Republicans and Catholics will fail if they simply put new faces on old ideas.
What do Reince Priebus and Timothy Dolan have in common?
Mr. Reince Priebus, chair of the Republican National Committee, has been attempting to “rebrand” the Republican Party, and Archbishop Timothy Dolan, Catholic Archbishop of New York, is attempting to “rebrand” the Catholic Church as both of these institutions — one political and one religious (well, maybe both political and both religious) — continue to experience a precipitous exodus by former advocates, supporters and believers (who we can now call “leavers”).
If the last series of national elections indicate anything, with the Republican Party losing the popular vote in five out of the last six contests, the party has enormous problems if it wishes to extricate itself from the endangered political species list.
During the 2012 presidential campaign alone, the Republicans lost seats in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, with the overall national electoral college vote going to Mr. Obama over Mr. Romney by a margin of 332 to 206. The Democrats garnered nearly 5 million more votes than the Republicans. Except for older white men and people whose incomes topped $50,000 annually, the Republicans lost most other demographic groups. For example, Democrats won women voters by 55 percent to the Republicans’ 44 percent; voters ages 18 to 29, 60 percent; 30 to 44, 52 percent; urban voters, 62 percent; black voters, 93 percent; Latino/a voters, 71 percent; Asian voters, 73 percent; and voters whose annual income was below $50,000 voted for the Democrats by a margin of 60 percent to 38 percent for the Republicans.
Of the 5 percent of voters who identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, approximately 75 percent voted for Mr. Obama.
Regarding the Catholic Church, poll after poll has found that the papacy is out of step with its increasingly shrinking U.S. flock. On the topic of abortion, 55 percent of U.S. Catholics do not want the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade decision overturned; 67 percent support pre-marital sex between a man and a woman; 71 percent approve of divorce; and 61 percent believe that homosexuality should be approved by society, while 52 percent support marriage equality for same-sex couples; 82 percent approve of birth control; 63 percent sanction medical research using stem cells obtained from human embryos; and 59 percent support ordination of women; 58 percent stated priests should be allowed to marry.
In addition, approximately 70 percent of young people between the age of 18 and 22 leave the Church and the Barna Group found that about 80 percent of people brought up in the Church will “disengage” by the time they reach 29 years of age.
Priebus and Dolan both acknowledge the challenges to their institutions, and both came up with virtually similar solutions: change the messaging.
Chair Priebus, appearing on the CBS program Face the Nation, Sunday, March 17, 2013, when asked by host Bob Schieffer “what went wrong” in the last election, Priebus asserted: “We have to relate things to people’s lives. We have to win the math war, which we do a good job of but we’re going to have to learn how to learn the heart war, and that’s what in presidential elections, what is plaguing our party.”
Priebus is now calling for fewer primary campaign debates, earlier national conventions in either June or July during election years, and in particular, initiating better public relations efforts by placing paid “outreach employees” within communities — specifically the rapidly growing voting blocs of African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latino/as on an ongoing basis “to make the case for our party and our candidates,” he explained to Bob Schieffer. These paid marketing consultants will also target campuses, including historically black colleges and universities.
Chair Priebus recently released a report providing a post-mortem of the 2012 presidential election, and offering “solutions” for the GOP to move forward. The report, called the “Growth and Opportunity Project” argued that:
“We need to do a better job connecting people to our policies….If we believe our policies are the best ones to improve the lives of the American people, all the American people, our candidates and office holders need to do a better job talking to the normal people, people-oriented terms, and we need to go to communities where Republicans do not normally go to listen and make our case. We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian, and gay Americans and demonstrate that we care about them too” (p. 7).
Archbishop Dolan, also appearing on Face the Nation, on Easter Sunday, March 31, 2013, told host Bob Schieffer that he acknowledges the challenging facing the Catholic Church and concluded that “I think while we can’t tamper with what God has revealed [read as policies of the Catholic Church],…we can try to do better in the way we present them, with more credibility and in a more compelling way.”
