Categories: Canada

Catholics flee Liberals in droves

Catholics have always voted Liberal, until recently

by Kate Lunau on Monday, November 24, 2008 9:00am - 95 Comments

Catholics flee Liberals in droves As Canada’s once-mighty Liberals consider their future, they might be advised to visit a local church—and not just to pray for the party. The religious vote, it seems, played a major role in their recent election defeat. According to new data from Angus Reid Strategies provided exclusively to Maclean’s, Catholics—who make up 44 per cent of Canada’s population and have preferred the Liberals for decades—are flocking to the Conservatives.

Catholic voters back parties that are community-minded, says Andrew Grenville, Angus Reid’s chief research officer. And in 2006, for the first time, they shifted their support to the Tories. This year’s results confirm the trend: outside Quebec, 49 per cent of Catholics who attend church weekly voted Conservative, compared to just 38 per cent in 2004. Within Quebec, where upwards of 80 per cent of the population identifies as Catholic, the switch away from the Liberals is even more striking. In 2008, just 22 per cent of Quebec Catholics voted Liberal, compared to 56 per cent in 2004. “Looks like we have a new status quo,” Grenville says.

It’s not just Catholics who’ve had a change of heart. Protestants, who make up 30 per cent of the population, tend to split their vote between the two major parties, but over the last four years, there’s been a big shift toward the Tories. In 2008, 64 per cent of church-going Protestants outside of Quebec chose the Conservatives, compared to 51 per cent in 2004. Voters who attend so-called conservative churches (such as Baptist, Mennonite, and Stephen Harper’s own Christian and Missionary Alliance) prefer the Tories in even greater numbers: a whopping three-quarters of them voted Conservative this year.

What does it mean? “The Liberals have alienated their base, which shows how weak their support really is,” Grenville says, adding that he isn’t very optimistic about the party’s immediate future. “I can’t see Bob Rae or Michael Ignatieff appealing to that vote either, which is in part why their prospects aren’t too bright.”

Tags: Andrew Grenville, Bob Rae, liberals, Michael Ignatieff, Stephen Harper

More by Kate Lunau

Ti-Guy

The Church’s constant teaching has held that every animate creature contains a soul,

Totally untrue. Catholicism teaches that only humans have souls.

You really don’t know what you’re talking about, Jarrid.
Paul

The difficulty with that position is that it can degenerate into a sort of idolatry, in which the entire faith stands or falls on the behavior of an individual. The faith cannot possibly be falsifiable based on the failures of men. The Church teaches that all men are sinful, but the fact that we sin cannot prevent us from repudiating it and teaching others to do the same.
Paul

Ti-Guy,

This is a teaching contained in the Summa Theologica. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that animals have a “material soul”. It’s an accepted part of the faith that all living creatures have souls, although it’s not particularly important part:

“To seek the nature of the soul, we must premise that the soul is defined as the first principle of life of those things which live: for we call living things “animate,” [i.e. having a soul], and those things which have no life, “inanimate.”" (Summa Theologica, Prima Pars, Question 75, Article 1)
Jack Mitchell

Paul –

On your second point, the question is not whether the fetus is a “human person”, but whether it is a human being.

Yes, right. But we can’t play bait-and-switch with the meaning of “human being.” It obviously belongs genetically to the species “homo sapiens,” but I simply refuse to believe that a collection of human cells constitutes an homo. I do have some self-respect and to class me (and my soul) with a 10-week fetus is sheer sentimentality.

If human rights is anything other than a facade to advance a particular set of leftist interests, then every human being, from the instant of their conception, will be entitled to these rights.

Well, to my mind human rights are nothing but a facade to advance leftist interests, if by leftist interests you mean protecting individual members of society from arbitrary power. I understand very well that the emotional impulse towards human rights is, historically, a Christian one (though, you have to admit, a Protestant one); but that is not the only way to look at them. It seems you’re trying to eat your cake and have it too: either human rights are secular, or they’re subordinate to revelation. If they’re secular, then really they have no role in a religious argument; if they’re subordinate to revelation, let’s just stick with revelation and not try to earn God some better PR with fashionable labels.

