Kentucky Bishop John Stowe has expressed his “dismay” over the overwhelming Catholic voter support for Donald Trump, insisting the U.S. Bishops should have warned Americans about the “danger” of the election.
Stowe, a well-known liberal prelate, said the bishops should have issued a public statement of disagreement with Trump’s policies following the election, the way they did in the case of Joe Biden four years ago.
There is the issue of Trump’s character, Stowe told Crux, an online Catholic news service, “and when somebody has such a flawed character that has been manifestly obvious throughout his previous presidency and the time in between, even denying the reality of the previous election, I think we have a responsibility to name the issue, and the issue is the person in this case.”
In 2021, Stowe defended President Joe Biden’s support for abortion, arguing that “it is a complex issue for a responsible Catholic officeholder who recognizes the law of the land and must survive within the dynamics of a political party, believing what the Church teaches, but unclear as to how that should relate to the law.”
He went on to compare support for abortion to “the cruel exclusion of refugees and desperate migrants.”
“How can you follow Jesus and be unrepentant about systemic racism, unwelcoming to the alien and stranger, unmoved by the needs of the poor or uninterested in the common good?” he asked.
On the other hand, Stowe has had only censure for Donald Trump and his supporters, contending that “for this president to call himself pro-life, and for anybody to back him because of claims of being pro-life, is almost willful ignorance.”
“I find it disappointing that our Church did not speak out more forcefully about the danger of this election,” the bishop stated, suggesting that the bishops’ conference should update its voting guide, which currently places too much emphasis on the issue of abortion.
As Breitbart News has reported, Donald Trump won the Catholic vote in the recent election by a massive 15-point margin, according to exit polls.
While Trump and running mate JD Vance — a convert to Catholicism — actively reached out to Catholic voters during the campaign, Kamala Harris often seemed hostile to Catholic interests.
In late October, Donald Trump stated that Kamala Harris had “lost the Catholic vote,” noting her poor polling numbers among Catholics, a demographic that acts as a reliable bellwether of the election results.
Kamala’s “persecution of the Catholic Church is unprecedented!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, underscoring her support of late-term abortion, “and even execution after birth,” which the majority of Americans oppose.
For her part, former U.S. Ambassador Callista Gingrich had described Kamala Harris as “the anti-Catholic candidate.”
Harris’s snub of the Alfred E. Smith Catholic charity dinner in New York was just the latest evidence of her “disdain for Catholics,” Gingrich wrote.
Kamala “declined the invitation to attend the Al Smith Dinner, the first presidential candidate to do so since Walter Mondale in 1984,” Gingrich noted. “Instead, she sent in a pre-recorded video message.”
CatholicVote.org president Brian Burch called Trump’s Victory “historic,” noting that “Catholic voters played a decisive role in the historic victory of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, with some exit polls suggesting Trump defeated Harris among Catholics by a 14 point margin.”
“These numbers are shocking,” he said, “and could prove to be the largest margin among Catholics in a presidential race in decades. Catholics proved again to be a critical voting bloc that cannot be ignored.”
“Catholics are increasingly attracted by the agenda of the new right, popularized by Trump, which combines family-first social policies with America-first economic priorities,” he added.
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