Dolan expressed his excitement over the recent election of Pope Francis, “because what he’s trying to do I think in a very natural, spontaneous way is to restore the luster to the church, return to those biblical values of utter simplicity, of sincerity, of service, almost a no-frills religion, and that resonates with people.”
For the Republican Party and the worldwide Catholic Church to have any future, all the public relations efforts and attempts to “restore the luster” will ultimately fail to attract voters and followers unless and until these institutions significantly reevaluate and change their policies, dismantle their patriarchal-oligarchic-dictatorial hierarchies, and connect truthfully and effectively to the lived experiences of real people.
Leaders in both institutions are fooling themselves if they think that merely presenting diverse faces and voices and using simple language to reach “normal people” will lead them to victory. To remain viable, the GOP and the Church must craft a diversity of thought and a diversity of policies to give people something to vote for and something to believe in, something to embrace, something that makes peoples’ lives better, instead of merely rehashing the policies of the past simply presented in a box with pretty wrapping paper and a bow.
Maybe then and only then will the Republican Party and the Catholic Church save themselves from themselves.
–Photo: King of the Ants/Flickr
WRT abortion and the republicans/conservatives: First you have to decide what’s being done to whom? As we see in the Gosnell case, born-alive babies are being killed without a peep from the holier-than-thou supporters of women’s rights. Either it’s a human being, or it’s not. If it is, we have a problem. If it isn’t, when does it begin? IOW, did Gosnell commit murder or not? The paid-for birth control is a fabulous example of a non-issue. There are two kinds of women who would be impacted. One is the woman who is currently paying for BC. Upon finding she… Read more »
I’m curious, Dr. Blumenfeld, is there anything conservative the Republicans could do to make progress here, or is this one of those “republicans would be better if they became democrats” posts? I’m not trying to be snarky, I’m genuinely curious. I’ve heard from many on the left since the last election that if the republicans want to ever win again they need to basically become democrats and/or embrace various left wing positions. That is obviously not going to happen. If they move to the left, they will not attract any left wing voters. These people already vote for the left… Read more »
Dear Kittycat or whatever your real name is, what I am asking for is that the Republican party drop its hypocrisy and doubletalk. The Republican National Committee brands itself as the party of “small government,” of “freedom,” of “personal responsibility.” So, I ask, why if this is the case, is it so interested in imposing governmental restrictions on a woman’s right to choose and on a woman’s very body, for example, by imposing waiting periods and even in some states invasive vaginal procedures? Why is it so concerned with imposing governmental restrictions on what a woman does with her body… Read more »
omg I just had a readgasm…..dreamy sigh.
kittycat – As Warren said, the problem is the lack of uniformity in their ‘principles’ that most undermines the Republicans right now. Some articulated value gets applied in almost opposite ways depending on the particular issue. What you said – focus on small and local government, especially personal liberties and communities helping each other. I think there are limited government and personal responsibility arguments to be made for drug decriminalization, marriage and immigration reform, and many other issues, which would offer them many new policy and PR options without sacrificing their core principles – is a very good answer to… Read more »
neil.
See public schools for “just as bad”.
I note that selective quoting of doctrine and writings, some centuries old, is a legitimate route for criticism.
Is that only with regard to RCs, or would it be consistent to apply it to other faiths? If you were to find out, for example that another faith currently called for…oh, say, the execution of gays, could we take that as exemplifying that faith?
Or is it just the RCs?
“The role of religion is paradoxical. It makes and unmakes prejudice. While the creeds of the great religions are universalistic, all stressing brotherhood (sic), the practices of these creeds are frequently divisive and brutal” (Gordon Allport, 1954, p. 444).
agreed. Kudos
The Catholic church can’t “rebrand” itself out of being the world’s largest organized child rape ring.
Thankfully, God gave us the internet to show future generations proof of organized child rape by the Catholic church, in God’s name, followed by a generation of liars saying “its just as bad everywhere else”, which is a standard Catholic lie, easily discovered by anyone who seeks the truth.
What is your proof that sexual abuse occurs more frequently within the Catholic Church than it does in society as a whole? Or is this “truth” you claim simply hate speech?
