Couldn’t disagree more. The Church, practically by definition, has been Conservative. It’s never called for government to legislate on behalf of the poor or to care for the poor. The Church champions voluntary charities because Catholicism like Christianity in general calls for individual accountability, not shared responsibility. What organization in the country has fought harder against abortion, gay marriage, divorce, promiscuity, Hollywood, academia than the Catholic Church. But of course I’m speaking of the Roman Catholic Church as an institution, not the various pretenders to membership in it. The church in early America had very little influence other than its efforts to relieve the poor Catholic immigrants’ lives; even so, it never sought government solution; it sought management recognition of its laborers’ needs which, admittedly led, wrongly perhaps, to the growth of unions which then led to a Catholic/Democrat alliance. Unfortunately, most of the Catholics raised in the solemnity of that alliance became more Democrat than Catholic.
I do agree that American Catholics are not Conservatives because of their Catholicism. To me it’s more a matter of consistency of belief. Individual accountability covers most of the spectrum in American (and other) politics. And while it’s absolutely true that that idea arose in America via the Puritan ethic, it had been true in Catholicism for centuries.
Lastly, though, it may be important to keep in mind that there’s no hierarchy in protestantism, no higher court, so to speak, so we don’t know what the official line or the valid teaching is. There is a hierarchy in Catholicism and that higher court almost always favors the American Conservative view.
Really ? That is why the last Pope hosted Pelosi and Obama to talk about health care ?
You can say what you want to say and the Catholic church can say what it wants to say but I watch what they DO
and they DO support socialism and churn out people who support socialism .