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Catholic doctrine has always rejected abortion: But what about Catholics in pews today?

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Catholic doctrine has always rejected abortion: But what about Catholics in pews today?

It may be the most important U.S. Supreme Court decision of the last fifty years.

A leaked draft of a majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, would effectively dismantle the legal framework around abortion that was established in the 1973 decision Roe v. Wade. In its wake, states would have almost complete freedom to regulate abortion however they saw fit, including enacting a total prohibition.

Among those who study American religion and politics, it’s long been established that the earliest political voices seeking to restrict access to an abortion were members of the Catholic Church. For centuries, the catechism has taught that life should be protected at all stages — from conception to natural death. Thus, the tens of millions of American Catholics should be the standard bearers for the pro-life movement in the United States.

But here is an important question for journalists: Will most Catholics applaud the end of Roe? The data tells a nuanced story about how the average Catholic thinks about the issue of abortion access. As always, it’s important to note if polls pay any attention to how often Catholics attend Mass.

Looking back to the time period immediately after the Roe v Wade decision in 1973, it’s clear that the vast majority of Catholics were not comfortable with the concept of a woman obtaining an abortion for any reason, which not was out of step with how the average American felt.

For instance, in 1985 about 35% of Catholics were in favor of abortion demand. It was 39% of the general public. In the 1990s and 2000s, abortion opinion was relatively stable, but then things began to shift in 2010. From that point forward, the share of Catholics who supported abortion began to rise, which paralleled a shift in the overall opinion of the American public.

By 2021, fifty-three percent of Americans supported abortion on demand along with forty-five percent of Catholics. But, it’s worth noting that the contours of the two lines run in almost perfect unison. As the country moved left on abortion, so did the average Catholic.


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Podcast: A growing post-Roe divide between 'Jesusland' and the 'United States of Canada'?

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Podcast: A growing post-Roe divide between 'Jesusland' and the 'United States of Canada'?

Over the past week or so, I have received several emails — while noticing similar messages on Twitter — from people asking: “Why is The Atlantic publishing the same story over and over?” Some people ask the same question about The New York Times.

It’s not the same SPECIFIC story over and over, of course. But we are talking about stories with the same basic Big Idea, usually framed in the same way. In other words, it’s kind of a cookie-cutter approach.

The key word is “division,” as in America is getting more and more divided or American evangelicalism is getting more and more divided. A new Ronald Brownstein essay of this kind at The Atlantic — “America’s Blue-Red Divide Is About to Get Starker” — provided the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

The villains in these dramas are, of course, White evangelicals or, in more nuanced reporting, a radical wing of the White evangelicals. Just this week, I praised the New York Times for running a feature that offered a variation on one of these templates: “Bravo! The New York Times reports that evangelicals are divided, not united on politics.” That piece showed progress, in part, because it undercut the myth of the evangelical political monolith on issues such as Donald Trump, COVID vaccines, QAnon, etc.

Let me make this personal. There is a reason that all of these stories written by journalists and blue-checkmark Twitter stars sound a big familiar to me. You see, people who have been paying attention know that the great “Jesusland” v. the “United States of Canada” divide is actually at least three decades old. It’s getting more obvious, methinks, because of the flamethrower social-media culture that shapes everything,

So let’s take a journey and connect a few themes in this drama, including summary statements by some important scribes. The goal is to collect the dots and the, at the end, we’ll look at how some of these ideas show up in that new leaning-left analysis at The Atlantic.

First, there is the column I wrote in 1998, when marking the 10th anniversary of “On Religion” being syndicated (as opposed to the 33rd anniversary the other day). Here’s the key chunk of that:

… In 1986, a sociologist of religion had an epiphany while serving as a witness in a church-state case in Mobile, Ala.


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While polls show ambivalence, SCOTUS striking down Roe would let each state decide

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While polls show ambivalence, SCOTUS striking down Roe would let each state decide

According to the Gallup Poll, 49% of American adults called themselves "pro-choice" last year versus 47% "pro-life," with the second designation chosen by 73% of those who attend worship weekly and 74% of Republicans.

