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no idea what denomination this guy is, but in the Catholic world, prolife, pro-immigration, pro-social justice like healthcare for the poor, anti-Trump is not particularly ideosyncratic. Rather it's extremely common, and a relatively consistent worldview. This probably describes the pope himself, and many priest and bishops in the US.
However, I don't this agree that this maps to 'Red-coded'. I think it's the default left-wing half of Catholicism in America, consistenly votes democrate, and is pretty solidly blue tribe, just not woke.
Seems like a Charismatic Protestant of some sort, which would, at least in American context, further point towards him probably not being a liberal/leftist.
There are (weird)left wing charismatic protestants. It really wouldn't shock me if one of them wound up in a political assassination because, well, you can expect any group of weirdos to be overrepresented in political violence.
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In the days when the Democrats really were the party of the working man, you could vote Democrat and be red-coded. That faded away as they chased after the college-educated vote, pivoted to "what do college kids like? oh yeah sex'n'drugs'n'rock&roll", went increasingly all-in on progressivism, or at least allowed the progressive wing to push the social liberalisation programme, and dumped the rare part of "safe, legal, and rare" in the dumpster.
So now you're either mostly a cultural Catholic who votes blue no matter who because that's how you were raised, you are more serious about your faith but think the Democrats are better on other issues, or this is the deal-breaker issue for you and you have to hold your nose and vote for the Republicans.
But I think FCfromSSC doesn't mean Catholics when they talk about Christians there, they mean Protestants and most especially the Evangelicals.
No-college kids like that too.
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Yes and no.
Biden / Pelosi style catholics are definitely solidly blue tribe and do vote democrat. There's even vestiges of old school machine politics for these kind of folks in states like Rhode Island and Massachusettes.
The problem is they aren't actually catholic. Just as "culturally Jewish" is a thing for totally non-observing "Jews" in the bicoastal cities, I believe "culturally catholic" exists as well for many democrat strongholds. To me, it's almost stolen valor. People like Biden etc get to say "faith is at the core of who I am" blah blah blah and infuse their speeches - and votes - with high minded moralism. But they aren't actually living or even trying to believe the doctrine of their faith. The Church is pretty damn clear on abortion and divorce, among other issues.
Theologically serious Catholics, nowadays, have to vote Republican because, of the two parties, it is the only one that isn't openly hostile to all of the bedrock elements of the faith. A lot of the politically motivated (and serious) American Catholics also get really into issues of religious liberties. One need look no further than the recent SCOTUS decision on tax-exemption status for faith based charities.
Don't think the Pope would agree.
Why?
The majority of what he posted on Twitter before he became Pope (which wasn't much) was criticism of Trumpist policies or ideas.
He was also a, literally, registered Republican.
Claiming that the pope agreed with democrats more on immigration is probably true(although a lot of the evidence used for that is out of context- his recent speech about ‘breaking down borders’ was explicitly calling for Palestinian rights and not about the U.S., for example). But the claim that he was or is particularly anti trump is not.
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There are a small number of theologically serious Catholics who vote democrat- over stuff like the border, 'Trump is pro-choice too', 'democrats hew closer to Catholic social teaching'(apart from unions this is not really true, because Catholic social teaching is not really defined enough to say that clearly- it's a set of principles, not a policy platform, and neither party is much into it), or just unironically believing democrat's propaganda. This group is old and shrinking(partly from dying of old age), but the claim that it doesn't exist is just false.
That being said 90+% of non-dissenting, precept-following Catholics do probably vote republican, with the other single-digit percent being a higher percentage of heavily propagandized non-English speakers, or residents of places like Chicago where maintaining a democrat registration to vote strategically for less-bad democrats is more important than protest voting for republicans, than of actual liberals.
This is all correct and an important improvement on what I originally commented.
Taking the issue up one or two levels of analysis, I believe there's a fundamental and close-to-irreconcilable tension between being Catholic and being American. I was listening to an SSPX sermon on the drive home from my Dad's last night and the priest points out that America is a protestant country founded on and steeped in protestant principles. Catholic integralism has approximately 0% shot of taking root in the American Federalist system. (That being said, however, Catholic political leaders, especially in the judiciary, have, for decades, punch above their electoral weight.)
The overwhelming majority of the time, voting in America, for theologically serious (TM) catholics, is a choice for the lesser of two evils. My guiding light, for some time, has been a candidate's perspective on religious liberty. Never their voiced position, mind you - religious liberty is one of those issues everyone always says they are for, but their voting behaviors often betray them later on.
