Barack Obama with children, Sasha and Malia and wife, Michelle.
Catholic News Service photo
An estimated 54 percent of voters who describe themselves as Catholic helped elect Sen. Barack Obama Tuesday as the first African-American president.
That’s a significant boost for Democrats since 2004, when it was President Bush who carried Catholics at 52 percent. This year, young Latino Catholics helped Obama take key battleground states.
Obama won convincingly, with 52 percent of the popular vote and at press time 349 of the possible 538 electoral college votes.
Democrats increased their majorities in the House and Senate, as well.
Race seemed to play a smaller role than did Americans’ confidence that the level-headed Obama can handle global turmoil.
Weary of war in Iraq and hopeful that Obama and his party will bolster the threatened American middle class, swing voters moved toward the Democrats.
“Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope,” a solemn Obama told a crowd of hundreds of thousands gathered in Chicago for a victory celebration.
The nation’s Catholic bishops sent congratulations, despite differences with Obama over abortion. In a letter to the president-elect, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago urged Obama to use his office to defend the vulnerable and heal division.
“His commitment to the least among us resonates strongly with the Catholic preferential option for the poor,” says Douglas Kmiec, a Republican Catholic and law professor at Pepperdine University who became an Obama supporter and was denied Communion as a result. “His commitment to end an unjustified and costly war in Iraq and to renew America’s international standing and efforts at diplomacy are all individually or collectively explanations for this phenomenal moment in electoral history.”
Kmiec, who calls the election “a truly happy moment in the life of America,” says the election results give Obama a “genuine mandate.”
An abortion foe, Kmiec says improved economic and social conditions under an Obama administration “will make the scourge of abortion less.”
But Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights says Obama’s election, while welcome in that it broke the racial barrier, will ignite culture wars because of the president-elect’s liberal positions.
“I think those people who are already militantly secularist will read this as a green light to become even more aggressive,” Donohue predicts.
Donohue recalls 1993, when a newly sworn-in President Clinton quickly dismantled restrictions on abortion. Obama, who has promised to sign the controversial Freedom of Choice Act, could well be even more offensive to pro-life Americans, says Donohue, who foresees threats to religious freedom for Catholic hospitals and Catholic doctors.
Despite Obama’s talk of unity, Donohue thinks the Democrat’s appointees to the Supreme Court will be highly divisive.
As expected, Oregon went heavily for Obama, with 56 percent of the state’s voters choosing him.
Oregon’s U.S. Senate race was too close to call at press time, with incumbent Republican Sen. Gordon Smith holding a lead of a few thousand votes over Democrat Jeff Merkley.
At Marist High in Eugene, students favored Smith over Merkley 61 to 37 percent in a mock election early this week. For president, 53 percent of Marist students chose Republican Sen. John McCain. But among Marist staff, 81 percent favored Obama.
Nationwide, Catholics kept track of a set of ballot measures that touch on faith and morals.
In Washington State, voters approved an assisted-suicide law like Oregon’s by a 59-41 margin, becoming only the second state with such a law. Washington’s Catholic bishops and a national Catholic organization for people with disabilities had urged Washington residents to vote no.
Gay marriage was outlawed easily in Arizona and Florida, and a close vote in California was leaning toward a ban, which California’s Catholic bishops support.
Debate over the issue was charged. The Fresno, California, bishop relieved a priest after he preached against the ban. A layman handing out pro-ban yard signs at a Modesto Catholic church was roughed up by a supporter of gay marriage.
Also in California, a law requiring parental notice before a minor has an abortion was rejected 52-48.
In South Dakota, a ban of most abortions was defeated by a 55-45 margin.
A measure to relax restrictions on stem cell research in Michigan won 52-48. Under the proposal, families with unused embryos from fertility treatments can donate them to science to study incurable diseases. Michigan Catholic leaders urged research using new adult stem cell methods instead of killing frozen embryos for the purpose.
A Colorado initiative that would have amended the state constitution to say personhood begins at conception was crushed by a 73-27 margin. Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput and National Right to Life refused to endorse the measure, saying it could prompt a ruling that would strengthen Roe v. Wade.
The bishops of Missouri opposed an initiative to require English only at public meetings, an idea 86 percent of voters approved. In Oregon, a bill to limit foreign-language instruction at public schools failed.
This year again showed that, when it comes to partisan politics, many Catholics have no comfortable home.
In the days before Tuesday’s election, Olive and Herb Plep of Portland wanted to highlight some Catholic principles for voting — the dignity of all human life from conception to natural death, and the need for peace.
The Pleps, members of St. Juan Diego Parish, broadcast invitations to an election rosary.
Alice is a lifelong Democrat, who as a teen volunteered for John Kennedy. But her party veered away from her, she said, when it made legal abortion one of its major planks.
The Franciscan Spiritual Center on Monday and Tuesday sponsored walking meditations for voters to clear their minds.
In a letter to members of Resurrection Parish in Tualatin just before the election, Father Bill Moisant reflected on what a “truly pro-life politician” would do.
In addition to opposing abortion, such a candidate would be “against unjustifiable wars, against the death penalty, in favor of readily available medical and social services for pregnant women and children,” Father Moisant wrote.
The priest also said a pro-life politician would favor universal health care for all children, an effective educational system and an environment that is safe.
