Left at the Altar: How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics Can Save the Democrats
In 1960, Democrats and Catholics united to elect John F. Kennedy, America’s first Catholic president. As we approach the 2008 presidential election, the Democratic party is struggling to secure Catholic votes. For most of the twentieth-century, however, the Catholic vote was solidly Democratic. In Left at the Altar, Michael Sean Winters chronicles the rise and fall of this vital alliance, and offers compelling arguments for its revival. For the Democrats, the stakes could not be higher: The...
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A dynamic young scholar and journalist explains how the Democrats lost the Catholic vote, and how they must win it back in order to survive in the twenty-first century. C. Robert Nixon - Library Journal In the days of the New Deal, Catholics supported the Democratic Party, sharing its concern for laborers and its language of moral responsibility for the poor and suffering. In the days of civil rights protests and the Vietnam War, Catholics were prominent, and Democrats spoke the language of social responsibility and a higher morality. Recently, however, the Democrats have championed the assertion of absolute personal autonomy and individual rights on moral issues. Their rhetoric projects an elitist bias against religion and traditional values, replacing Franklin D. Roosevelt's pragmatic liberalism and its moral underpinnings with radical moral individualism. This shift has driven a wedge between the Democratic Party and the Catholic Church and made the GOP the "God Party." Here, Winters (doctoral student, Catholic Univ. of America), a Catholic writer, recommends a return to the kind of moral and religious language once invoked by Martin Luther King Jr. and Msgr. Gerald J. Ryan, especially in defining human dignity, the common good, and just war. He believes that winning back the Catholic vote could be decisive in future elections. A well-written and thoroughly researched look at Catholicism and politics in our era with a thought-provoking thesis; recommended for academic and public libraries.
1 The Priest and the President Create the New Deal 72 The Uneven Assimilation of American Catholics 373 Kennedy's "Private" Faith 694 The 1960s: Race, Vietnam, and Vatican II 895 Abortion and the Collapse of the New Deal Coalition 1136 From Roe to Reagan 1357 From Cuomo to Kerry 1578 Human Dignity, the Common Good, and Just War 1839 Latinos and the Rebirth of the Catholic-Democratic Alliance 211Acknowledgments 223Notes 227Index 237
\ Library JournalIn the days of the New Deal, Catholics supported the Democratic Party, sharing its concern for laborers and its language of moral responsibility for the poor and suffering. In the days of civil rights protests and the Vietnam War, Catholics were prominent, and Democrats spoke the language of social responsibility and a higher morality. Recently, however, the Democrats have championed the assertion of absolute personal autonomy and individual rights on moral issues. Their rhetoric projects an elitist bias against religion and traditional values, replacing Franklin D. Roosevelt's pragmatic liberalism and its moral underpinnings with radical moral individualism. This shift has driven a wedge between the Democratic Party and the Catholic Church and made the GOP the "God Party." Here, Winters (doctoral student, Catholic Univ. of America), a Catholic writer, recommends a return to the kind of moral and religious language once invoked by Martin Luther King Jr. and Msgr. Gerald J. Ryan, especially in defining human dignity, the common good, and just war. He believes that winning back the Catholic vote could be decisive in future elections. A well-written and thoroughly researched look at Catholicism and politics in our era with a thought-provoking thesis; recommended for academic and public libraries.\ —C. Robert Nixon\ \ \
