundamental political and moral issues of our time.