Category: Catholic Politicians
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Sed Contra: Bush Courts the Catholics

Deal W. Hudson May 1, 2001 Only a few days after his inauguration, President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush dined with the newly installed archbishop of Washington, D.C., Theodore (now Cardinal) McCarrick. In spite of concerns about security, the dinner took place in the archdiocese’s chancery, not the White House. On January…
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A New Grassroots Political Organization Makes Its Mark

Deal W. Hudson November 6, 2009 The election results of November 2 were not merely the spontaneous reaction of Republicans to the bad economy and liberal excesses of the Obama administration. The four pro-life, conservative GOP candidates in Virginia and New Jersey were elected in a groundswell of religious and social conservatives, many of them…
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Another ‘John Paul II’ Catholic Runs for Congress

Deal W. Hudson November 9, 2009 On October 30, Brian Rooney, an attorney for the Thomas More Law Center, filed his papers to run for Michigan’s 7th Congressional Seat. Rooney had initially put aside his political plans when his son Blaise was born with a congenital heart defect in February, but the fight to save his…
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Catholic Politicians Supporting Same-Sex Marriage Legislation

Deal W. Hudson January 7, 2010 Writing for the Catholic Advocate, Matt Smith reports that 39 of the 106 cosponsors of a House bill that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act are “self-identified” Catholics. Smith, a former associate director of the White House Office of Public Liaison, warns that same-sex marriage activists are trying to bring H.R.…
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Are the Bishops ‘Advancing the Republican Agenda’?

Deal W. Hudson April 5, 2010 Regular readers may be taken aback by the question, but I ask it seriously. In fact, I am repeating a question put to Francis Cardinal George by a reporter for the Catholic News Service. A March 23 story from CNS, written by Nancy Frazier O’Brien, featured an exchange with Cardinal George,…
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Bishop Robert McElroy Urges Catholics to “All Become Disrupters”

Deal W. Hudson February 20, 2017 In the column written for NEWSMAX, I report on the U.S. Regional World Meeting of Popular Movements, held February 16-19 in Modesto, CA. Towards the end I call upon the USCCB, a sponsor of the conference, to publicly distance itself from the call of Bishop McElroy towards the violence of “disruption.”…
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Dominant-Issue Voters

By Deal W. Hudson Several Catholic leaders have recently commented that Catholics should not be “single issue” voters, meaning that they shouldn’t vote exclusively on the abortion issue. I agree. But it’s not necessary to be a single-issue voter to give the life issues the priority they deserve. Catholics should be “dominant issue” voters. The…
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Don’t Call Me a Conservative Catholic Anymore!

By Deal W. Hudson Labels in politics and religion serve a purpose: There are discernible groups and coalitions within and between the worlds of the Church and government. Words used as labels serve the purpose of enabling us to distinguish between one group and the other. But I don’t want to be called a “Conservative…
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Robert Novak–The Catholic Vote: Does It Swing?

Note: Robert (Bob) Novak was America’s premiere political reporter for decades until he died at age 78 in 2007. His work, starting at the Chicago Sun-Times and continuing through the Wall Street Journal, CNN’s “Crossfire,” and Fox News, is well-chronicled. In 1998, the year of this article, Novak was received into the Catholic Church by…