A human right can admit of no exceptions. It is immutable – not contingent on any circumstance.

This is tautological. By this reasoning, we simply call contingent rights civil rights and absolute rights human rights; but the question of what’s contingent and what’s absolute remains.

The idea of human “personhood” is simply a method whereby the government can assign human rights in an arbitrary fashion, without exclusive reference to their status as a human being, but by introducing certain qualifications which have, in the past, included skin colour and gender. If human rights are to be applied with integrity, then they must be applied universally, without exception.

That is indeed the only way we’ve figured out to prevent social abuses, but it does not follow that it corresponds to objective reality. It’s a legal fiction that serves as a safeguard for rights no member of society wants to forfeit.

On your final point, which is a religious topic not particularly relevant to public policy, the idea that the fetus does not contain a soul has been thoroughly discredited.

To my mind, the main effect of this “discrediting” has been to discredit the idea of the soul entirely. If mere movement constitutes animacy, then animals and even plants should have souls (not a bad idea, IMHO); but to assert that a “soul” is visible in a 10-week fetus is to reduce the evidence of souls in adult people to near zero, i.e. to make it such a minimum standard that having a soul becomes a mere technicality. This is what you get when theologians become lawyers, or vice versa.
Karol

This new trend would have nothing to do with a fact that Dalton “Catholic” McGuinty lashed out at the Pope over abortion issue not so long ago, or would it??

No, Dalton would never be so stupid as to piss off his fellow parisioners and all Catholics living in Ontario, or would he??
Paul

“I simply refuse to believe that a collection of human cells constitutes an homo. I do have some self-respect and to class me (and my soul) with a 10-week fetus is sheer sentimentality”

If it meets the scientific definition of membership in the human species, then it has human rights. No exception is made based on location or stage of development.

“It seems you’re trying to eat your cake and have it too: either human rights are secular, or they’re subordinate to revelation.”

It’s a useful secular framework for defending innocent life. The doctrine of human rights has no source in Divine Revelation. If you read much of the Old Testament, this should be abundantly clear. God is no humanist.

“This is tautological. By this reasoning, we simply call contingent rights civil rights and absolute rights human rights; but the question of what’s contingent and what’s absolute remains.”

It’s not a tautology. It simply means that human rights are inviolable. No person can have the “right” to violate another’s rights. Such an idea causes the entire framework of human rights to collapse, by dissolving the condition that all human beings are equal.

“That is indeed the only way we’ve figured out to prevent social abuses, but it does not follow that it corresponds to objective reality. It’s a legal fiction that serves as a safeguard for rights no member of society wants to forfeit.”

Again, it serves as a useful framework for defending the lives of innocents.

“To my mind, the main effect of this “discrediting” has been to discredit the idea of the soul entirely. If mere movement constitutes animacy, then animals and even plants should have souls (not a bad idea, IMHO); ”

Again, I refer to the Summa Theologica. The doctrine which was so clearly laid out by this doctor of the Church 700 years ago holds perfectly true today (except in those areas where it depends on primitive science). The Summa makes it clear that every living thing has a soul.
Jarrid

Paul vs. Ti-Guy on Catholicism,

From the little I’m seen from Paul on this comment string, and from the depressingly large amount of commentary I’ve seen from Ti-Guy generally, this one is a complete mismatch. In one corner, polite and informed, in the other, hectoring and mal-informed.

Ti-Guy time to go to bed.
Ti-Guy

Don’t get hysterically angry at me for caring too much, Jarrid.

If it meets the scientific definition of membership in the human species, then it has human rights

What court of law established this?
Jarrid

I’m not angry at you Ti-Guy, I just wish Catholics weren’t so ignorant about their own faith. Catholics like you, ignorant about the basics of their faith, and railing against their own faith at the same time, are actually a dime a dozen. One of the reasons for their angry railing against their faith is precisely their own ignornace of it.

