Why do some Catholics lean politically conservative?

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I can’t answer for all conservative-leaning Catholics, but I will tell you why this Catholic leans conservative.
  1. I am a firm believer in the 1st and 2nd ammendment. As a member of the physically weaker sex, I need access to be able to reliably defend myself. Also, as they say, when seconds count, the police are only minutes away. As for the 1st ammendment, the Left is the side of censorship. As someone who has a lot of politically incorrect beliefs and is part of a politically incorrect Church, I worry a lot about first ammendment issues.
  2. I am against identity poltics which the Left has fully embraced. For me, in is not about what you are, but who you are. I believe in individual justice, not group justice.
  3. I don’t know anybody who can remember a time when cities like my native Chicago were not run by Democrats. If their policies worked, they should be heaven on earth. Instead, they resemble war zones.
  4. I’d rather give my own time and treasure to the needy as I see fit, instead trust some faceless bureaucrat would know how to spend my own money better than I do. In general, the older I get, I find that more often, if I want something done right, I have to do it myself.
  5. I have a general dislike of bureaucrats.
  6. I believe in border enforcement and law and order in general.
  7. And the usual social issues that make Catholics lean conservative.
 
Maximilian75 said:
subsidiarity, in a word
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I think this is the basic answer to the OP’s initial question.

All Catholics (at least in theory) agree with the principle that we must care for the poor. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t differences of opinion with regards to what policies will best achieve that end.

For those who lean conservative, it is often a preference to handle things on a local level rather than give more money to the federal government to try to solve it with a one-size-fits-all national approach.
 
I feel that the charity and civility level is going to spiral, I want to issue an reminder that I want the discussion to be civil and calm. I know this is politics but I wish not to cause harm (heated but polite and civil discussion please).
 
I try to be a Catholic who is neither liberal nor conservative, right nor left. I try to look at every issue from a Gospel social justice perspective.
 
blackforest said:
The Republicans are doing very, very little to stop abortion. Just saying.
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President Trump has taken a lot of action to defund Planned Parenthood, abortion abroad, restrictions on the practice, appointing pro-life justices, even being the first sitting president to address the March for Life.

Maybe the party as a whole hasn’t done everything they can, but the current leadership isn’t running on the old playbook.
 
I agree the republicans have failed in many ways in stopping abortion but they do not promote it.

Democrats push for abortion under the disguise of calling it “women’s healthcare”.

I also find offensive the crude way democrats speak of the human life in the mother’s womb.
 
I meant traditionally as in throughout most of Church history. Saints and popes promoted the “divine rights of kings” to use the old expression. The American constitution was a radically progressive / liberal document in its day.
This goes back to my earlier point that terms such as “conservative”, “progressive”, “traditional”, “liberal” are moving targets.
 
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Pro-life.

It’s the #1 issue that matters. If people aren’t even alive, how can we fight for social justice for them?

I think that’s why you won’t find them on the Liberal side. If the LIberals in the US are like the ones in Canada they’re staunchly pro-death.
 
You seem to think there’s something anomalous or hard to explain about being Catholic and voting Republican. What makes you think that?

In postwar Germany and Italy, the Catholic Church was strongly supportive of the Christian Democrat parties in both countries, Democrazia Cristiana in Italy and the CDU/CSU in Germany. In both cases they were the conservative parties, competing for votes against the Social Democrats in Germany and, in Italy, mainly against the Communist Party, which at that time was the largest and most successful party on the Left.
 
redbetta said:
As for the 1st ammendment, the Left is the side of censorship. As someone who has a lot of politically incorrect beliefs and is part of a politically incorrect Church, I worry a lot about first ammendment issues.
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I’ll begin first by staying that Donald Trump is an opportunist, not a conservative. He is whatever it takes to be and stay in power.

Second, he has pushed for censorship of everyone from climate scientists to media outlets to critics of police brutality. It’s traditionally been a position of the nationalistic Right that no one should be allowed to express free speech by sitting during the Pledge of Allegiance or refusing to sing the national anthem. And they’ve actively banned student protests.

I cherish the First Amendment. But the Right doesn’t have the moral high ground in defending it.
 
twf said:
I meant traditionally as in throughout most of Church history. Saints and popes promoted the “divine rights of kings” to use the old expression.
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Until the US Constitution was passed, there weren’t many other republics out there. Monarchy was the status quo virtually everywhere, in both Catholic and non-Catholic countries and still is in plenty of countries mostly non-catholic like Jordan and Saudi Arabia and Thailand.

I don’t think that monarchy is particularly associated with the Catholic Church at all.
 
blackforest said:
It actually baffles me that such a no-brainer, human rights issue like abortion has become a matter of partisan politics.

