Embracing the Catholic vote in Canada
FORMER MPP ON WHY LEADERS SHOULD REVEAL FAITH, VALUES TO RALLY VOTERS
In Canada, the Catholic vote is a bit like how Walter Cronkite described the U.S. health care system, as “neither healthy, caring, nor a system,” or as folksy philosophers describe The Theology of Aristotle, which is neither a theology nor by Aristotle.
Because in Canada, the Catholic vote is not really Catholic. It is more movement conservative. It picks and chooses its priorities with a strict approach to rules in which sex and life issues crowd out all else of interest to the faithful electorate, not least the central vision of Jesus as a person in the world and the social teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, but also more earthly priorities like climate change and the economy.
This is the context in which John Milloy has reflected on his career as a Catholic Liberal MPP, an Ontario cabinet minister, and before that a Parliament Hill senior staffer to former prime minister Jean Chrétien.
One thing he has learned is that the Catholic vote is not really a vote, either, like for example the youth vote. Catholics might be a demographic, sometimes estimated as high as 40 per cent of Canadians, but this slice of the electorate is too broad for the strategic campaign uses to which it is put. Some voting blocs are, at least at certain times, univocal. Not Catholics, and certainly not Christians in general.
“I’m sorry I can’t vote Liberal, I’m a Christian,” a woman once told Milloy at her doorstep during a campaign. “I didn’t get angry, but I can’t let this one pass. So I said, ‘So am I.’”
It was more of a standoff than a breakthrough, but it was an early real-world test of the vision he puts out in Politics and Faith in a Polarized World: A Challenge for Catholics. Now director of the Centre for Public Ethics at Martin Luther University College at Wilfrid Laurier University, Milloy has produced this brief guide for Catholic candidates and voters, arguing for a closer engagement between faith and politics.
It seems a curious project during an election in which the two main party leaders are both observant Catholics. But Canada’s Catholic vote is full of contradictions, not least the fact that it is a myth.
“If you believe the Liberal war room, the Catholic vote is a group of homophobic, anti-choice, primarily conservative Catholics and evangelicals,” Milloy said.
The man knows better than most. He has worked in Liberal war rooms.
For their part, Conservatives seem to think they can count on Catholic votes, but would just as soon keep the people out of the picture.
“Not only is it cynical, but it’s defining the Catholic faith by a couple of hot button issues,” Milloy said.
So Canadians get Catholic leaders who keep quiet about it. Even when a party leader confesses a devotion to Jesus, as the Anglican former Green Party Leader Elizabeth May did in the last federal election campaign, she acted like it was a breach of etiquette for a politician.
As for Catholic voters, they seem content to leave their faith safe and sound amid the bells and smells of Sunday morning, and not let it have much effect on their politics. This is what Milloy argues needs to change.
“It robs all of us, because on the one hand the parties have diminished these groups to one issue, and these groups have allowed themselves to be diminished
to one issue,” Milloy said.
That issue, of course, is abortion, the obsessive focus on which has robbed Canadian politics of Catholic voices on other major issues their church calls on them to address, such as the environment, poverty, and the plight of seniors in long-term care.
It is countercultural to argue for more Christianity in public life, even possibly retrograde. But as usual, a contrast with the American picture casts a little positive gleam on the Canadian one.
Just in the last few days, a political scene dominated by a univocal fundamentalist Christian voting bloc has led states like Texas, and
possibly Florida next, to pass plainly unconstitutional laws restricting abortion, in an effort to provoke a generational showdown with the Supreme Court and the Catholic Democrat President. For his part, Joe Biden was the target of serious efforts by Catholic Bishops to deny him the sacrament of communion, which as a general practice Milloy describes as “weaponizing access to God.”
Canada has pretty much none of that.
Church and state are far more closely linked in America, ironically given America’s principled separation of the two. Canada has no such
legal division. On the contrary, Canada’s Constitution states it “is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.”
In practice, though, Canada has a much more robust actual separation of church and state. Sometimes it seems like they’ve barely met.
The first time the Archdiocese of Toronto ever held a candidates debate was in the 2019 election. All parties sent men, which made the abortion segment particularly awkward. The proposed second debate in this campaign was cancelled by COVID.
As Milloy puts it, in Canada the Catholic Church “is not getting along well with society.”
So far in the Canadian election campaign, Milloy notes that abortion was trotted out in the early days. Liberals often bait Conservatives into talking about it, and Conservative Leader Erin O’toole is no exception. He has taken pains to “inoculate” himself by reaffirming his pro-choice policy stance, and so abortion continues to serve as a football in a familiar old game, Milloy said.
“This campaign is about nothing,” Milloy said. “It’s hard to fight stereotypes when you’re fulfilling them.”
Part of the problem is that, when campaigning, politicians have a tendency to pitch utopia, which runs counter to the Catholic outlook. In his book, Milloy favourably quotes a line from Press, a British television series, that “there isn’t a solution to the world.”
Catholics reject the idea of eternal solutions on Earth, Milloy said. As sinful people in an imperfect world, he notes, their work is never actually done.
“Catholicism is about meeting the world where it is — broken, weary and searching for answers,” he writes.
It is importantly not about providing final answers. But politics often tries to. For politicians, Milloy argues that Catholic faith can provide a framework for action, give a sense of purpose, help set priorities, and break down polarization. His book contrasts moral deliberation with moral indictment, where deliberation is an exercise in empathy, humility and co-operation, while indictment simply calls out the other side for being wrong, and for needing to either repent or shut up.
“That is the state of public discourse in Canada today,” Milloy said, and some of the worst examples of moral indictment have been occurring within the Catholic Church.
The bishops are little help, Milloy argues, a tone deaf group with a credibility problem, divided influence, stale priorities and formulaic public engagement.
“It is difficult to convince Canadians that religious faith is about more than abortion and sex when that is all leaders seem to talk about,” he writes.
Broadly speaking, Milloy said, Canadian bishops were dead set on fighting funding cuts to summer students at pro-life organizations, on mixing it up in the assisted dying debate, and even in the arcane scientific issue of human stem cell lines used in vaccine development. But it’s crickets when it comes to economic inequality, racism, climate change and seniors. Social justice gets a “perfunctory” nod in the Church ostensibly devoted to it, Milloy said.
There is plenty of doctrinal support for Milloy’s contrary view, in Catholic social teaching and in the writing of Pope Francis, including Laudato Si (Praise to you) on the environment and Fratelli Tutti (All brothers) on social friendship.
Milloy finds it interesting, even optimistic, that when you look at Catholic social teaching, at times it seems left wing, at times right wing. The effect is “dynamic,” he said. “You can’t pigeon hole it.”
So, in a way, there is a possible Catholic vote. It need not always be a myth or a bogeyman.
“I actually think there are a lot of Catholics who care about their faith and if a party was to appeal to those values, I think you could rally people,” Milloy said.