The ignorance you display about your own Catholic faith is quite unremarkable in this day and age and hardly anything to get angry about. But I do wish you would remedy it, for your own sake.
Ti-Guy

What? How I am ignorant of the basics of Catholic faith? I even took Latin.

Why do you continue to lie and defame in such a manner Jarrid? Have you no shame?
Jack Mitchell

OK, Paul, I’ve got the Summa Theologica in front of me. Shall we dance?

The relevant article is Prima Pars, 75, 3rd Article, “Utrum animae brutorum animalium sint subsistentes,” especially Thomas’ main text:

Dicendum quod antiqui philosophi nullam distinctionem ponebant inter sensum et intellectum, et utrumque corporeo principio attribuebant, ut dictum est. – Plato autem distinxit inter intellectum et sensum; utrumque tamen attribuit principio incorporeo, ponens quod, sicut intelligere, ita et sentire convenit animae secundum seipsam. Et ex hoc sequebatur quod etiam animae brutorum animalium sint subsistentes. Sed Aristoteles posuit quod solum intelligere, inter opera animae, sine organo corporeo exercetur. Sentire vero, et consequentes operationes anima sensitivae, manifeste accidunt cum aliqua corporis immutatione; sicut in videndo immutatur pupilla per speciem coloris; et idem apparet in alliis. Et sic manifestum est quod anima sensitiva non habet aliquam operationem propriam per seipsam, sed omnis operatio sensitivae animae est coniuncti. Ex quo relinquitur quod, cum animae brutorum animalium per se non operentur, non sint subsistentes: similiter enim unumquodque habet esse et operationem. (my emphasis)

He goes on to say in the same Article:

Dicendum quod vis motiva est duplex. Una quae imperat motum, scilicet appetitiva. Et huius operatio in anima sensitiva non est sine corpore; sed ira et gaudium et huiusmodi passiones sunt cum aliqua corporis immutatione. Alia vis motiva est exequens motum, per quam membra redduntur habilia ad obediendum appetitui, cuius actus non est movere sed moveri. Unde patet quod movere non est actus animae sensitivae sine corpore.

In other words, since (in Aristotles’ view at least) animals lack intellect and depend on appetite, their souls are insubsistent; but are you seriously saying that a cocker spaniel, say, shows less intellect than a 10-week fetus?
Jack Mitchell

The corollary being, of course, that cocker spaniels have inalienable human rights . . .
http://www.babiesbreath.ca David MacKenzie

While I suspect that there ARE a few regional dynamics embedded within this analysis that could also be factors, the truth is that Roman Catholic and Protestant Christians who are culturally discerning and serious about their Bible, are far from content with either small “l” liberalism, or capital “L” Liberalism. How can we be content with 100,000 Canadian abortion deaths annually– as many as all our military losses in all the 20th Century? How can we be content with shoot-up centres that ENABLE heroine addiction to continue unabated? How can we be content with a runaway gambling culture, or euthanasia culture? And how can we be content with the Canadian descent into permissive sexuality, whorish materialism, and STDs– all while the only “cures” being offered by “liberal” society are more latex and more Gardasil? And how can all of this be acceptable TO ANY CHRISTIAN when our rights to speak against this debacle are being thwarted at every turn due to over-zealous Human Rights Tribunals and Political Correct nonsense?
Pingback: The Liberals and their shrinking base. at The Public Post
aurelteluma

Let’s pray together…Thy kingdom come…in the heart of conservatives and liberals..
Paul

Jack,

That’s a very interesting objection. I think the answer would lie in the fact of the human soul’s potential being contingent on the body’s state of maturity. It can only reach this potential when the body is fully formed, at which point it becomes clear that the human soul’s nature is very different from a cocker spaniel’s.