The Catholic church admitted 4,392 substantiated, accused, child sex abusing priests in their own John Jay report of 2004, and NO INSTITUTION IN HISTORY IS EVEN CLOSE TO THIS NUMBER.
That was 4%, but it was 8-9% in the 70s and 80s, and that’s just the ones they admitted. Of course, they couldn’t get away with it without the support of a billion pedophile protectors.
judging a faith by quoting selected doctrinal pieces, some important guys’ writings, some centuries old.
Can we do the same to other faiths? Or just the rc?
See, thing is, for all the rc say about gays, they do not have a doctrine calling for execution.
so. Are we going to be consistent?
didn’t think so
“Rebranding” is a poor choice of words. That to me says they need to commercialize like the giant evangelical-ish “mega churches” with video screen, rock bands, and coffee shops in the lobby all of which are ridiculous. The Church needs new thinking, younger leadership, and more respect for nuns and lay people. _My_ Catholic Church, the one the I love and hold dear spent time and energy concerned with social justice for the poor, needy, and other “least of us” types. In the past five years all they care about is abortion and covering up (and making excuses) for priest… Read more »
Jimbo – Amen! The experience of your mother says an awful lot about how far the Church has strayed from the essence of Christ, which was all about “what you do to the least of my people” and “love one another” and “where two are gathered” and so on. David Kuo (former Deputy Director of George W. Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives who died this week) called for a fast from politics in 2006, saying: “if I say Jesus, I think most people at the end of the radio will go – will think, oh, OK: abortion, homosexuality,… Read more »
The only time it was suggested to me as to how to vote it was in the context of our Catholic beliefs. “Founded in 1910 as the National Conference of Catholic Charities, the organization changed its name in 1986 to Catholic Charities USA (CCUSA).[7] In 2010, Catholic Charities’ centennial year, more than 1,700 agencies, institutions and organizations composed the Catholic Charities network, including individual organizations of the dioceses, such as the Archdiocese of Chicago. About $2 billion of its budget comes from the Faith-Based Initiatives Office of the federal government. Nearly 90 cents of every dollar donated to Catholic Charities… Read more »
Several times at several parishes in 2008 I was handed literature by the KoC after masses which in not so many words said “vote for McCain not Obama” for “Catholic” reasons. Which of course the only one was abortion. Why do these “vote on Catholic beliefs” literature never include anything about helping the poor, fair tax policy, increased funding for education, or healthcare reform? Is it because their preferred anti-abortion politicians continually fall on the wrong side of these issues? Couldn’t be, right? These same politicians that are against abortion are almost always the same ones who want to cut… Read more »
Perhaps you have heard of Mother Theresa? Or the recent Medal of Honor recipient Emil Kapaun a Catholic Chaplin during the Korean war that was taken captive by the Chinese and held in a POW camp and who cared for his fellow captives. His story can be found here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/emil-kapaun-who-ministered-to-korean-war-pows-to-receive-posthumous-medal/2013/04/10/09913232-a121-11e2-be47-b44febada3a8_story.html There are a lot of issues the Catholic Church can focus on and they need to focus on them all. You can turn away from the Church, thus reducing their resources to focus on all the issues or you can become active in the Church and help steer the focus… Read more »
Here’s the thing, the Church shouldn’t be opposing abortion as long as they are anti-contraception. The Church shouldn’t be opposing marriage because Jesus didn’t say anything about gays or their right to marriage. The other thing is the Church doesn’t want to hear from the lay people. If they did they would have stopped opposing contraceptives years ago. There is no place for people who want to change the Church because the Church won’t let you have a voice. They are concerned about keeping their power structure in place which is full of old, never married, never lived “real life”… Read more »
And the reason for all of these priests assaulting these boys was simply that they refused to have sex (a natural biological process) with grown up women, so instead innocent children had to suffer. You and I have both been left by the church.
