It's more complex than that but does work with the parent's comment. The official policy of the Catholic Church is that abortion is a terrible sin. Many other (but obviously not all) Christian churches have the same views. That does not mean that individual Catholics or their Christian brothers and sisters agree with the views of their churches on abortion or don't always agree that their religious views should be imposed on all of society. Abortion, while an important issue, is just one of thousands that church dogma preaches and there is no party that matches up to any of them completely. Some members of the church simply see the balance of other issues as being greater than the issue of abortion.

So, you are saying that when one social group you belong to (the church) has an inconsistent belief system with another social group you belong to (loose party affiliation), you pick the one that suits your personal opinion on other issues.

This begs the question - why do people pick and choose their religious dogma, but not their political dogma?

I feel that the answer to this question is 'The world is a little bit more complicated than the parent poster claims.' These claims have little predictive, or explanatory power, given this rather prominent counter-example.

People pick and choose both. What I have seen is that people generally start with what their parents taught them, but it's not that uncommon for them to end up completely different. And it changes over time. I was very much a "D" voter when I was young (as my parents were) but mostly vote "R" now. I've never been religous though (neither were my parents).

> This begs the question - why do people pick and choose their religious dogma, but not their political dogma?

Well, in a multiparty democracy (which was where the study happened; if you didn't know that going in to the article, the reference to multiple center-right parties should be a pretty big giveaway) if you dissent from a party on an issue of any salience, there's a pretty good chance there is another party available that is just like that one, except for it's view on the issue you dissent on. So, if the party fails to convince you when it changes, you stop being a party member rather than become a dissenter on the one issue.

That's less true for religions (especially religions with certain features: you aren't going to find a Church like the Roman Catholic Church including it's view of the papacy and it's historical descent, but differing on the moral parameters of abortion.)

It's also less true of parties in a system which isn't a robust multiparty democracy, which is why both major parties in the US system are big tent parties with stark internal divisions that sometimes try to paper over them to present a united front.

Probably because most people don't pick what church they belong to; their parents do that for them. While people do convert between religions, most will stay with what they grew up with and try to make things work within that framework. Sometimes that's not possible so they pick one or the other of their religion or their political ideology. Religion doesn't always lose out and my gut instinct is that it wins out more than politics does but that's more difficult to see since membership and public interaction for religion works differently than it does for political parties.

> This begs the question - why do people pick and choose their religious dogma, but not their political dogma?

Interesting possibility: Religion is a protected class, politics isn't. So people fear viewpoint discrimination (i.e. getting canceled) for diverging from the dominant political party, because that isn't protected, but not for diverging from any given religious doctrine, because that is protected.

Maybe we just need to declare the political parties to be religions. In a way they are. And it's in the same way that caused religions to be protected to begin with, isn't it?

California has some pieces of political affiliation carved out as a protected class.

It feels risky to me. Coupled to the protection of freedom of religion in the US is both the interpretation of the First Amendment and the political custom that there be a "high wall" between religion and politics. In practice, this isn't always true, but the principle serves as a counterweight to people's faith not being formally, structurally questionable.

For obvious reasons, no such high wall can exist between people's politics and politics, so making political affiliation a protected class risks giving protection of the law to things that society will greatly suffer under if they are protected (imagine if he SPLC couldn't fire a staffer who's an active Klansman).

> For obvious reasons, no such high wall can exist between people's politics and politics

I don't know if I buy it, because the purpose of the wall is to constrain people from being punished for their beliefs, which you could do just as well with politics. That isn't the same as having their beliefs questioned in a public debate -- which we already do with religion. Questioning isn't punishment. Getting fired is punishment.

> imagine if he SPLC couldn't fire a staffer who's an active Klansman

The strongest objection to a Klansman is that they commit acts of violence. But violence isn't protected speech. If they're committing acts of violence, fire them.

Whereas if your only objection is that they go home and give sermons against interracial marriage while wearing a stupid hat, isn't that kind of the point?

How is it any different than Planned Parenthood can't fire a Catholic for opposing abortion outside of work?

The larger concern is they use SPLC's money to pay for venues for those sermons, or direct SPLC's resources away from SPLC's goals because those goals are counter to the individual's politics.

Companies ought to have the right to fire people acting counter to their goals.

It's not "SPLC's money" once they've paid it to someone else for labor, any more than it was Planned Parenthood's money when a Catholic donates it to a church that gives sermons against abortion.

> Would that explain why Catholics, who, ah, generally don't support abortion, are split ~50/50 between blue and red?

American Catholics support legal abortion at pretty similar rates to the general population. [0] The Church heirarchy may not, but that’s not the population of interest.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/20/8-key-findi...

