Quote of the Day

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On the . . . issue of same-sex marriage, Catholic opinion [in the U.S.] has tended to be slightly more favorable than the population as a whole and way more favorable than Evangelical opinion. The 2007 Pew Poll found that 42% of Catholics expressed support for same-sex marriage versus 36% of the population as a whole. In terms of trends, 40% of Catholics supported same-sex marriage in 2001 with that number increasing to nearly 60% by 2014. By contrast, only 13% of Evangelicals favored same-sex marriage in 2001 and just 23% approve of it today.

. . . The real Catholic-Evangelical convergence is between the Republican leadership, the Catholic bishops, right-wing Catholics, and rank-and-file Evangelicals, a coalition that was cemented by Karl Rove with his aggressive outreach to 'conservative' Catholics during the Bush administration. But the fact that a big chunk of moderate and progressive Catholics are missing from this coalition continues to be lost on many in the media. It’s as if as long as the bishops are vocal in their objections to progressive polices and someone in the public is making noise, there’s a tendency to attribute it to “Catholics.” How else to explain the PPRI number that only 37% of Catholics oppose the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act, when the widespread perception that Catholics were broadly disapproving of it helped gin up early and critical opposition?

– Patricia Miller
"The Catholic-Evangelical (Non-)Coalition"
Religion Dispatches
April 30, 2014

Related Off-site Link:
Catholic Bishops and U.S. Evangelicals Make Strange Bedfellows – Francis DeBernardo (Bondings 2.0, May 25, 2014).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Catholic Attitudes on Gay and Lesbian Issues: An Overview
A Hopeful Trend
Jonathan Capehart: "Catholics Lead the Way on Same-Sex Marriage"
Patrick Hornbeck on Why Good Catholics Are Challenging Church Line on Homosexuality
Media Matters
First They Take Manhattan
Naming and Confronting Bigotry
American Catholics and Obama
On the First Anniversary of Marriage Equality in Minnesota, a Celebratory Look Back at the Important Role Played by Catholics