Evan Thomas, late editor of Newsweek and a liberal journalist, once remarked that the media give the dems fifteen points in national elections. If you correct for those in each state in the 2008 election, Obama gets Vermont and DC, a total of 7 electoral votes. Later, Thomas amended the number to 5. Haven’t done the math, but under reasonable assumptions, five percent will reverse an actual 9% spread. So, as some have said, conservatives need to buy major media outlets, including, say, women’s magazines. The point is not to rebrand repubs, conservatives, or Catholics, but to successfully resist being… Read more »
Thank you to those of you who brought clarity regarding the Catholic Church. I’ll admit, my initial responses were knee jerk and not really well thought out and accordingly, no as well penned as they could have been. Yes, the book “The Last Acceptable Prejudice” is an excellent book. Kerri, I’m not sure where you get the impression that the Catholic church in general isn’t a loving and accepting church, In so far as Sister Simone “But Sister Simone is a woman, which disqualifies her—and tens of millions of other Catholic women—from any ordained leadership positions in the church. This… Read more »
Tom Brechlin asked: “Kerri, I’m not sure where you get the impression that the Catholic church in general isn’t a loving and accepting church.” Well, Tom, let me count the ways. During his annual Christmas message delivered in December 2012, for example, he asserted that marriage for same sex couples destroys the “essence of the human creature,” and he deemed marriage equality as a “manipulation of nature,” and along with abortion and euthanasia, threatens world peace. “People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given to them by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the… Read more »
Warren, Many of us who are believers welcome your prayers and ask for your forgiveness. May God bless you. The first among sinners, JAM
Warren, Through the years I too have heard people complain about many things with the church but that’s not to say that these rogue clergy are the norm. When I speak of the church, I speak of it in it’s entirety. We have three Catholic parishes in my village/town and there are many within the towns surrounding it. I have been a parishioner of all three and have comfortably settled in the one I’m in now. I’m not going to throw my faith away because of a select number of clergy. I believe in the Catholic church and that’s where… Read more »
Wow, Warren I don’t even know where to begin. If your attack were aimed at Jews you would be called an Anti-Semite, but since your attack is against Catholics you can make such remarks with impunity and you a protected vehicle for disseminating you vile attacks. The Catholic Church does not hate the sinner, they hate the sin. A fundamental belief of the Roman Catholic faith is that sexual intercourse’s primary purpose is for the creation of life and that anything that subverts that or interferes with God’s plan for life is usurping the power of God. The theory is… Read more »
Tom Brechlin – In addition to Warren’s “let me count the ways” reply, let me say just a few things about the Catholic Church and women. The “we revere Mary, but we don’t worship her” doublespeak is the tip of a deep-seated and long-enduring iceberg built by the Church’s marginalizing and demonizing of women. Starting with Mary Magdalene and moving through the recent reprimand of the LCWR and the latest hubbub against contraception, the Church has spent a millennia silencing women’s voices and denying feminine spirituality. The Gnostic Gospels speak quite well to the position of Mary Magdalene noting she… Read more »
Do you know that condoms fail 1% of the time. So on any given night in the United States (we’ll limit it to just the U.S.) 100,000 couples could be engaging in “casual” uncommitted sex using condoms and since 1% of those condoms fail, as statistics say they do, a life may very well be created from that “casual” uncommitted sex and now what do we have an “unwanted” child, at least unwanted by the fun time couple who never considered the potential consequences of their irresponsible act. The Catholic Church has, through God’s grace, simply sought to impress upon… Read more »
courage – Perhaps this hypothetical couple put on a condom precisely because they did consider the potential consequences and were being responsible. Perhaps this hypothetical couple is married and already has three children and is struggling to make ends meet because the government hasn’t raised the minimum wage or expanded food stamps or provided universal childcare and having another child will further endanger the health and welfare of their existing family and they would never consider abortion or adoption as an option. And perhaps the failure rate of condoms is precisely why having access to other forms of contraception is… Read more »
