(LifeSiteNews) — The co-founder of the ill-fated Catholics for Harris organization is blaming the vice president’s “aversion to engaging with Catholic voters” as a large reason for why she lost to Donald Trump this month.
In a decently argued Newsweek op-ed titled “Kamala Harris Lost Catholic Voters Because She Didn’t Try To Win Them,” Chris Hale bemoaned the fact that Harris “avoided any sustained outreach to religious communities, including Catholics.”
“Harris’ failure to engage Catholic voters is symptomatic of a broader issue within the Democratic Party: a discomfort with engaging faith communities across the nation,” he wrote.
“Not showing up (at the Al Smith Dinner) felt like a deliberate decision to sidestep an important constituency — a decision that underscored the Democratic Party’s growing ‘God problem.’”
While that’s all well and good analysis, Hale fails to accurately characterize the radical, anti-Catholic nature of Harris’ past behaviors as well as the policies she wanted to put into place had she beaten Trump on November 5.
“Pro-Catholic arguments in favor of Vice President Harris were drowned out by (her not attending the Al Smith Dinner), which fed into the damaging media narrative that Kamala Harris and the Democrats were anti-Catholic,” he wrote.
There was a “perception that (Catholic) voices and values were unwelcome in the Democratic Party,” he added.
This is, as the British say, bullocks.
There is not a “media narrative” at fault here. Nor is there a “perception” that Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party were anti-Catholic. The facts reveal that that is precisely what they are.
Harris and the Democratic Party are anti-Catholic
Just two weeks before the election, Harris was asked point blank by MSNBC reporter Hallie Jackson if she would grant any religious exemptions to her abortion until birth policies, which is as anti-Catholic as you can get.
“I don’t think we should be making concessions when we’re talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body,” she emphatically responded.
This sort of remark confirms that Harris, who kicked out young Catholics at her rally for saying “Christ is King” just days before that interview, is someone who views the concerns of Catholics with disdain. The notion that there is a mistaken “perception” that she does is nonsense.
Moreover, the Democratic Party and its most loyal supporters have not been shy about their hostility toward Catholic teaching for decades. In 2013, former MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry declared that “we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”
Is it not true that LGBT forces in the Democratic Party today are acting upon this mentality and prying child away from their parents so they can indoctrinate them with gender ideology in schools and libraries? Of course, it is.
At the 2012 Democratic National Convention, an Orwellian video proclaimed that “government is the only thing we all belong to.” Delegates at that meeting also booed when references to God were reintroduced to the party’s platform after having been taken out.
But that’s not all. Former Illinois Democratic Congressman Dan Lipinski, a Catholic, was driven out of the office in 2021 because he was against abortion. He was known as being one of the last pro-life Democrats in the House. The simple fact is that the party will not tolerate anyone who wants any sort of limitations when it comes to killing unborn children. Hale is mistaken to think this will change.
Biden-Harris implemented anti-Catholic policies
The policies enacted under Democratic President Joe Biden are also proof positive that it is not just a “perception” issue but that the party itself holds Catholics in contempt.
As pointed out by JD Vance in an op-ed for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published a week before the election, the Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Justice spied on Latin Mass churches and raided the house of pro-life Catholic activist Mark Houck. It also persecuted other pro-lifers and tried to force doctors employed at Catholic hospitals to commit sex-change surgeries for minors.
Kamala Harris’s anti-Catholic record is disgraceful and an insult to millions of Americans.
My op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette⬇️https://t.co/tZR2NJCL22
— JD Vance (@JDVance) October 24, 2024
Vance’s essay also noted that while Harris was attorney general of California, she directed law enforcement to raid the home of David Daleiden, a Catholic pro-life activist who released video showing that Planned Parenthood was selling aborted babies’ body parts. He further recalled that in 2018 she attacked Trump judicial nominee Brian Buescher over his membership in the Knights of Columbus for its support of Church teaching against abortion and homosexual “marriage.”
Hale is right to lament that “over the years, the (Democratic) party has increasingly aligned itself with secular and progressive values, often sidelining religious voices in the process.” He is also correct in saying that the Republican Party “has been more adept at framing its platform in terms of faith and values.”
But my guess is that Democrats won’t learn from their landslide defeat and that they will only continue to double down on anti-Catholic and pro-LGBT legislation while also cannibalizing its more moderate members who speak out on those issues. In order to fix its “God problem,” the Democratic Party must first acknowledge there even is a God.