That’s the question being batted about on Wednesday, when The Atlantic published a lengthy reported piece entitled “Why Only Cafeteria Catholics Can Survive in American Politics.” In it, religion writer Emma Green gives voice to an argument often repeated by centrist Catholics in election years: that America’s rigid two-party system, divided along deeply entrenched ideological lines, makes it impossible for rank-and-file Catholics to register with a party that matches all aspects of official Church theology. She argues this forces American Catholics to “pick and choose” their theology—making them dreaded “cafeteria Catholics”—resulting in a “diluted identity” for American Catholicism. [...]
But there remains a major problem with Green’s analysis: claiming a Catholic identity and harboring views contrary to Church hierarchy isn’t an American invention. It’s the norm in Catholicism, because being Catholic doesn’t necessarily mean agreeing with bishops, or voting the way they want you to. And it never has. [...]
No one disputes that American Catholics, once a beleaguered religious minority beset by rampant anti-Catholicism reminiscent of today’s Islamophobia, flocked to the Democratic Party to support Catholic candidates such as Al Smith in the 1920s and John F. Kennedy in the 1960s. They’re certainly not the first minority group to do so; America’s brand of democracy encourages minority groups to form alliances and cling to one party out of self-preservation. The same could be said of today’s American Muslims, for instance, who switched from voting for Republican George W. Bush to Democrat John Kerry in one election cycle, and remain firmly Democratic—even though many express conservative sensibilities on several issues. [...]
Granted, if this sort of dissenting spirit was unique among modern American Catholics, one could plausibly argue that the United States has created an environment that bifurcates Catholics in unusual ways. But it’s not: In 2014, a global survey conducted by Univision found that most of the planet’s Catholics disagree with the church on birth control, abortion rights, divorce, and priestly celibacy. This corroborates with several other polls showing the leftward tilt of many Catholic-majority nations: a 2013 Pew poll found that 65 percent of those in Brazil —which is still one of the world’s most Catholic countries—believe homosexuality should be accepted by society, which is probably why Brazil legalized same-sex marriage that same year. In Argentina, which Pope Francis calls home and where 70 percent of the population claims a Catholic identity, marriage equality is widely supported.
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