Media coverage in the run-up to the US election made much of Donald Trump’s “Catholic problem” – but exit polls revealed that Catholics voted 52 per cent for the president-elect and only 45 per cent for Hillary Clinton. The election continued a trend of a majority of Catholics voting for the winning presidential candidate.
“Presidential candidates who win the Catholic vote almost always win the presidency,” said the statistician Dr Mark Gray of Georgetown University.
What the media are saying
Barbie Latza Nadeau, writing at the Daily Beast website under the headline “Why Catholics crucified Clinton”, argued that the central issues were abortion and the bishops’ long battle over Obama’s contraceptive mandate. Hillary Clinton, she wrote, was not a “Catholic-friendly choice”, and Tim Kaine, her Catholic running mate, did not help, given his “apparent disregard to Catholic teaching on abortion, same-sex marriage and the death penalty”.
Fr Thomas Reese, writing for the National Catholic Reporter, disagreed. He pointed out that white Catholicsgave Trump almost the same proportion of votes as they did Mitt Romney in 2012 (60 per cent to 59 per cent). For Fr Reese, the Hispanic Catholic vote was the real surprise – just 67 per cent voted for Clinton compared to 75 per cent voting for Barack Obama. “Trump won the Catholic vote … not because white Catholics voted more Republican this year than four years ago, but because Hispanics did not deliver for Clinton,” he wrote.
At the National Review, George Weigel suggested that voters’ support for Trump was “reaction, not renewal”. A lot of what people were reacting against ought to be taken seriously, he said, “from the plight of those left behind to the plague of political correctness and its corrosive impact on democracy”. But in Trump the reaction had found itself a “dangerous vehicle”.
John Allen at CruxNow.com said Trump’s victory may push US bishops to prioritise more progressive causes, with the likely flashpoints being immigration, social security and defence issues.
The most overlooked story of the week
✣ Medjugorje hotelier jailed for extortion
What happened?
An Italian manager of a hotel in Medjugorje was jailed for extorting pilgrimage groups. Luca Cobre was part of a group that allegedly threatened to close tourist agencies and other organisations and expel their owners from the town if they did not pay up. The other alleged group members, including government officials, are still on trial.
Why was it under-reported?
The news broke two days after the US election. Even without that huge story, an extortion racket in a little-known town in Bosnia-Herzegovina would seem of little interest to most news editors – except, of course, that Medjugorje is where six children are alleged to have had visions of the Virgin Mary and a shrine there now attracts a million pilgrims a year.
The conviction of Cobre does not help the reputation of the pilgrimage site, suggesting that there is an unsavoury side to the industry that has built up around the apparitions.
What will happen next?
A Vatican ruling on Medjugorje has long been said to be “imminent” but has never materialised. The apparitions have never been formally approved and official pilgrimages by dioceses are forbidden. A high-level Vatican commission into the apparitions concluded in 2014 but its report has not been made public. Last year the Pope said new guidelines had been approved – but there is no sign of them yet. Most recently, a Vatican spokesman said a papally appointed administrator for the site was “one of the hypotheses being studied”.
✣The week ahead
Seventeen new cardinals will be inducted into the College of Cardinals tomorrow. Among them are three from America – Cardinals-elect Blase Cupich of Chicago, Kevin Farrell and Joseph Tobin, newly appointed Archbishop of New Jersey. They also include Cardinal-elect Ernest Simoni, an 88-year-old Albanian priest who spent decades serving in labour camps.
On Sunday the new cardinals will join Pope Francis in celebrating the feast of Christ the King and in marking the end of the Year of Mercy. The Pope’s final act of the Jubilee Year will be to close the Holy Door of St Peter’s Basilica.
On Wednesday evening the façades of Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral will be lit in red as part of Red Wednesday, a global event to raise awareness of Christian persecution. A Mass will take place in the Cathedral at 5.30pm, and in the piazza afterwards there will be music, films and speakers including Syriac Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II.
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