More than one political colour in the pews of the Catholic Church

Published on Wednesday 5 November 2008 19:01

It is wrong to assume you know how a Catholic will vote, and it must stay that way, says Brian Fitzpatrick

LAST week, Liz Leydon of the Scottish Catholic Observer mused on the notion of the Catholic Church as "Labour at prayer" (Government & Public Affairs, 30 October). With an eye on the Glenrothes by-election, she cited a panel of lay Catholics – me included – gathering at the Newman Association in Glasgow University as evidence of some rupture in that bond.

This news came as a surprise to the association's office-bearers, who dissociated their non-partisan group from such claims. While one could not imagine such a forum on "Catholics and the Tory Party", still less "Catholics and the Lib-Dems" filling up more than a phone box, all three major parties do, of course, count Catholics among their members, leadership and voters.

And contrary to older prejudice, most Catholic priests, properly, usually keep their political opinions to themselves. The myth of a "Catholic vote" was one sustained by bigots, dismissive of Catholic voters as simpletons toeing a Vatican line. Yet, so far as their views ever were known, many old-style Irish-born priests in Scotland's parishes were Tories.

Our bishops too have tended to be a bit more blue than red in their sympathies, with the occasional Bishop delivering the benediction at a Tory fundraiser. Younger clerics tend – if anything – to be more inclined to vote SNP and, perhaps with the exception of Paisley's Bishop Philip Tartaglia, there seem few advocates for some Caledonian version of the Christian Democrats.

But, as with most denominations, most threads of the political tartan are represented in pews on Sundays.

It is true that, in contrast to the "professional wing" of my church, practising Catholics in Britain have indeed tended to cast their votes disproportionately for Labour – that centre-left tilt running contrary to voting trends across much of Europe and the United States.

The reasons are manifold: many European democratic socialist parties were avowedly secularist and in competition for votes with explicitly Catholic or Catholic-front political opponents.

Bishops, and even a Pope, went out of their way to stress that the British Labour Party, characterised in contrast as owing "more to Methodism than Marx" in its origins, escaped the strictures against doctrinaire socialism. More tellingly, Labour's backing for public service jobs helped untold Catholics escape job discrimination, Labour councils helped end housing discrimination and the opening up of university places accelerated the progress of many young Catholics into a wider and more liberal Scottish society.

This week's broadside from Cardinal Keith O'Brien over the Human Fertilisation and Embryology (HFE) Bill is the latest in a series of spats with the government including rows over gay adoption, civil partnerships and – in Scotland – the bitter "Keep the Clause" campaign.

And it is mainly in the fields of sexual and life ethics that some voices are keen to draw dividing lines and where a measure of stridency enters the debate on the role of religious belief in political life.

Some guardians of what they believe comprises "true" Catholicism, (a very un-Catholic notion of itself), chide the rest of us that it is not possible to keep faith with one's beliefs and a Labour affiliation.

They urge us on to a very dangerous road – that one doctrine has to be encapsulated in a political party before you can vote for it. A similar fundamentalist line was played out across the Atlantic with attacks on Joe Biden's stance on abortion and calls that he should refrain from Communion until he had mended his ways.

In 2004, George Bush capitalised on his Catholic opponent's "pro-choice" record and managed to secure a majority of Catholic votes. And in the past few weeks Sarah Palin, whose "pro-life" credentials are such that she counsels incest victims to continue their pregnancy, hoped to offer some chance of catching Barack Obama.

Yet, given the result, the US should be a salutary lesson for our "fundies". Polls indicated that Catholic Democrats who deserted John Kerry in 2004 returned in their droves, and just as many Republicans, exhausted by the weirdness of much of the American religious right, abandoned John McCain.

But the British debate does not follow the US model. Sensible party managers know a conscience vote when they see one. During the closing stages of the HFE Bill and when votes came up on attempts to lower the abortion time limit, Catholic Labour MPs, including ministers, went to the lobbies with colleagues of all faiths and none from across the parties. No-one resigned or was censured for failing to toe any party line.

Our politics also, thankfully, do not reflect the cultural wars that have disfigured US political life. Supporting access to abortion does not define one as Labour in the way it might define a Democrat, and concern over abortion is found within all UK parties.

Most Catholic legislators here have shared with voters their views on life issues and tend to vote with their conscience. In a very British accommodation, if surveys showing overwhelming support for abortion rights are correct, most British voters respect and tolerate the stance of their representatives.

Reassuringly for progressive Catholics who love their faith, Ms Leydon's conclusions lack any papal imprimatur. The current scholarly Pope seems keener to form men's consciences than man the political barricades and used his first encyclical to offer the support of the Church in discerning what social justice demands and how it might be achieved. He cautioned that the Church "cannot and must not replace the state" and reiterated longstanding teaching that building a more just society was primarily one for ordinary Catholics and their neighbours.

&#149 Brian Fitzpatrick is an advocate