http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1851777,00.html
How Catholics Are Judging Obama and the Democrats
By Amy Sullivan
This year's Al Smith Dinner — the annual gala that raises funds for the
Archdiocese of New York and has become an essential social ticket for the
city's political and media class — will be remembered as a rare cease-fire
moment in the heated 2008 presidential campaign. Exchanging rolled-up shirt
sleeves for white ties, John McCain and Barack Obama cracked each other up on
topics that usually result in outraged press statements when raised on the
campaign trail. "I got my name, Barack, from my father," deadpanned Obama,
"and I got my middle name from somebody who obviously didn't think I'd ever
run for President."
What has gone largely unnoticed, however, is that the evening marked just the
second time in 20 years that both presidential candidates had been invited to
attend the gathering of Catholic elites. The event itself is a strictly
nonpartisan affair. However, the question of whether the Archdiocese extends
an invitation to certain candidates has produced no small amount of political
drama in past election years. Obama's presence on the dais at the
Waldorf-Astoria is just one sign that this may be the Democrats' best year
for Catholic support in decades.
Although the American Catholic community is too diverse to usefully refer to
it as a monolithic bloc, presidential campaigns have long considered Catholic
voters an essential part of a winning strategy. They are the largest single
religious constituency in the electorate (33 million voted in 2004) and have
aligned themselves with the winner in every presidential election going back
to 1960, with the exception of 2000.
So it was perhaps no surprise that the Al Smith Dinner, which gives
candidates the chance to hobnob with Catholic opinion leaders just weeks
before an election, became what Theodore White called "a ritual of American
politics." John Kennedy and Richard Nixon were the first contenders for the
White House to share the dais at the event in 1960. Over the next two decades
it was a standard campaign stop, a light-hearted evening to honor the memory
of the first Catholic to win a major party's presidential nomination.
The trouble — at least, for Democrats — started in 1980. The Roe v. Wade
decision had elevated the political importance of abortion, and while
Catholics tentatively supported Jimmy Carter in 1976, they soon determined he
was not the pro-life politician they had assumed. When Carter appeared with
Ronald Reagan at the Al Smith Dinner, the crowd embraced the GOP challenger
with warm applause. Carter was booed.
By 1984, New York's newly-appointed Archbishop John O'Connor had already
spent much of his short time in the position taking on the state's two most
prominent Catholic Democrats: Governor Mario Cuomo and Vice
Presidential-nominee Geraldine Ferraro. By the time the dinner rolled along,
tensions between the Catholic Church and the Democratic Party had become so
strained that the Democratic nominee Walter Mondale simply skipped the event.
Reagan attended alone and, on Election Day, captured 61% of Catholic voters,
the largest share that any Republican presidential candidate had ever earned.
No GOP candidate has matched it since.
After Michael Dukakis and George H.W. Bush traded passive-aggressive jabs in
1988, O'Connor simply didn't invite the presidential candidates in either
1992 or 1996. The slight was particularly painful for Bill Clinton, who
developed an affinity for the Catholic Church as an undergraduate at
Georgetown University. And it was compounded by the fact that in 1992,
O'Connor invited Pennsylvania Governor Robert Casey to be the featured
speaker. The pro-life Catholic Democrat had himself been denied a speaking
slot at that summer's Democratic National Convention and the dinner
arrangements were seen as payback.
A truce seemed in sight in 2000 when O'Connor was succeeded by Cardinal
Edward Egan, a prelate far less interested in making political waves. And
indeed he invited Al Gore and George W. Bush to the event that fall. Just
four years later, though, both Bush and John Kerry were left off the list.
"The issues in this year's campaign," explained an archdiocesan spokesman
then, "could provoke division and disagreement." Critics speculated that
church leaders were more concerned about keeping Kerry, a pro-choice Roman
Catholic, off the stage.
Why then was Obama welcomed to the Al Smith Dinner, his hand on Cardinal
Egan's shoulder as they chuckled together, while Kerry had to stay away? It
helps that Obama is not Catholic. Some Catholics have criticized his support
for abortion rights, but as he is not a member of their tradition, they don't
feel the same need to sanction him. But more importantly, the political
landscape for Catholics has changed since 2004.