If you look at the response to objection 3 in article 2 of the same question, you’ll see that St. Thomas Aquinas admits as much; the body is necessary for the acton of the intellect. Simply because the intellect isn’t in evidence doesn’t mean that a subsistent human soul isn’t there.
T. Thwim

Paul, if you’re postulating changes in the nature of the human soul based on the physical maturity of the host, then isn’t that opening up the idea that the foetus is not truly human?

Yet if, on the other hand, even such changes as great as that do not change the fundamental nature of the human soul, then the question opens up, well where does it stop? Does Monty Python have it right when they sing that every sperm is sacred?

Of course, to argue that the conservatives don’t reject catholic values is to have no freaking clue what the conservatives stand for. “Harsher punishments,” proclaim the conservatives, “turn the other cheek,” asks Jesus. “Cut benefits! The poor need to stand on their own two feet,” cry the conservatives. ” Love your neighbor … when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed,” proclaims Jesus. Conservatives refusing to act against the death penalty as applied in other countries runs smack-dab into “Thou shalt not kill.” The conservatives worship of big business and wealth Jesus answers simply with “You cannot serve both God and money.”

Of course, all this means nothing because I don’t think there is a modern religion today that actually follows Christ.. just people who are picking and choosing the bits that match their own prejudices.
pete e

I think the real issue is that people are willing to look around. conservatives have been saying since the early days of Preston Manning that a whole bunch of groups (especially Catholics and Indo-Canadians) would vote to the right if only he could get their attention. Alas, old habits are hard to break.

If Manning was right, the logjam is broken. Those voters won’t be coming back until the Liberals have revisited 20 years of policy, not 5.
Paul

“Paul, if you’re postulating changes in the nature of the human soul based on the physical maturity of the host, then isn’t that opening up the idea that the foetus is not truly human?”

That’s not what I’m saying at all. The soul doesn’t change.
Jack Mitchell

Paul: “The soul doesn’t change.”

Right, so the question is why human-soul style activity is not observable in the early stages of fetal life. It seems to me one is left with either a) the soul’s entering the body at a later point, making early abortion OK, b) parallel “intellectual” activity in non-human life (which, to my mind, is obvious empirically) and consequent duty to extend the rhetoric about abortion to the meat supply among other things, or c) the contingency of the “right to life.” Or one can abandon reason altogether and simply assert a series of unprovable tenets: entry of the soul at conception, damnation of the unbaptised, revealed truth of a “right to life,” etc. But if so the intellectual damage to Catholicism is immense, nothing less than the separation of religion and empiricism, besides the emotional burden imposed on believers to reject the modernity which abortion (and its concomitant liberation of women) represents.

From my point of view, it is just too clear that in general the opponents of abortion (perhaps not yourself, Paul) are arguing in bad faith. Nothing will convince them because their visceral “belief” or emotional response is irrational. They miss what we all miss in general, a sense of established certainties, and reach out to abortion as a token cause: “If this isn’t wrong, nothing’s wrong.” It’s the death rattle of absolute values. But those values are not coming back — you can’t will them (sorry, “believe” them) into existence again. We need to create new values based on direct experience of life, something the modern world denies us thoroughly. But if we could experience life directly again we would find not only modernity hollow but all the commandments of the Middle Ages equally divorced from truth.
http://www.truemuse.wordpress.com truemuse

Jack,
I can tell you that as a woman I do not want to have liberation by abortion. I don’t want it sold to other nations as part of the ‘package’ of democracy that we offer. Abortion is a medical and moral issue and it’s discussion helps to ameliorate the problems with it. Abortion is not ‘modern’. I would think that Paul is likely against abortion to save the life of a woman. Why argue his extreme position? The trouble with the Catholic pro-life movement is that they don’t have any compassion for medically necessary abortion. The pro-choice movement has no compassion for limits to protect those working in abortion and us all from too much of it. They’re a bunch of losers, all.
Paul

“Right, so the question is why human-soul style activity is not observable in the early stages of fetal life. ”

I did my best to answer that one; the exercise of the intellect depends on the body (per Aquinas), but the underlying potential is there even before the body has reached maturity.

