Living in Milwaukee, a bastion of liberalism, I can’t recall meeting any Catholic in the last two elections, including some daily communicants, who did not vote enthusiastically for Obama. And the post-election data in both cases indicate that the majority of Catholics around the country voted similarly. During these elections, however, we occasionally heard news from other states about priests warning their congregations that voting Democratic would be a mortal sin.
These priests had some solid backing from bishops. For the last two decades, a number of bishops have warned not only politicians but individual voters that they should not receive communion without confession, after voting for Democrats supporting abortion rights – including Bishops Burke of St. Louis, Wenski of Orlando (now Miami), Sheridan of Colorado Springs, Maher of San Diego, Weigand of Sacramento, and Cardinals Law and O’Malley of Boston.
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