You can be culturally catholic and support abortion. There’s even atheist catolics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_atheism

> You can be culturally catholic and support abortion

You can be religiously Catholic and support legal abortion, and do so without dissenting on any essential doctrine (though you’d be in tension with how the heirarchy tends to apply certain important doctrines.)

If you morally support abortion, you'd be in dissent, but doctrinal dissent isn't really unheard of among Catholics (even within the heirarchy.)

>You can be culturally catholic and support abortion.

No actually, you can't. You can fit the broader definition of Christian but if you hold these views and profess to be a Catholic, you are in fact a heretic and can be excommunicated[1]. I see this fiction posted again and again on HN, and while it's not my intention to support or oppose the Church's viewpoint on this people should be educated and aware that they can't claim to be certain things if they aren't them.

[1] https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/docume...

This is technically correct (the best kind of correct! ;) ).

In practice, there's a wide gulf between what the Church formally establishes as dogma and the adherence of individual Catholics. It's generally resolved as the Church holding the door open for forgiveness through a person's entire life, as long as penitence is a possibility. It's rare for the Church to excommunicate an individual Catholic (or even deprive them of communion) even for very public statements regarding their support of abortion.

Sometimes, the door is held open so long the Church's view on the topic changes and forgiveness is no longer needed to align the practitioner with the Church's stance.

> if you hold these views and profess to be a Catholic, you are in fact a heretic and can be excommunicated

No, you can't, and nothing at your link supports your claim. Support for legal abortion (or the non-criminalization of anything; criminalization is not symmetric and there are cases where this wouldn't be the case for supporting criminalization of an act) is, where not obligatory, inherently a prudential judgement as criminalization always inflicts harm intentionally.

Moral support for abortion would be dissent from authoritative teaching, which is of a more serious (both doctrinally and in canon law) character, but that's an intensely different thing.

This is for having an abortion, not supporting them. The later group is much larger than the former.

You don't even have to go to church to be culturally a catholic.

As a catholic, I would say that the catholic church has done a pretty decent job of not taking sides in politics. (Probably so as to not push anyone away from church, they dont suck people in and have growing memberships like some other denominations ). I have friends and extended family in those “newer hyper Christian” churches, and they all somehow manage to attach way more identity into their church life than any catholics I know. As well as pushing their beliefs on other people. Whereas the catholic view as I have experienced it is “you're different? Thats cool, lets be nice”. Theyre still super pro life, but i havent heard anything that makes me think the overarching catholic political stance is a one issue vote.

For a Catholic, supporting abortion by knowingly voting for it is "formal cooperation"[1] with the taking of innocent human being's lives. This is why by Canon law, not that it's always followed, politicians who support abortion should not be given communion: they are manifestly in a state of mortal sin and giving them communion is desecrating the Eucharist and causing scandal[2]. Because of this, well catechized Catholics will oppose abortion. That said, it's unproductive to be a jerk about it and the correct response for those who don't have pastoral responsibility for the individuals in question is just to pray that they realize their error and repent.

[1] https://www.consciencelaws.org/religion/religion002.aspx

[2] In this context, by scandal Catholics mean action that invites others to sin.

While what you say is true, what im trying to say is that my experience has been that most catholics (that i know anyway) are not “well catechized”, the church i go go has not been pressing your points, and other denominations seem to be more focused (than the catholic church) on pressing their religion into political votes and action these days.

> As a catholic, I would say that the catholic church has done a pretty decent job of not taking sides in politics.

Have you not seen the current Pope? Far more injecting in politics than the previous. Obvious in a historical perspective, this is still very hands off for the church.

I believe this view is due to social media. The pope isn’t that extreme, our world is

A large portion of Catholics (about 35%) are Latino, who are often more socially conservative.

The European Catholics (Primarily Irish, Italian, German ancestry) are often more liberal, perhaps because historically they've lived in the urban North East.

Two things come to mind. First (and I don't know how true it is), some contemporary Catholics are not hard-line anti-abortion; second, at the end of the day you usually have a choice of D or R. You go with what lines up best. Voting for either one does not mean you lockstep agree with their position on every issue.

I would guess most blue catholics who don't support abortion either avoid the topic or at least don't admit to their opinion to their blue friends.

My mother is very anti-abortion while also being a die hard straight ticket Democrat. Not all Catholics in her social circle are the same but many are. I can't say she has a political social circle, so maybe she is able to balance her beliefs because she isn't called on them. The issues her and her friends care about tend to be about extending entitlement programs, public education, assistance to immigrants, and things of a similar nature. For these the Democrats are much more inline with their views than Republicans, which is probably how she and other Catholics like her justify supporting the pro-choice political party despite being strongly against abortion.