From: William T Goodall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Interestingly the demographics are quite clear that the USA will become a predominantly Catholic nation within the next twenty years.
Really? I've never heard that before - Is this due to immigration or rapid population growth in certain Catholic communities?
Those same fervent cults that left the Old World because they considered the Pope to be the AntiChrist (or whatever) will remain as the beleaguered old guard in this new version of America.
I think they will be blowing things up and generally doing the whole terrorist thing quite soon. (That was a prediction BTW). If someone wants to explain why that won't happen...
Julia already mentioned a few points, but I will add:
- The political differences between Catholic Church leadership and most Protestant leadership these days are rather small, leaving them mostly on the same side of the political aisle.
- Separation of church and state, and constitutionalized protection of religious
freedom should continue to keep the religious intolerance and persecution
abuses of the past (such as those the Puritans fled from) from being repeated
here.
- I think American Catholics, especially those under 40, tend to be more liberal/
independent of and far less bound by Catholic Church doctrine (ie: on things like divorce,
birth control, homosexuality, and maybe even abortion, etc) than those in some other
nations. For example, I went to a Catholic school, and yet was taught homosexuality
was OK, and birth control was OK. Also, there's Catholic politicians like Ted Kennedy
who is strongly pro-choice, drawing a line between his faith's doctrine and his political
vote.
In other words, I think:
1) Catholic politicians that politically advocate the Church's teachings IMHO don't differ
that much politically from, say, evangelical politicians that advocate their faith's teachings,
(at least compared to what they're opposing) so no blowing things up is necessary.
2) I'm guessing that the trend of American Catholics differing from Church doctrine will
continue to increase, so that Catholic voting trends won't be substantially different than
the US as a whole.
Of course, I don't have any statistics here to back this up, so it's all just my own speculation.
JDG may have (and probably does have) a very different perspective.
-bryon
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