I think you’ve set up a bit of a false dilemma, also. Human intelligence doesn’t refer to anything an animal is capable of, but instead concerns the capacity for reason, and, consequently, contemplation of and communion with the Divine – God, who is the source of reason.

I really don’t think my position is irrational.
Paul

Truemuse,

Direct abortion is, of course, never permissible. The intentional destruction of innocent human life is an intrinsically evil act. One of the first rules of moral theology is that it is never permissible to commit an intrinsic evil, even for the gravest of reasons.
http://www.truemuse.wordpress.com truemuse

You and Judy Rebick are matched bedfellows but I make the threesome. You argue for no abortion in Theological doctrine, Rebick argues for abortion-on-demand in Social Justice rhetoric, but I argue for legislated abortion according to my only choice: to live as a citizen in a system of responsible government. If I give up that choice, I fall to Religion or Lawlessness. That’s all I’ll say to you buddy. When you politicize women’s issues you do alot of harm because the daily travails of those that are face to face with the moral or medical dilemma of abortion have no social support because of you have dismantled it by your methods. You / Judy Rebick : have some fun there :: when I come to join you you’ll part company.
Terry

I think all you perhaps embrace dualism too much for the catholic church’s taste. In the church the soul is considered to be in perfect union with the body. Anima properly defined, is the fact that a body is alive, not a ghostly spook. This is why the bodily resurrection of the dead is not a figurative thing in the catholic church, but a hopeful promise. It is believed that a human being is not thinking or active being without a body, and being alive is the highest good of human existence.

For the ones who quote Thomas Aquinas, as one who is both educated in scholastic philosophy and is a “sweats the details” form of Roman Catholic, I have to say two things:

1) We have had a theological tradition past Aquinas and disagree with many of the things he said.
2) We have arrived at our current abortion position as we shifted from the idea of “form” as abstract shape to include knowledge of cellular biology, embryology and DNA.

The simple fact of the matter is that we know that a fertilized egg is a complete human organism. It doesn’t matter if it is as intelligent as cocker spaniel or even a mosquito. The life of human beings is sacred and should be protected and nurtured to its full potential. Human beings cannot be considered a means or an obstacle. This is what separates catholic humanism from secular humanism, where the sick, the weak, and the feebleminded are to be treasured, whereas secular humanism values human life in relation to the peak of intellectual and physical power. (This is why libertarians and social liberals usually agree on social policy issues).

So what happens when we need to be pragmatic? We do indeed line up with the left-leaning parties when it comes to social issues and are suspicious of unregulated capitalism. We agree on the importance of action on environmental concerns. However, imagine if the NDP or Liberals supported capital punishment without appeal. While you may find that many of your interests line up, unabashed support for the death penalty would make it hard to support them. Catholics feel much the same way about abortion, which whether you agree with our reasoning or not, we regard as an intrinsic evil.

The Church accepts the necessity of abortion if a pregnancy (such as an etopic pregnancy) would kill both the mother and child. 50 years ago, if a uterine cancer had to be excised on a pregnant woman the church would have accepted that as well, though today a increased concern about abortions has lead to a hardening of positions (a famous case in Chile comes to mind). What the church cannot accept is the idea that abortion is to be used as means to avoid responsibility. (see doctrine of double effect)

As a result the Church and indeed many other Christians on the religious right have had to change attitudes. Giving up your child for adoption is not shameful anymore, but favored over the alternative. Social conservatives resist being absorbed into the libertarian wing of the party because social justice issues which might assist in reducing abortions go over very well. Of course, the accepting abortion has also caused some attitude changes on the left as well.

The differences between the left and the right on sexuality and abortion can be summed up this way. The left isn’t particularly concerned if their unmarried children have sex, but are upset if they get pregnant. The right is upset if their unmarried children have sex, but will accept and welcome the new baby if they get pregnant.