The over-all population posted the same virtual tie in each of the prior three years. Journalists, by the way, should note that Gallup's question defied the widely-followed Associated Press Stylebook, which despite some criticism rejects both of those familiar labels in favor of "abortion-rights" versus "anti-abortion" while disallowing "pro-abortion."

After last week's leak to Politico of a Supreme Court draft opinion that would return abortion policy-making to each state, the Pew Research Center (media contact 202-419-4372) released poll results that are vitally important for media analysis.

Here’s where the stories will be found: The Pew team warns against Gallup's two-sided breakdown above, since "relatively few" Americans "take an absolutist view" for or against legality in all circumstances.

Much ambivalence is evident. Fully 33% of Pew respondents believed that whether to abort should "belong solely to the pregnant woman" (and 72% among Americans over-all) AND at the same time believed that "human life begins at conception so a fetus is a person with rights" (held by a 56% majority of Americans).

The Pew data fill a 78-page report, titled "America's Abortion Quandary." As typical with Pew, the new survey stands out for the precision and variety of questions, special skill in defining religious sectors (though this project does not distinguish between Hispanic and non-Hispanic Catholics), the huge sample of 10,441 (compared with 1,016 for that Gallup poll) and consequently a remarkably high response rate of 89% among members of Pew's ongoing American Trends Panel.

Another technical note on polls. Regarding political races they are often more accurate on the national level than with state races. And the Supreme Court draft indicates abortion policy will be returned to each individual state — so that's where legal and political fireworks will occur unless efforts in Congress succeed.


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Bravo! The New York Times reports that evangelicals are divided, not united on politics

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Bravo! The New York Times reports that evangelicals are divided, not united on politics

If you stop and think about it, the latest New York Times feature about those dreaded White evangelicals includes a few signs of progress.

The good news is that the story focuses on the many ways White American evangelicals are divided, these days. That’s progress, since it undercuts the dominant news narrative of the years since 2016. You know the one: That White evangelicals from sea to shining sea just love Donald Trump and that’s that.

The truth was always more complex than that, but many blue-checkmark experts on Twitter really needed someone to blame for Trump. White evangelicals were the answer, of course, since it would have required a great deal of introspection to blame the Democratic Party for nominating Hillary Clinton — perhaps the only opponent that scared millions of depressed Americans more than Trump.

But back to the key truth in this Times report — which is that White evangelicals are divided, which is true, and that is certainly not the same thing as the myth of monolithic unity. For background, see this 2018 post: “Complex realities hidden in '81 percent of evangelicals' love Trump myth.”

At the heart of this story is a character that will be familiar to some news consumers — a conservative religious leader whose beliefs would normally cause heart attacks in blue-zip-code newsrooms, but this leader is shown to deserve sympathy because believers who are much worse are attacking him/her. (The irony in this case is that this particular pastor seems very familiar to me since he appears to represent the evangelicalism in which I was raised and that I greatly respect.)

The headline: “As a ‘Seismic Shift’ Fractures Evangelicals, an Arkansas Pastor Leaves Home.” Here’s the overture:

FORT SMITH, Ark. — In the fall of 2020, Kevin Thompson delivered a sermon about the gentleness of God. At one point, he drew a quick contrast between a loving, accessible God and remote, inaccessible celebrities. Speaking without notes, his Bible in his hand, he reached for a few easy examples: Oprah, Jay-Z, Tom Hanks.

Mr. Thompson could not tell how his sermon was received. The church he led had only recently returned to meeting in person. Attendance was sparse, and it was hard to appreciate if his jokes were landing, or if his congregation — with family groups spaced three seats apart, and others watching online — remained engaged.

So he was caught off guard when two church members expressed alarm about the passing reference to Mr. Hanks.


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Dramatic story of Kyrgyz Christian swept up in China's Uyghur repression gets very little ink

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Dramatic story of Kyrgyz Christian swept up in China's Uyghur repression gets very little ink

In all the stories about Ukraine and the genocide/war happening there, it’s easy to forget the other genocide going on in western China.

A number of weeks ago, Axios.com published a short about China’s “crime’s about humanity” there, particularly against the more than 1 million Muslims who are imprisoned in this 21st century gulag.

