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Conservative Catholics could swing US election in favour of Trump and Vance

Many Irish Catholics are drawn to the disruptive energies of Trumpism as they engage in what they see as a ‘spiritual war’ against liberalism

JD Vance and Donald Trump: In a climate of populist disruption, radicalised Catholics are happily describing themselves as the 'red-pilled laity' who have seen the light about the corruptions of liberalism. Photograph: Doug Mills/New York Times
JD Vance and Donald Trump: In a climate of populist disruption, radicalised Catholics are happily describing themselves as the 'red-pilled laity' who have seen the light about the corruptions of liberalism. Photograph: Doug Mills/New York Times
Liam Kennedy
Wed Sept 11 2024 - 06:00

The political advent of JD Vance casts a spotlight on a growing faction of the religious right in the United States – post-liberal Catholics. Vance is closely allied with several of the intellectual leaders of the movement, which appears to have been a significant force in his conversion to Catholicism in 2019.

The terms of conservative Catholic political engagement in the US are shifting, with an influential push by those who champion a postliberal order and a radical move away from the politics of a previous generation aligned with the Republican Party establishment. This new generation is more drawn to the disruptive energies of Trumpism and keen to use the powers of the state to crush liberalism and its elites. Their battle with liberalism is existential and apocalyptic, a “spiritual war” for the future of America.

The large voting bloc of Protestant evangelicals for Donald Trump is widely understood as one of his most solid and important bases of support, while less attention has been paid to the role of Catholic Americans. “There is no ‘Catholic vote’. And yet, it matters,” remarked Washington Post journalist EJ Dionne Jr more than 20 years ago, indicating that the Catholic vote was not predictable and that it had an impact in swing states. In the coming presidential election, the Catholic vote in several states is likely to be crucial in determining the national outcome. In Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, Catholics significantly outnumber evangelicals.

[ What does JD Vance’s Catholic conversion tell us about Donald Trump’s running mate? ]

The long Catholic march into the establishment has also seen a shift away from the Democratic to the Republican Party over the last 60 years and into elite positions of conservative power – five of the last six Republican appointees to the Supreme Court have been Catholic. Irish Catholics have been part of that shift, becoming more conservative as they cease to be immigrant outsiders.

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Catholics make up the largest religious group in the US (Protestants are divided into denominations) and vote at a higher rate than the American average. The overall Catholic vote was almost evenly split in the 2020 election, but there are signs it has moved to Trump’s advantage over the last few years. A Pew Research poll in April this year showed Trump leading Joe Biden by 55 per cent to 43 per cent among Catholics.

Vance embodies the ethos and political hopes of the post-liberal Catholic right as it is fused with Trumpism

Part of the reason many Catholics did not support Joe Biden was precisely because of his Catholicism, an ecumenical liberal Catholicism that is anathema to traditionalists. A number of leading Catholic clergy volubly opposed his presidency, with several bishops arguing Biden should not receive Communion. In 2020, Providence bishop Thomas Tobin tweeted “Biden-Harris. First time in a while that the Democratic ticket hasn’t had a Catholic on it. Sad.”

[ How apt that Democratic convention marks the passing of the last old-style Irish Catholic politician ]

The Catholic opposition to Biden points up the ideological divisions within conservative Catholicism around Pope Francis’s pontificate and domestic culture wars. Francis has been vociferously criticised as a disaster for the church, with many denouncing the first Latin-American pontiff as a “globalist”.

In this climate of populist disruption, radicalised Catholics are happily describing themselves as the “red-pilled laity” who have seen the light about the corruptions of liberalism and the need for a new politics to oppose it. They have formed well-funded institutions and networks that constitute an organised Catholic right wing, including media organisations such as Church Militant, LifeSiteNews and EWTN (The Eternal Word Television Network). Together, they constitute an ideological ecosystem that has been described as “a Catholic Fox News”. And they include advocacy and lobbying groups that parallel yet operate beyond the reach of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Trump has amplified this alt-right Catholicism, interacting with its spokespeople and signing up several of them to the advisory board of Catholics for Trump. His advisers indicate this is a deliberate strategy to “bypass the bishops” – Trump was irked that he was not receiving the loyalty from mainstream Catholicism he believes he merits. In 2020, he called himself the “best president in the history of the Catholic Church”.

[ JD Vance surfaces the strange, sometimes openly hateful language of the fringe right ]

More mainstream Catholicism retains a hesitancy about speaking out in support of party politics, observing the division between church and state. But that division is increasingly under strain, as Catholics and Americans more generally register a loss of faith in constitutional democracy.

In this climate of factionalism and infighting in the Catholic Church, post-liberal ideas have flourished. Post-liberalism is a philosophical outlook rather than a policy programme but its leaders believe it can be the fuel of a political revolution and that JD Vance will be their agent. Irish-American philosopher Patrick Deneen of Notre Dame University, along with Adrian Vermeule of Harvard Law School and Sohrab Ahmari, a founder and editor of the magazine Compact, are among its most public proponents. They posit that liberalism is the cause of multiple societal ills – from economic inequality to homelessness to childlessness. In place of liberalism’s commitment to individual rights, they call for fealty to a “common good”. They support government interventions to secure a nation united around values of faith, family and order. Deneen’s pronouncements on the failures of liberalism and calls for a “post-liberal order” are proving influential among Republican politicians and activists, including Vance.

Deneen has formulated a call for “regime change” (the title of his 2023 book), which Vance has echoed, stating his role in Congress is “explicitly anti-regime”. He writes in favour of “a peaceful but vigorous overthrow of a corrupt and corrupting liberal ruling class and the creation of a post-liberal order”, so that “a fundamentally different ethos informs those institutions and the personnel who populate key offices and positions”. While Deneen articulates this regime change as a spiritual revolution, Vance is more forthright, stating “if I was giving [a second-term president Trump] one piece of advice, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people”.

[ Who is JD Vance? Rhetorical bomb-thrower, Trumpian conservative, symbol of the American dream ]

Vance embodies the ethos and political hopes of the post-liberal Catholic right as it is fused with Trumpism. There are expectations he will provide an intellectual vision and leadership for Trumpism after Trump. Fellow right-wing Catholic Steve Bannon is convinced, describing Vance as “the St Paul to Trump’s Jesus – the zealous convert who spreads the gospel of Trumpism further than Trump himself”.

Liam Kennedy is a professor in the Clinton Institute at University College Dublin