It was interesting to learn the extent to which - by significant majorities - Catholics have been choosing Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama.
But it was kind of strange, given the Catholic Church's racial history in New York City, that Jim Dwyer's New York Times column did not explicity raise the issue of race as a factor in the choice of Hillary over Barack.
In offering explanations for the preference, social consiousness of the Clintons - Bill as President, Hillary as Senator - was mentioned, in particular their willingness to include ethnic, working-lcass Catholics in social programs they sponsored or endorsed.
Fair enough. But has Obama's record in that respect differed in substantial ways from the Clintons'?
What made the most sense, as a reason for liking the Clintons so much, was the involvement of the former president and spouse in brokering peace in Northern Ireland.
And even there, frankly, one has the impression that the justifiers are kind of stretching it.
The most absurd explanation of Catholics' preference for Hillary is some kind of feminist impulse, which, according to Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan of Queens, is traceable to the experience of older Catholics exposed to nuns as principals of church schools.
Feminism, as Dwyer himself points out, is not generally considered a hallmark of Catholicism with its still all-male priesthood, and so the explanation seems vacuous and insincere.
Unaddressed in the column is why supposedly family-loving Catholics would choose the Clintons over Barck and Michelle Obama, who by most accounts seems to have a nuclear household that approaches the American - and we'd even dare say, the Catholic - ideal.
The Catholic Church of course is a changing institution, a changing people, though the issue of the relationship between the Church and blacks continues.
The issue within the issue these days is immigration, especially from Latin America, and it was quickly raised in the Times column, with the suggestion that the Clintons have an agreeable record on it.
But in the last debate, as I recall, it was Obama who went out on a limb and bravely declared that immigrant laborers were not taking jobs away from African Americans.
A bit of long-view historical perspective now.
Catholics have a murky history with regard to Blacks in New York City especially, going back to the Civil War era Draft Riots, in which Catholic immigrants attacked and killed Blacks in Manhattan.
As recently as the mid-1900s, the Catholic Church was effectively segregated here in Brooklyn, with Blacks pretty much consigned to worshipping at Central Brooklyn's St. Peter Claver. (Note: a movement is now afoot to have the founding pastor, the late Msgr. Bernard Quinn, made a saint.)
There is no intention here to say that Catholics, even older ones, have any inclination for a return to those days of old.
But the thoughts expressed in this column - or, better said, the thoughts so glaritingly unexpressed there - remind a person of white American voters, in the past, declared to pollsters a preference for a black candidate, only to go into the voting booth and pull the lever for a White one.
Except that here the Catholics seem to be rightly declaring their preference, while obfuscating their reasons.
Comments