This is way off base, he equates becoming an “American” Catholic as leading to being a democrat voter, when it is the opposite, the more American a Catholic becomes, the more likely he is to vote like a Southern, all-American Protestant.
It is Catholic foreignness which is the more liberal, and it always has been, today, and a 100 years ago, and a 150 years ago.
Catholics are to the left of the non-Catholic Christians, that is the problem, they move right by becoming more American, not less.
Those are not Catholic values. Longenecker nicely exposes a falsehood which is proposed in all of your posts; namely, that "Democrat" values are "Catholic" values. They're not. They're American values and those who fall away from Catholicism embrace them.
America is, and always has been, a liberal project.
That's its fundamental problem. The "pursuit of happiness" is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and is the major driving force behind the progressivist, liberal agenda which advances incrementally with time. At our core, we're liberal. We hold a liberal view of the human condition. People must be free of constraints in order to pursue their dreams, desires and to find worldly "happiness".
This philosophy was responsible for America's spectacular economic rise and brief (in historical terms) ascendancy in the world. Sadly, it's also responsible for its current decay, decadence and equally fast-approaching end as our search for "happiness" encompasses the destruction of marriage, unborn human life and the celebration of sodomy.
Longenecker is spot on.