Do you know the only form of birth control that is 100% effective 100% of the time? Abstinence. One of the things about marriage is you know each other, you know each other’s rhythms and you know each others tolerances. You respect each other and you are kind and patient etc. We are not compulsive beasts unable to control our impulses. Our desires can wait until a better time to engage in expressions of love and if by chance we get pregnant nonetheless we should not consider it a curse, but a blessing and since none of us can see… Read more »
courage – I absolutely condemn Joe Paterno as much as any priest or other sex offender. And if Penn State had numerous coaches and professors committing sex offenses on minors and spent decades covering it up and just moving them around to other departments I would absolutely condemn the institution as much as I condemn the Church. But my point wasn’t just about sexual abuse – that’s only one of the several dysfunctional ways the Church approaches sex. If the Church handed out basal thermometers to every couple when they got married along with a graphic education on fertility I… Read more »
Ok there are 1.5 billion Catholics in the world and of course that includes all the clergy, the bishops, priests, cardinals, Archbishops, nuns and laity etc. There maybe 250,000 staff, faculty, coaches, assistant coaches, members of the Board of Trustees (including the governor, who was the attorney general at the time Jerry Sandusky committed his horrible acts while Joe turned the other way) and students at Penn State and all their branch campuses. As a percentage of the whole my bet is that Penn State has/had a greater number of perpetrators of deviant acts and those engaged in covering those… Read more »
What other forms of contraception do you have in mind? Perhaps driving a needle the size of sewing awl into the baby in uterios brain, o I am sorry calling it a baby makes it way too uncomfortable, I mean the fetus, that’s better, I mean who feels bad about killing a fetus or a zygote that’s even better because that word actually sounds gross and should be terminated.
Right. I’m not sure at any point in this conversation I gave off the impression I was anything but anti-abortion, but as is often my experience with GMP threads the conversation goes off the rails right about now. So, I’m getting off at this stop. My final point on this aspect of the thread is to return to the core of my original comment – the Catholic Church’s relationship with and treatment of women sucks. It has sucked for centuries. It sucks on nearly every level from the mundane, intimate, daily issues women face to the highest, sacred, most divine… Read more »
“And perhaps the failure rate of condoms is precisely why having access to other forms of contraception is important.”
This is where I got the notion that you considered abortion as another form of contraception, because after all if the condom fails and you get pregnant then what are you left with in the way of “contraception”, although by definition abortion is not contra ception. Contraception is supposed to prevent conception. Because the Catholic Church believes in alternative roles for women within the Church that means they treat women poorly? You really believe that?
Not much here: If the republicans become dems, the dems might lose some elections to the dem-lite. Sure you want to go there? Embryonic stem cell research is, as a commenter on another blog noted, a way to desensitize the population to abortion. (We’re already doing it in the lab, so what’s the problem?). There are no results from it that have helped anybody compared to other kinds of stem cell research. Part of the problem is the institutional media deciding what we get to know and what not. Ex. Jody Arias’ trial is on all over the place. Kermit… Read more »
Warren – I had the same thoughts as I listened to news reports about the RNC meeting this week… tone can’t offset content; form over substance is not an effective way to build relationships. As for Catholicism, I was raised as a social-justice Catholic and it seems to me the only Church leaders that are still consistently preaching the “love one another” message are the nuns. (Sister Simone Cambell at http://www.networklobby.org/ and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious https://lcwr.org/ are both inspiring.) Pope Francis is a glimmer of hope, as are the surveys that show *most* US Catholics are tolerant,… Read more »
Kari — I found the following story to be pretty revealing and to provide more than a glimmer of hope. Unusual to have a reporter go to such lengths to get a story. Certainly these details have not been widely reported.
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/francis-gets-his-oxygen-slums
Recommended reading: The New Anti-Catholicism — The Last Acceptable Prejudice.
http://www.amazon.com/New-Anti-Catholicism-Last-Acceptable-Prejudice/dp/0195176049
I was mistaken …. I thought these surveys were done representing how Catholics felt … without looking at each and every one of them, it appears they are surveys are from the general public.
I just watched Dolans interview and was happy to see that he appears not to be interested in re-branding the Catholic Church. Like I said, it is what it is. Personally I struggle with cafeteria Catholics and would much rather see the church be filled with true Catholics then a massive number who simply call themselves Catholic.