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Only if you selectively define "bedrock elements" to include only what's politically convenient. Is JD Vance actually Catholic? He repeated rumors about Haitian immigrants he knew to be untrue for the specific purpose of demonizing them for political gain. He has, to my knowledge, never once apologized for this or walked back his statements, instead doubling down on them and insisting on calling them "illegals" not because they arrived here illegally, but because he disagreed with the political mechanism by which they were allowed to come. Again, he didn't do this because he was mistaken but because either he personally doesn't like them due to his own racism or because he cynically believes that other people are racist enough that he can exploit them for his own political ends. While the church's position on immigration doesn't contain any bright lines, you'd have to squint really hard to claim that productive, law-abiding people are causing such a burden to the United States that we are justified in deporting them to a country steeped in as much violence, poverty, and political instability as Haiti.
Or if you'd prefer bright lines, let's just point to capital punishment, an issue on which the church has taken an unequivocal stance for 50 years. This isn't merely something where Republicans want to maintain the status quo; they actually advocate expanding the death penalty. At least when Democrats want to expand abortion access it isn't based on the idea that more abortions is a good thing.
I say this as a Catholic who went to a small, Catholic, liberal arts college largely populated by serious Catholics. Some of my friends were liberals, some conservatives, and I don't believe for a second that abortion or anything else is the defining thing that's keeping them from voting Democrat. I'm still in contact with a lot of these people, and the ones that didn't switch to Democrat in the wake of Trump are all aboard the Trump Train, defending every policy of his without question. They spent college defending the Iraq War as totally justified, and I can't tell you how many times I heard the traditional conservative caricature about how poor people just didn't work hard enough and taxes should be lower to avoid penalizing the most talented people in society. I don't think that these people "aren't true Catholics", I just wish conservative Catholics would stop blowing smoke up my ass because of the abortion issue, or gay marriage, or whatever. The Democratic Party could reverse course on these issues tomorrow and I'd still have to hear the same bullshit about immigrants, poor people, urban blacks, and anyone else they think is ruining America.
The correlation between social and economic conservatism isn't all that surprising in light of facts like these:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GVSIRXhWYAAxzzp?format=png&name=small
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A very large supermajority of six-precepts following Catholics who don't dissent from the doctrine of the Church voting republican is not the same thing as most Catholic republicans being six-precept following believers in every jot of Church doctrine.
The actual name for the prior group when identified in social surveys is 'conservative Catholics', and pollsters literally identify them in part by their beliefs about things like papal infallibility and transubstantiation. @100ProofTollBooth may not be literally correct, but his statement is almost assuredly close enough for government work.
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There are requirements to come under the program which they entered via. I don’t think anyone seriously debates that on the merits they’d qualify for these programs. Instead, the whole point is to delay for almost a decade having the case tried on the merits so that by that point in time the pro immigrant can say “they’ve been here a decade — how cruel to cast them out.”
That is, it is all a procedural game whilst they are substantively illegal. Fuck then for playing that game and the NGOs who support it.
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Biden is in an irregular marriage.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/01/27/some-questions-about-the-bidens-1977-catholic-wedding/
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I’m not talking about Biden or Pelosi or other democrat leaders. There are many many serious Catholics who are anti Trump and also anti abortion. You can I can discuss whether they are mistaken to keep voting democrat but these people exist in large number.
I am saying that if this guy is hypothetically anti Trump pro immigrant healthcare and anti abortion:
This describes a ton of serious involved Catholics. You are right that they are much less common in trad circles
A reliably large proportion vote democrat. Sure once you start filtering for theological rigidity, they vote more and more a minority vote, but still exist.
Voting pattern aside these folks are much more Blue Tribe than Red Tribe.
This set of views probably describes the most left wing bishops in the US, including ones who are shakey on sex stuff and ones who are solid.
Again, ther is no evidence this guy is Catholic so I’m just playing pattern matching.
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I agree that the last 20 years saw a move of the last of these Catholics to the GOP. Pro choice Democratic politicians were censured by the church itself which is a big step. In liberal European countries like Germany there are Catholic groups who have semi-openly broken with the Vatican on abortion but in the US the clergy tend to be more socially conservative.
But an example of the above would be like ACB who is a liberal except for abortion.
If they didn't have to worry about re-election there'd be a lot more "ACBs" in the House and Senate.
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ACB as a 'liberal' is a bit of a stretch. She's probably better described as a moderate conservative on non-social issues.
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