I don’t suppose I should have been surprised by how almost comically hyperbolic the survey questions were. After all, the outside envelope of the survey mailing proclaimed that “there is a war on Catholics and Faith in God.” CatholicVote boasts of its “Battle Plan” to win this war. Part of that plan is to share the survey’s results first with President Trump and his top advisers, and then with lawmakers, journalists, “[r]adio talk show hosts,” and “bloggers.” I have a feeling that Trump and his acolytes will not be disappointed by the survey’s results. But I do confess to being stunned by the advice given to survey respondents by Brian Burch, the president of CatholicVote. In a postscript at the end of his four-page letter detailing how his organization will be “Mobilizing Catholics to Defend Faith and Family in 2020,” Burch explains the secret to the survey’s exactitude and effectiveness. “Please,” he writes, “don’t spend more than a few minutes on your survey. Your first instinctive response to each question will be more accurate and helpful to us as we carry out this November 3rd Project to STOP the radical Anti-Catholic Left from winning control of our government in 2020.”
In this age of the Twitter presidency and the swamp of disinformation on social media, this faith-based organization thinks we need less deliberation and more impulsiveness. No weighing of competing goods, just the pursuit of a winner-take-all politics. Don’t question your instincts, don’t extend the benefit of the doubt to your political opponents, just vote your grievances. Why? Because “the Radical Left Seeks to Ride the Pandemic, Riots and Social Unrest to Win Power on November 3rd,” Burch insists. They “are openly rooting for terrible things to happen to America.” How does Burch know this? He heard “foul-mouthed” comedian Bill Maher say it on TV.
CatholicVote claims it is “primarily focused on educating, registering, and mobilizing millions of pro-life, pro-family conservative Catholics to vote.” Registering and mobilizing conservative churchgoers? Certainly. Educating them? Only if you think a Trump rally is educational.
In the material accompanying the survey, White House Chief of Staff and Tea Party stalwart Mark Meadows makes a cameo appearance, as does Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence. Burch writes of meeting Pence at the National Day of Prayer and assuring him that millions of Catholics “support the Trump administration and are praying for him.” Piety directed toward a politician is always dangerous, but Trump’s apotheosis as a champion of “Christian moral teaching” gives new meaning to the term “blind faith.”
Politics, as the saying goes, ain’t beanbag. Appealing to voters based on religious identity or values has a long and often inspiring history. What is disturbing about CatholicVote is its apparent cynicism about the intelligence and faith of its prospective audience. The organization seems to think that if every issue is presented as black or white, the pro-life, pro-family Catholic voter will line up obediently at the polls. When it comes to this sort of political zealotry, nothing is sacred. CatholicVote uses cellphone location data to track church attendance and then recruit frequent Catholic churchgoers. That intrusive politicking in church crossed a line for a conservative Catholic like Richard Garnett, director of the program on church, state and society at the University of Notre Dame and a Commonweal contributor. “I don’t want any organization to know where I spend time with friends or where I go,” he told Crux. “It’s almost like they’re getting in the car with me and following me around.”
It is sadly true that in our polarized and increasingly secular culture, politics is now likely to determine even one’s religious allegiance. If more proof of that fact is needed, CatholicVote’s efforts provide it. CatholicVote claims it seeks “to renew our country and our culture, in full communion with, and 100 percent faithful to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.”
That “profession,” to borrow Henry Adams’s terminology, is what Donald Trump might call smart “branding.” In another age it was called blasphemy.