In a hierarchical tradition like Catholicism, debates don't happen very
often. Right now, however, American Catholics are going through a revival of
the arguments that took place in the 1980s between bishops who believed
abortion ought to be the top political and moral focus of the church and the
camp led by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin that argued for a more
"consistent ethic of life."
In early October, Bishop Joseph Martino of Scranton released a letter to be
read in every pulpit in the diocese that said, in part: "Abortion is the
issue this year and every year in every campaign. [Catholics] are wrong when
they assert that abortion is only one of a multitude of issues of equal
importance. Abortion must take precedence over every other issue." But just
last fall, the American bishops released Faithful Citizenship: A Call to
Political Responsibility, a document that reminded Catholics that "all life
issues are connected." Over the past few years, archbishops around the
country have spoken out in favor of immigration reform, opposing the use of
torture, and advocating policies that focus more on the poor.
As a result, many Catholics can now argue that neither party fits precisely
with Catholic social teaching — the Democratic position on abortion is still
unacceptable but so are GOP positions on education and health care and the
war in Iraq. This realization is reflected in changing party identification —
as of this past February, 41% of Catholic voters called themselves
Independents, an 11-point increase since 2004. And in opinion polls,
Catholics are evenly divided between Obama and McCain.
Obama has also benefitted from the resurgence of progressive Catholics. The
Catholic Left used to be a vigorous social and political presence, from the
work of Dorothy Day to the activism of the Berrigan brothers to disarmament
advocates in the 1980s. But by the time Kerry ran in 2004, there were very
few Catholic voices echoing his insistence that church teaching addressed
more than just abortion or pushing back against suggestions that he and other
pro-choice Catholics should be denied communion.
This void, and Kerry's defeat, prompted a group of progressive Catholics to
create their own infrastructure after 2004. When two young graduate students
first launched Catholics United, they had $1,000 in seed money and were
operating out of a dorm room. Four years later, the nonpartisan organization
has more than 30,000 members and a $200,000 budget. This month they are
sending a direct mail piece titled "What Does Being Pro-Life Really Mean?" to
50,000 Catholic households in Pennsylvania and Ohio. The same message is
plastered across billboards in heavily Catholic swing states.
Pro-life Catholics have also spoken out to argue that Obama's support for an
abortion reduction strategy — which he mentioned in both his acceptance
speech and in the third presidential debate — makes him a more "pro-life"
candidate than McCain. The GOP's single focus on overturning Roe, they argue,
ignores the progress that could be made in lowering the abortion rate through
changes in economic policies and by reforming adoption laws. Most recently,
two high-profile Obama supporters — former Reagan Justice Department
official Douglas Kmiec and actor Martin Sheen — have filmed a series of
short videos making this case that are being disseminated by the Democratic
PAC Matthew 25.
Despite all of the arguments about what it means to be pro-life and which
party best represents Catholic social teaching, however, the election is
likely to come down to one issue for most Catholic voters: the economy. Other
voting blocs, such as white evangelicals, have also expressed strong concerns
about the economic situation but have not shifted over to support the
Democratic ticket, primarily because of a strong identification with the GOP.
But Catholics have a different relationship with the Democratic Party. Many
grew up with grandparents who hung portraits of FDR on the living room wall
and have parents who celebrated Kennedy's victory as one of their own.
In a year like 2008, when the economy trumps social issues, Catholics are
most likely to return to their roots in the Democratic Party. And that's
particularly true when they hear fellow Catholics arguing that Democrats
reflect their religious values. McCain may have gotten a longer standing
ovation on his way to the podium at the Al Smith Dinner and dropped
references to "defending the rights of the unborn" in among his jokes. But it
was Obama who won over Al Smith IV, the event's emcee and great-grandson of
the historic candidate. "Awesome," Smith told Obama after the Democrat had
finished speaking. "That was just awesome!"
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這篇文章 大概介紹美國天主教徒從1960以來 在美國總統選舉的投票行為 還有紐約教區
的一個募款餐會
裡面題到 天主教徒 2004 年投票的有三千三百萬人 是最大的單一宗教團體
從1960年開始 多數天主教投的總統候選人 最後都獲得勝利 只有2000年是例外
今年 經濟議題比較重要的情況下
天主教徒 又回到民主黨的根
=============