CATHOLICIZATION OF THE U. S. REPUBLICAN PARTY

Prophetic Intelligence Briefings BY: Pastor Hal Mayer

Catholicization of the U.S. Republican Party · April 05, 2012

“There was a time when the Republican Party was strictly for White Anglo Saxon Protestants.” But in the candidates bidding for this year’s Republican Party presidential nomination are a Mormon (Mitt Romney) and two Catholics (Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich).

“Roughly one-quarter of Republican primary voters are Catholic. Notable Catholic GOP leaders include John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Christine O’Donnell, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush. Six out of nine justices of the Supreme Court are Catholics, and five of them are Republicans.

“The GOP is undergoing a quiet process of Catholicization. Republican outreach to Catholics began in the early 1970s, when Richard Nixon… [took] a tough stand on abortion.” He even told his staff that he would consider converting to Catholicism if it wouldn’t look like “cheap politics.”

Conservatives are attracted to Catholic arguments on social values, which made the church a strong partner in defending them in the 1980s and 1990s.

The Moral Majority (founded in 1979 by evangelicals) included Catholics in its social agenda to oppose abortion and homosexual rights, which by the mid-1980’s received one third of its funding from Roman Catholics. The leaders used the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition to build an ecumenical coalition, and were enthusiastic about John Paul II and his anti-communism. They especially liked Roman Catholic conservative intellectual arguments that they could use in fighting liberals.

“Under Catholic influence, the pro-life movement evolved from a zealous, theology-heavy rationale to one more couched in the language of human dignity and personhood.” And by 2000 Catholic social teaching was at the center of the Republican Party’s agenda.

George Bush played his social conservatism to gain support of Catholics and won the Catholic vote in 2004 against Catholic candidate John Kerry.

“Republican Protestants have become a little more Catholic in their outlook, so conservative Catholics have become a little more Protestant in theirs.” The growing alliance between conservative Catholics and evangelicals is a grass-roots cultural and ecumenical revolution. This mix has shifted and defined the 2012 Republican race by its Catholic moral teaching and “fierce social conservatism.”

“God’s Word has given warning of the impending danger; let this be unheeded, and the Protestant world will learn what the purposes of Rome really are, only when it is too late to escape the snare. [The Papacy] is silently growing into power. Her doctrines are exerting their influence in legislative halls, in the churches, and in the hearts of men… Stealthily and unsuspectedly she is strengthening her forces to further her own ends when the time shall come for her to strike. All that she desires is vantage-ground, and this is already being given her. We shall soon see and shall feel what the purpose of the Roman element is.” Great Controversy, page 581

How GOP got Catholicized

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