Lost in the details of this story is a second angle that would be of great interest to lots of readers in the United States and elsewhere — that Christians too have been caught up in the dragnet.

A Christian Chinese national who spent 10 months in a Xinjiang detention camp has arrived in the United States after months of behind-the-scenes lobbying by U.S. lawmakers, human rights activists and international lawyers.

Why it matters: The man, Ovalbek Turdakun, will provide evidence that international human rights lawyers say is vital to the case they have submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor arguing that China has committed crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.

Here are several crucial details in this overlooked story:

* Ovalbek and his wife and child were authorized to enter the U.S. on significant public benefit parole, which permits entry for special purposes such as testifying in a proceeding, but does not grant immigration status, because of the value of the testimony they are expected to give. Ovalbek crossed the borders of several Asian countries to get out, finally landing at Dulles Inernational Airport on April 8. Thus:

The big picture: Ovalbek Turdakun is a unique witness to Chinese government repression in Xinjiang, according to international lawyers, U.S. officials and others with knowledge of the case.


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Ordinary protests at doxxed SCOTUS homes, Masses and a generic firebomb, as well

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Ordinary protests at doxxed SCOTUS homes, Masses and a generic firebomb, as well

The Roe v. Wade related events of the past three or four days have created a very obvious case study that can be stashed into that ongoing “mirror image” case file here at GetReligion.

Start here. Let’s say that, during the days of the Donald Trump White House, something important happened related to LGBTQ rights — something like a U.S. Supreme Court decision that delivered a major victory to the trans community. At that point, some wild people on the far cultural right published the home addresses of the justices that backed the decision and, maybe, even any hospital that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg might be visiting for cancer treatments.

Another group, let’s call it “Bork Sent Us,” announces plans for protests at Episcopal Church parishes because of that denomination’s outspoken support for LGBTQ causes. Some protestors promise to invade sanctuaries and violate the bread and wine used in the Holy Eucharist. Along the way, what if someone firebombed a Planned Parenthood facility?

Obviously, Trump’s press secretary would be asked to condemn this madness, including violations of a federal law against intimidating protests at the homes of judges.

Let’s set that aside for a moment. I want to ask a “mirror image” journalism question: Would this be treated as a major news story in elite media on both sides of our divided nation and, thus, divided media? Would this, at the very least, deserve a story or two that made it into the basic Associated Press summary of the major news stories of the weekend?

Let me say that these events would have deserved waves of digital ink, with good cause.

This brings us, of course, to the leaked copy of a draft of a majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito that points to a potential 5-3-1 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Twitter users may know many of the details of the anger this has unleashed in mass media and among Sexual Revolution clergy, both secular and sacred. There has been some coverage, including (#DUH) at Fox News. A sample on the church angle:

The White House on Sunday defended people's "fundamental right to protest" but warned against efforts to "intimidate" others during pro-abortion protests planned at Catholic churches across the country.

Multiple activist groups are planning protests defending abortion rights outside Catholic churches on Mother's Day and the following Sunday after a draft opinion from the Supreme Court threatened to overturn Roe v. Wade.


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No way around it: Bombshell Roe v. Wade leak was the religion story of the week

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No way around it: Bombshell Roe v. Wade leak was the religion story of the week

News that the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority might overturn Roe v. Wade is not overly shocking. We’ve known that for months.

But the timing — and manner — of this week’s leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion that would strike down the landmark 1973 decision, which legalized abortion nationwide? That counts as a bombshell.

To discuss the big scoop by Politico’s Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward, ReligionUnplugged.com convened a panel of top religion journalists who have written extensively about the abortion debate. Click here to watch the discussion.

Clemente Lisi and I moderated the panel. Lisi, who teaches journalism at The King’s College in New York, is a ReligionUnplugged.com senior editor and a veteran GetReligion writer who focuses on Catholic news for both websites. The panelists were:

• Adelle Banks, Religion News Service production editor and national reporter (see “If Roe goes, Black church leaders expect renewed energy for elections”).

• Kelsey Dallas, Deseret News religion reporter and associate national editor (see “As some rallied over Roe v. Wade, these Christians prayed”).