Pro-life is actually a really Left-leaning position, when you think about it - i.e. defending an extremely vulnerable sub-group, not to mention all of the structural/societal sexism leading women to abortion, (e.g. can’t have a baby and finish school, partner threatening to leave her, etc.)
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I can’t agree more with this! I believe part of the reason the left has so firmly hitched itself to the pro-choice movement is identity politics (which is nearly a universally leftist phenomenon). They’ve pretty successfully couched all of their arguments in terms of female bodily autonomy without any concern whatsoever for universal moral principles of individuals’ rights. When fetuses learn how to protest and voice their aggrieved minority status then pro-choicers on the left will be left with the same kind of cognitive dissonance they have when trying to simultaneously support the values of two aggrieved minorities that are mutually exclusive (e.g. between the religious liberty of Muslims and the marriage equality of gays, or trans-activists vs. traditional feminists, etc.).
 
The origins of the “pro-choice” movement are largely steeped in the whole eugenics/population control crap. Bernard Nathanson, one of NARAL’s founders, said that he and his colleagues just decided to promote it with a feminist framing. But the ideals behind it were anything BUT progressive.
 
God forgive me for the Schadenfreude, but I giggled audibly when I learned that Planned Parenthood has been engaging in union busting. My guess is that when the two issues butt heads, the liberal elite will side with Big Abortion over laborer rights.

I self-identify as a pro-life, Left-leaning populist and do NOT consider myself a Democrat. So you can imagine me trying to take this latest development in stride . . .
 
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For me, the abortion issue is the first reason I lean conservative. While not all Republicans are pro-life, nearly all Democrats who run for office are pro-abortion. With more than 1 million abortions annually in the United States, there really is no bigger issue. Support for traditional marriage, opposition to legalized suicide, and (generally) opposition to embryonic stem-cell research are other positions one seems to find only on one side of the aisle. Granted, conservative Catholics who support capital punishment are in conflict with the moral and/or prudential judgment of the Holy Father, and I do believe we can function without capital punishment, but there were only 23 executions in the United States in 2017, so the actual execution of criminals in the United States has already become extremely rare.

But then I also believe that the conservative approach to government is generally better for society. Conservatives tend to support the principle of subsidiarity, where matters are handled at the most local levels possible based on the particular issue. For example, decisions that can be made within the family should usually be made there. Decisions that can be handled by local government probably should be, unless there is an overwhelming reason to push it to the state or federal level. This approach offers individuals the greatest control over their own destinies and the greatest opportunity to effect change within their community, as it is much easier to influence local policy than state or federal. Plus, if one finds a local policy intolerable and cannot change it, one may at least have the option of moving to another community that has a different policy.

Liberals tend to favor a more top-down approach, pushing policies to the federal level whenever possible out of fear that individuals or communities won’t make the right decisions. (This is also why liberals tend to want global bodies such as the U.N. to have even more influence.) This means that if the government gets it wrong, there is almost nothing you as an individual can do about it, short of leaving the country or the planet. The only time I hear liberals mention state sovereignty is when conservatives have majority control of Congress and the White House.

Then there are questions of economics. Yes, as Catholics we believe in being charitable. But being charitable doesn’t mean advocating bad policies that are intended to do good but in fact do more damage. I believe that most of the time, the free market ends up serving the needs of everyone better than highly socialized and micromanaged markets. There are a few ways government might be able to help the poor move ahead, and I support doing so when possible, but the intention of helping the poor is not enough if a policy does more harm than good. (Thomas Sowell’s “Basic Economics” is a great summary of how government intervention in the marketplace can go wrong.) So on that front as well, I consider conservatism to be very much in line with my faith.
 
I don’t think the origins of any of these political movements matter much, at least not to those who find themselves in those groups today since historical continuity isn’t valued much in politics. It’s like using the Jim Crow era Dixiecrats as evidence that the Democratic Party of the 21st century is systematically racist, or, conversely, that Abraham Lincoln’s position on African-American repatriation to Africa and the subsequent American Colonization Society’s creation of the nation of Liberia on the West African coast for such an endeavor somehow means that 21st century Republicans want all Blacks to “go back to Africa”.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
strongly doubt that even Jesus’ original Twelve all had the same political views. Matthew was a tax collector; he lived off the oppressive system in place. Nowadays Matthew would probably be a well-paid government bureaucrat. By contrast, Simon the Zealot was a revolutionary activist. He wanted to smash the Roman oppression and would have been one of the antifa running around in the street throwing bricks. They both were able to become brothers in Christ though they probably wouldn’t have had a civil word to say to each other on the street.
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strongly doubt that even Jesus’ original Twelve all had the same political views. Matthew was a tax collector; he lived off the oppressive system in place. Nowadays Matthew would probably be a well-paid government bureaucrat. By contrast, Simon the Zealot was a revolutionary activist. He wanted to smash the Roman oppression and would have been one of the antifa running around in the street throwing bricks. They both were able to become brothers in Christ though they probably wouldn’t have had a civil word to say to each other on the street.

Not very much is known about Simon the Zealot but that he was passionate in following Jesus and may have been armed with a sword - St. Peter drew his sword in the Garden, but Simon kept his concealed. It isn’t very “nice” to suggest Antifa would describe his actions, nor that he and St. Peter would not have greeted each other on the street. Can’t imagine why your post would be so anti Simon the Zealot - he was a chosen apostle and was in attendance with the others. On behalf of Simon - we thank you for your service!
 
Did I say anything about Donald Trump? I don’t believe he is a conservative either.
 
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