This really should come as no surprise:
Despite Santorum’s devout Catholicism, Romney beat Santorum, 44% to 37%, among Michigan Catholics, who comprised 30% of the state’s electorate. In Ohio, by contrast, Catholics were just one-quarter of the vote in 2008. Meanwhile, Santorum trounced Romney among Michigan’s Evangelicals by sixteen points. Such voters amounted to 39% of the vote in the Wolverine State. Four years ago, evangelicals made up 44% of the Ohio electorate.
Catholics are not, on the whole, particularly rabid about their religion, and were probably more turned off by Santorum saying he vomits at the thought of JFK, who many of those Catholics still hold dear (even the Republicans), than they are entranced by his birth control stance, with which they disagree. Santorum may think JFK should have danced to the Pope’s tune, but most Catholics would disagree, especially when it comes to anything involving sex. Nor should it come as any surprise that Santorum does so well with the fundamentalists; he is more of them than he is of the Catholics.
The quote above illustrates a peculiar phenomenon in our discourse. Santorum is a “devout” Catholic because he wants to outlaw birth control and abortion (i.e., keep those females in subjection), in line with Catholic teaching. Liberal Catholics, on the other hand, don’t earn that adjective, despite the fact that they agree with the Church on such issues as the death penalty, not to mention feeding the poor, healing the sick and all that other old fashioned stuff. The Bishops, twisted individuals that they are, would probably go along with this categorization; the hierarchy has become sex-obsessed. There may have been a time when they had some influence on the voting behavior of their “flock”, but lately, for the Bishops, it’s been like herding cats rather than sheep.
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