That is a disheartening and discouraging statistic. I blame the Bishops for a good part of that vote. Their "voter guide" was lengthy and convoluted in its arguments. What was it -- 8 or 12 2-sided pages long? In our church, no other piece of voter information was allowed. How can you equate killing babies with protecting our borders? Or promoting unions? Disgraceful and misguided.
Remember, only 60% of American Catholics are non-Hispanic Caucasians. The other 40% we know voted 80% for Obama. It is therefore clear that the 60% voted about 70% against Obama, making it one of the largest bases of opposition.
(Shrugs). The Roman Catholic vote wasn't any "worse" than the national-average 53% vote for Obama, and represented a 13-point swing from the RC vote in 2004. So the Catholic vote probably had been moving in the Right direction, overall, in recent elections; I think that by 2008 you just had a lot of "Bush fatigue", even amongst Republicans, which dampened turnout for the GOP in "center/center-right" voting blocs like the Roman Catholics.
JMHO, that is. But if Obama keeps this stuff up, I suspect that the pendulum will swing back in 2012.