• BeLynn Hollers, Dallas Morning News reporter who covers women’s health, politics and religion (see her coverage of Texas’ restrictive abortion law).

• And Kate Shellnutt, Christianity Today senior news editor (see “This is and isn’t the moment pro-life evangelicals have waited for”).

Among the tantalizing questions the panel explored: Is the abortion debate a religion story?

Yes and no, Hollers said.

Yes, Dallas said. “But maybe not for the reasons people might assume,” she quickly added.


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Angels and demons: Orthodox pain woven into this year's Pascha epistles in Ukraine

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Angels and demons: Orthodox pain woven into this year's Pascha epistles in Ukraine

With the barrage of horrors from Ukraine, it wasn't hard to distinguish between the messages released by the Eastern Orthodox leaders of Russia and Ukraine to mark Holy Pascha, the feast known as Easter in the West.

The epistle from Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill offered hope for this life and the next. But his text contained only one possible reference to the fighting in Ukraine, which the United Nations says has claimed the lives of 3,000 civilians, at the very least.

"In the light of Pascha everything is different," wrote the patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. "We are not afraid of any mundane sorrows, afflictions and worldly troubles, and even difficult circumstances of these troubled times do not seem so important in the perspective of eternity granted unto us."

But the first lines of the message released by Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine placed this Pascha in a radically different context -- a clash between good and evil, right now. It was released on April 25th, the day after Orthodox Christians celebrated Pascha according to the ancient Julian calendar.

This letter was especially symbolic since Metropolitan Onuphry leads Ukraine's oldest Orthodox body, one with strong ties to the giant Russian Orthodox Church.

"The Lord has visited us with a special trial and sorrow this year. The forces of evil have gathered over us," he wrote. "But we neither murmur nor despair" because Pascha is "a celebration of the triumph of good over evil, truth over falsehood, light over darkness. The Resurrection of Christ is the eternal Pascha, in which Christ our Savior and Lord translated us from death to life, from hell to Paradise."

The contrast between these messages underlined a complex reality in Orthodox life after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a land cruelly oppressed by the Soviet Union, but with strong Russian roots through the "Baptism of Rus" in 988. That was when, following the conversion of Prince Vladimir, there was a mass baptism of the people of Kiev -- celebrated for a millennium as the birth of Slavic Christianity.

Metropolitan Onuphry and other Orthodox hierarchs with historic ties to Moscow have openly opposed the Russian invasion, while trying to avoid attacks on the Russian Orthodox Church. The bottom line: Leaders of ancient Orthodox churches will ultimately, at the global level, need to address these conflicts.


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Was Jesus a socialist? Concerning the 'rich young ruler' and modern economics

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Was Jesus a socialist? Concerning the 'rich young ruler' and modern economics

THE QUESTION:

Was Jesus a Socialist?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Well, no. For one thing, that term, as with rival capitalism, pertains to modern industrialized society.

The 1st Century economy consisted mostly of hand-to-mouth subsistence agriculture, along with fishermen, small-time merchants, individual craftsmen and a tiny class of wealthy overlords. But the question above was posed this month by a Wall Street Journal column, so let’s briefly scan a few aspects of Christianity and economics.

Those familiar with the New Testament will immediately think of the incident between Jesus and the “rich young ruler” recorded in three of the four Gospels (here we’ll follow Luke 18:18-27 in the RSV translation).

The ruler asks Jesus, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus recites several of the Ten Commandments that are to be obeyed. The ruler replies that he has done this since his youth. Jesus then tells him “one thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” The ruler “became sad, for he was very rich.”

Jesus then observes, “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle,” but he concludes, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”

You can have some fun checking out commentaries on this passage online or in your local library. Softening the force of Jesus’ words (a bit too easily?), Bible experts often say this was a unique saying for one individual who was perhaps stingy and had set his heart too much on his wealth while neglecting God’s priority, that He be served through service to his needy people.

Whatever the ruler ended up doing with his wealth, we are familiar with Catholic men’s and women’s orders where those who join take voluntary vows of poverty and keep only minimal personal possessions, and the same in Buddhism.


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