The news is all abuzz today over the fact that Santorum “lost” the Catholic vote in the primaries last night. It’s a construction that assumes that it was his to lose, and is based in one of the most pernecious myths of the Beltway media, which is that America is a sectarian society where “people of faith” not only vote according to religious guidelines, but according to those set by the loudest sectarians amongst them. Thus, you get claims that Obama is going to lose the “Jewish vote” because, I dunno, something about Israel, even though he really hasn’t done a damn thing to hurt Israel. And now there’s a growing adherence to the nonsensical belief that Catholics are a voting bloc, and one that votes primarily based on what a bunch of right wing celibates who spend all their time on TV denouncing vaginas think. The only group that doesn’t get this treatment is mainline Protestants, because as the mainstream media doesn’t tend to think of “white” as a race so much as a baseline, so it thinks of mainline Protestantism as the norm by which you measure others against. (On that basis alone, I enjoyed Santorum saying mainline Protestants aren’t real Christians, because it actually jolted the media into realizing that various Protestants are also religious groups, just like Jews, Catholics, evangelicals, and Mormons.) But really, this nonsense about the “Catholic vote” has got to stop. There’s literally no evidence for such a thing. Most Catholics are pro-choice and use birth control, and they do so in roughly the same numbers as non-Catholics. In fact, they’re indistinguishable from the public at large in their voting habits. There’s perhaps a slim chance that some of them were moved against Santorum by the JFK comment, but honestly, I’m skeptical. The reason is that we’re talking about a Repubilcan primary. I guarantee their identity as Republicans was a bigger factor for Catholic Republicans voting in the primary than their loyalty to the only Catholic President.

Certainly there are people of faith who don’t consider environmentalism a part of their religion. But there are also many environmentalists who see their activism as deeply rooted in Scripture and faith traditions. Threats to the natural world at times implicitly involve issues with which religion has long grappled, among them materialism, social and economic justice, and love of God and neighbor. Indeed, it is not a little ironic that Santorum, a devout Roman Catholic, is at odds with Pope Benedict XVI and the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops who view climate change with alarm. They have repeatedly called on the government to address it as a matter of prudence, and to aid poor nations and people who are least responsible for climate change and least able to cope with its consequences. “At its core, global climate change is not about economic theory or political platforms, nor about partisan advantage or interest group pressures,” the U.S. bishops wrote. “It is about the future of God’s creation and the one human family. It is about protecting both ‘the human environment’ and the natural environment. It is about our human stewardship of God’s creation and our responsibility to those who come after us.

The Social Security system, in my opinion, is a flawed design, period. But having said that, the design would work a lot better if we had stable demographic trends. We don’t have enough workers to support the retirees … . A third of the young people in America are not in America today because of abortion.