The conservative organization CatholicVote.org, a "lay movement of committed Catholics" headquartered in Carmel, Indiana, is calling Vice President Kamala Harris one of the most anti-Catholic politicians ever.
It has launched a multimillion dollar campaign in heavily Catholic swing states to try to defeat her bid for the White House, Fox News is told.
CatholicVote president Brian Burch, in an interview with Fox News, said, "Kamala Harris represents the most vile anti-Catholic threat of any leading candidate for president in American history. She is a candidate of the hard left. And her record and her words demonstrate a gross anti-Catholic bias and bigotry."
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In comments to Fox News, Harris campaign spokesperson James Singer said on Monday, "Vice President Harris is proud to serve with the second Catholic president ever. Catholic voters are not defined by a single partisan organization, but by their values, communities, faith in each other, and love of our country — and Kamala Harris will fight every day to earn their vote."
Burch first cited Harris' 2018 questioning of then-federal judge nominee Brian Buescher. Harris vilified Buescher's membership in the Knights of Columbus (KOC), the Catholic fraternal organization.
In her written questions to Buescher, then-Sen. Harris, in her preamble, called the KOC "an all-male society comprised primarily of Catholic men, led by Mr. Carl Anderson."
Harris asked Buescher, "Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman's right to choose when you joined the organization? Did you agree with Mr. Carl Anderson that abortion is ‘the killing of the innocent on a massive scale?’ Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed marriage equality when you joined the organization?"
The Knights of Columbus was founded in 1882 by Fr. Michael McGivney to be a "mission of charity," to help widows, orphans and the less fortunate.
Over the years, it expanded its outreach, often getting involved in the political realm.
Through KOC efforts, it helped change the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 to include the words "under God." It raised millions for other charities both faith-based and secular, such as the Special Olympics and Habitat for Humanity, as well as Sisters of Life, March For Life, Persecuted Christians Fund and the Ukraine Solidarity Fund.
Burch wrote in an email blast to potential donors that "Harris shamelessly used Buescher’s membership in the world’s largest charitable organization to suggest that espousing Catholic teachings on abortion and same-sex ‘marriage’ disqualifies an individual from serving in public office."
Burch also pointed to Harris' perfect score with Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the nation. And while she was California's attorney general, she got a law passed requiring pro-life pregnancy centers to "promote abortion."
(It was eventually struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.)
In Congress, Harris introduced the "Do No Harm" act, which would essentially gut the 1983 Religious Freedom Restoration Act. If passed, it would require doctors and other Catholic health professionals to "violate their consciences" and perform abortion and transgender surgeries.
Some scratch their heads on this question, because how could she be anti-Catholic while serving as running mate and vice president under President Joe Biden, only the second Catholic president in American history?
Mathew Schmalz, professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, cast Harris in a much more favorable light.
Schmalz said, "I don't particularly see her as being anti-Catholic. I do see her as articulating a different kind of political vision than, say, conservative Catholics would be comfortable with."
Schmalz said that how Catholics or people of faith characterize Harris and her potential presidency depends on how they feel about policy, particularly on the issue of abortion.
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"Planned Parenthood, and so forth, are absolutely unacceptable to a certain group in the Catholic electorate, whereas another group in the Catholic electorate would find her overall commitment to social justice something that's praiseworthy," he said.
The nerve center and doctrinal authority of the world's nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics is the Vatican in the Eternal City.
Its teachings, some of which go back 2,000 years, with regular updates dealing with cultural changes, are upheld by the pope, the Bishop of Rome, and the Roman Curia, the seat of the Church's government.
Just this past March, Pope Francis issued his declaration, "Dignitas Infinita," in which he targeted some "grave violations of human dignity, including abortion, surrogacy, gender theory and transgenderism."
However, what the Vatican and the pope declare doesn't always filter down to lay Catholics.
Among all U.S. Catholics, according to Pew, 56% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases — while 42% say it should be illegal in all or most cases.
But those numbers shift when talking to Catholics who attend Mass regularly. Of those, 30% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases — while 68% say it should be illegal in all or most cases.
The Catholic vote is hard to pin down if looking at the Church's teachings. Catholicism, said Schmalz, is the largest denomination in the United States, and as such it covers a lot of socioeconomic and ethnic groups as well as people's lived experiences.
In the early 20th century, the Catholic vote was very much tied to labor and the Democratic Party. Catholic politicians such as Biden and former Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California benefited from "cradle Catholics" raised in the tradition of Catholicism voting for Democrats.
But that has begun to change, said Schmalz. "There is a much more vocal and very well organized conservative aspect," he said.
And that conservative Catholic voice has become the target of liberal vitriol.
When Kansas City Chief's kicker Harrison Butker expressed his traditional Catholic beliefs about gender, women and life, in a commencement speech last May at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, the mainstream media pounced — calling his remarks controversial, anti-women and anti-LGBTQ.
When former President Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee announced his running mate as Ohio Sen. JD Vance, some voices on the left called him a "firebrand" pro-life Catholic racist.
Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019. A Catholic convert is an untested political animal compared to those "born into the faith.'"
(Converts tend to be more passionate about the faith, said Burch, having chosen its tenets and its truths rather than accepting them as part of a family tradition.)
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Anthea Butler, who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, claimed Vance is "aligned with what is called ‘Catholic integralism,’ the belief that Christians can use a 'soft-power' approach to exert influence over society."
It's the Catholic version of Christian nationalism leveled against evangelicals who boldly state their love of God and country.
Said Schmalz, "Christian nationalism and Catholic integralism in their different ways [reflect] the question of whether or not the United States should identify itself as a Christian nation and what that means … That's a very controversial issue. And you'll find people with very passionate views on each side of that question."
Burch said CatholicVote's campaign is aimed at the key states that everyone's focused on: Arizona, Nevada, and the upper Midwestern states such as Michigan, but also Pennsylvania.
These states, he said, are at least 20% to 25% Catholic, or at least self-identified Catholic.
Said Burch, "Obviously, many of them are Democrats. Many of them are Republicans. But the key segment here is going to be those Catholic voters in the middle, those voters who maybe were Democrat by tradition or family who have been disenchanted with the party and now have moved to the middle — or some of them, of course, are moving to the right with Trump."
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There's an old political axiom that is grounded in election results. It says, "So goes the Catholic, so goes the election."
Since at least 2000, Catholics have sided with the victor in every presidential election but one, sliding back and forth between Republican and Democrat.
Catholics backed George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, then backed Barack Obama in 2008 and again in 2012.
In 2016, Catholics voted for Donald Trump by 52%-44%.
In 2020, the Catholic vote was a statistical dead heat, 49% for Biden, 50% for Trump.
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The 2024 presidential contest could come down to the Catholic vote.
But predicting that elusive electorate is a little like predicting the path of a hurricane. All the computer models can tell you a lot — except if some flicker of wind out of Cape Hatteras will make the storm zig instead of zag in a certain direction.
Burch told Fox News he is taking no chances in the matter.
