The thing about the Catholic Church do not map cleanly to the Conservative-Liberal politics that dominate America. The Church, to oversimplify, is extremely left-wing economically, but conservative socially (but even then there are multiple exceptions to these rules).

April 10, 2026 - 21:26 UTC

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Statistically, American Catholics are unusual in that they are roughly evenly divided across the political spectrum. This is a direct result of this. Abortion has historically been used as a wedge issue to align American Catholics and Evangelicals. In fact, up until around the 60's,
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abortion was really just a fringe issue that Catholics cared about.

Over the past few Popes, we've seen a deliberate refocusing of the Church's priorities: the Popes have been emphasizing teachings on economic justice over their social positions on, for example, gay and trans people.
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