Democrats must shed the label of being pro-abortion if they want to sway Catholic voters back to the party, according to a theology professor.
"When I came to this country from Ireland some 45 years ago, a cousin, here 15 years before, advised me that Catholics vote Democratic," Thomas Groome, professor of theology and religious education at Boston College, wrote in a column for The New York Times.
"Having grown up in the Irish Republic, I was well disposed to Republican Party principles like local autonomy and limited government. Yet a commitment to social justice, so central to my faith, seemed better represented by the Democratic Party. I followed my cousin’s good counsel," Groome wrote.
"But once-solid Catholic support for Democrats has steadily eroded. This was due at least in part to the shift by many American Catholic bishops from emphasizing social issues (peace, the economy) to engaging in the culture wars (abortion, gay marriage). Along the way, many Catholics came to view the Democrats as unconditionally supporting abortion."
Groome notes that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops decided that Catholics could not vote for a candidate because they are pro-choice, but Catholics can vote for them despite this. He later cites Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s voicing her support for Roe v. Wade in the third debate with Republican candidate Donald Trump as the moment she lost support from many Catholics.
"In making it appear as if she was viewing a wrenching moral decision only through a legal lens, she was losing many Catholic and evangelical voters. For them, her uncompromising defense of Roe was comparable to telling a group of Quakers, 'I’m in favor of war,' without even mentioning preconditions."
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