Catholic bishops 'resigned to defeat' — and spending millions less on election: report

When the U.S. Supreme Court made abortion a national right with the historic Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973, the most vehement outcry didn't come from white evangelical Protestants — it came from Catholics. White evangelicals, as religious studies professor Randall Balmer has noted, didn't make abortion a high priority until the late 1970s — their big issue in 1973 was segregation, which they vigorously defended.

The late Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., in fact, was an outspoken defender of Jim Crow laws for many years. And his Moral Majority didn't have a lot to say about abortion before the Religious Right emerged at the end of the decade.

In 2024, abortion remains a sensitive subject among Catholics. The U.S. Supreme Court, now dominated by far-right Catholics, overturned Roe with its 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. Yet some devout Catholics, including President Joe Biden and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), have been scathing critics of that decision and passionately defended reproductive rights.

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In a Religion News Service/National Public Radio article, journalists Jack Jenkins and Rosemary Westwood report that this election year, Catholic bishops are spending millions of dollars less fighting abortion than they spent in the past.

According to Jenkins and Westwood, ten states have abortion-related ballot measures in 2024. But Catholic bishops are spending money to fight them in only three of those states — an indication that they are "resigned to defeat" on this key issue.

"There are ten states with abortion measures on the ballot in 2024 — almost all of them seeking to protect abortion rights," the reporters explain. "That's four abortion measures more than in 2022, the first election after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and returned the question of abortion to the states. Yet an NPR and RNS review of financial disclosures found that Catholic groups are contributing far less this year — if they're spending money at all…. In fact, if you add up the donations from bishops in all 10 states, it amounts to just over $1 million."

Jenkins and Westwood add, "That's less than a third of the $3.68 million that a single Kansas archdiocese spent in 2022."

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Jamie Morris, executive director of the Missouri Catholic Conference, told RNS and NPR, "We have not seen sort of those big money sums coming in yet."

According to Morris, anti-abortion Catholics have a "realistic view that up to this point, we have not been very successful as a pro-life community on these ballot initiatives."

Jenkins and Westwood report, "Most of the money Catholic bishops have spent this election has been in Florida, where they have donated nearly $1 million to groups fighting Amendment 4, making them one of the largest donors in that state. But so far, there is only evidence in public filings that dioceses have contributed in two of the other nine states: Colorado, where they've spent $50,000, and Missouri, where they've spent $30,006. The Missouri Catholic conference and its five dioceses — including the region surrounding St. Louis, where roughly 20 percent of the population is Catholic, according to the local archdiocese — have each donated $5001 to Missouri Stands With Women, which is opposing the ballot measure."

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Read the full Religion News/NPR report at this link.