Tom Brechlin wrote: “…my spiritual adviser who has since passed away, once said (paraphrase) If the Catholic church dwindles to a couple thousand that are devoted in their faith and practice their faith, then the church would be better off. I agree with him.”
Tom, it seems that the way the Church is going, it will, indeed, “dwindle to a couple thousand,” and you and “the church would be better off.” You and your spiritual adviser might be sages.
Given that 23% of Americans or approximately 60 million Americans call themselves Roman Catholic I kind of doubt they will be dwindled down to a few thousand. Here’s the bottom line, while many, but not most, American Catholics don’t strictly adhere to the teachings of the Roman Catholic church as it is articulated in Rome, most of them who don’t still continue to attend church most Sundays out of the year, they continue to financially support the Church and most like their local pastor. The teachings of the Church are not likely to change radically in the near future. Those… Read more »
faith that was gotten by war tactics literally the tactic used by kings in order to convert the masses to a religion that prides itself on not committing murder was convert or die. It was done to African, Asian, and all Native cultures. Also the countries listed by Tom are some of the worst countries in the world riddled with sexism, murder, domestic abuse, rape, racism and all other forms of extreme evil. If so many people are Christians and the world is soooo horrible then one might say that the evidence is quite clear. All patriarchal religions that hate… Read more »
According to the BBC …. I should note that the growth areas are areas who have not given into secularism. Again, It’s not the peoples church … It’s Gods church that we are to build. How many Roman Catholics are there in the world? There are an estimated 1.2 billion Roman Catholics in the world, according to Vatican figures. More than 40% of the world’s Catholics live in Latin America – but Africa has seen the biggest growth in Catholic congregations in recent years. Latin America accounts for 483 million Catholics, or 41.3% of the total Catholic population. Of the… Read more »
And another thing … “Regarding the Catholic Church, poll after poll has found that the papacy is out of step with its increasingly shrinking U.S. flock. On the topic of abortion, 55 percent of U.S. Catholics do not want the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade decision overturned; 67 percent support pre-marital sex between a man and a woman; 71 percent approve of divorce; and 61 percent believe that homosexuality should be approved by society, while 52 percent support marriage equality for same-sex couples; 82 percent approve of birth control; 63 percent sanction medical research using stem cells obtained from human… Read more »
Here are the research studies: During the 2012 presidential campaign alone, the Republicans lost seats in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, with the overall national Electoral College vote going to Mr. Obama over Mr. Romney by a margin of 332 to 206. The Democrats garnered nearly 5 million more votes than the Republicans. (http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php) Except for older white men and people whose incomes topped $50,000 annually, the Republicans lost most other demographic groups. For example, Democrats won women voters by 55% to the Republicans 44%, (http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/08/politics/women-election) voters ages 18-29 60%, 30-44 52%, (http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/results/main), urban voters 62%, (http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/results/main)… Read more »
For starters, what Catholic Bishops do in the US is one thing but the Catholic faith overall is something all together different. You’re obvious not Catholic or you would know what’s happening. In the US, there is an effort to “attract” people to the faith. Here is the long and short of it …. If you’re not interested in Catholicism, then don’t change. As a non-practicing Catholic, you don’t know anything other then what main stream media puts out there and that’s fine. As a practicing Catholic, I’m not interested in re-branding the faith. It is what it is and… Read more »
Thank you. I too have been a Catholic all my life and I would be greatly disappointed if there was a “rebranding” of Catholicism as though it was simply a popularity contest.
Catholicism is a world wide faith and if the flock in the US is dwindling due to a desire for more change that is a shame, but there it is. Many catholics in the rest of the world desire no change at all. it is bigger than the US.
Catholicism in Mexico for example has resulted in an extreme patriarchy where women are murdered and raped at alarming rates and also denied birth control or abortions therefore relying on back alley abortions even in cases of rape/incest.
Well said my friend. I would prefer a smaller, more dedicated and loyal congregation than one that wins popularity contests. A faith requires some level of commitment to ideals that aren’t always that easy to follow. If that is not “popular”, well, so be it. As the song goes “They will know we are Christians by out love.”