My question to the USCCB: Was it worth it?
The leopards are eating faces, and innocent people are getting hurt in the meantime.
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On October 16, 2015, Twitter User Adrian Bott (@cavalorn) made one of the greatest contributions to the Internet lexicon to date when he tweeted: “'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.”
“Leopards eating people’s faces” has become my favorite piece of Internet shorthand. It’s become increasingly relevant over the past decade as we’ve experienced the ever increasing consequences of the far right shift of the American political mainstream. Whether it’s cis gays that embraced anti-trans politics now facing down the increasing risk that Obergefell is going to be overturned or conservative voters facing the closure of their local hospitals due to cuts to public health spending, self-centered political myopia has become a recurring theme that we’ve needed to address time and time again.
The Leopards have been feasting lately, that’s for sure, but perhaps there is no greater example in this political moment, or at least, not one as rapidly growing, as the situation the Catholic Church has found itself in in recent months.
When most people think of a Catholic voter, they think of someone who will almost without fail vote Republican. And while Catholics in the US are actually pretty politically diverse, there's a good reason for this stereotype. Trump consistently won the majority of white Catholics in 2016, 2020, and 2024 though lost heavily with Latine Catholics (for whatever reason, data doesn’t seem to track other Catholics of color), and from 2013 to 2023 the number of Catholics who identify as Republicans rose from 21 to 28% (during that same time period Catholic Democrats remained relatively steady at 33%, while Independents dropped from 37 to 30%). It’s more than voting data that informs this image though.
In the United States the Catholic hierarchy has pushed an almost singular narrative for decades: “abortion is the single most important issue for a Catholic voter.” While the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops stated in the wake of recent declarations about the enforcement of the Johnson Amendment that it “maintains its stance of not endorsing or opposing political candidates,” they certainly do not shy away from influencing elections on the issue level.
In “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibility from the Catholic Bishops of the United States,” a guide for Catholic voters on a wide variety of issues published by the USCCB, the very first topic covered in the “issues” section is “Human Life.” Now in the interest of fairness, this section does not only cover abortion, as it also brings up the Catholic stances on assisted suicide (don’t do it), the creation and destruction of human embryos for research (don’t do it), the death penalty (don’t do it), genocide and torture (I’d be shocked that they had to write that one down but I don’t live under a rock), and other issues surrounding the preservation of life. But still, abortion is the immediate, first thing listed under this section, alongside euthanasia, as “preeminent threats to human life and dignity because they directly attack life itself.” This guide clearly tells Catholic voters that if they vote for a pro-choice politician, they are in violation of Church teaching in the eyes of the bishops, and this is to be prioritized over all other issues. This was reemphasized by the USCCB in November of 2023, when they voted to make the “threat of abortion” the "preeminent priority” in guidance to Catholic voters ahead of the 2024 election.
If the narrative becomes “abortion is the main priority” then of course in the modern era that is going to then imply that faithful Catholics may only vote Republican.
It’s not only the voter guides though. The political hyperfixation on abortion on the part of the Bishops has been on a meteoric rise since white Evangelicals and Fundamentalists co-opted abortion as a major political issue as a smoke screen for anti-integration politics. This shift moved attitudes towards Catholics away from “dirty papists” to “allies in the fight for ‘life’” and granted access to a level of power and privilege that had been relatively limited before.
Now, in 2025, you could throw a rock at any major conservative event in the country and you’ll probably hit a Catholic bishop.
There’s a problem beginning to appear, however, which is that it is increasingly clear (as it was to many of us) that the conservative Catholic/Protestant political love affair was always conditional. Catholics were only ever going to be welcome in the growing tide of Christian nationalism so long as they were useful. But now that Trump is back in the White House, and the Protestant power players are more confident than ever, it seems they’re no longer as convinced of the utility of keeping the Catholic hierarchy around, and the leopards are getting hungry.
Because the thing is, while abortion has been the main priority of the USCCB for decades, it is not the only core issue, not for the Bishops and certainly not for American Catholics at large. Immigration, healthcare, poverty, violence, climate change – these are all issues where the Church is staunchly at odds with the Trump administration and its supporters.
On the immigration front Catholics (at all levels, not just the hierarchy) have voiced serious horror and fear at the rise in unjust immigration enforcement actions. More than 40% of US Catholics are either immigrants themselves, or otherwise the children of immigrants. Immigration and refugee resettlement are huge parts of the charitable work done by Catholic institutions, and Catholics (amongst other faiths) were targeted for such work within weeks of Trump’s return to the White House. Federal grants for immigration and refugee programs were slashed, and when the Bishops expressed outrage, J.D. Vance (himself a Catholic convert obnoxiously enough) accused them of only being concerned “for their bottom line.”
Trump’s removal of “sensitive spaces” protections, which prevented immigration officers from taking action in certain places like churches, schools, and hospitals was also met with major opposition, leading the USCCB to put out a statement condemning the horrifying increase by the administration in unjust immigration enforcement actions. A short time later the Bishop of San Bernardino issued a special dispensation releasing Catholics in the area from their obligation to attend Mass Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation if they feel that doing so would be a risk to their safety due to increased ICE raids. These types of dispensations are incredibly rare, as receiving the Eucharist is one of, if not the most, important aspects of Catholic religious practice, and typically are only granted during times of major crisis; think wars, natural disasters, etc, which should be a sign of how serious the ICE crisis is becoming in the eyes of the hierarchy.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” similarly has been met with outrage by much of the membership of the USCCB. While there was initial support for the bill due to the restrictions on funding for abortion and gender affirming care (because some people simply never learn from their mistakes), as well as funding for school vouchers, as soon as those were stripped from the final version of the bill, they were only left with the bad. Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, president of the USCCB,
“lamented the great harm the bill will cause to many of the most vulnerable in society, making steeper cuts to Medicaid and clean energy tax credits, and adding more to the deficit. While the bishops had commended the positive aspects of an earlier version of the bill, the restriction on federal funds to abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood was reduced to one year, the parental choice in education provision was greatly weakened, and the restriction on federally funding “gender transition” procedures was removed.”
It was this statement that ultimately inspired this blog, actually.
Because I read it, and I read the reactions to immigration enforcement, and I read all of these other things and on one hand, yes, I am glad that it seems that maybe the Catholic hierarchy is finally waking up to the absolute mess we are in. But on the other hand I am sitting here scratching my head because I genuinely don’t know what they thought was going to happen. The entire MAGA movement, from Trump all the way down, has always been about cruelty. They never hid what it was they were planning on these issues. It has always been about being so utterly cruel and violent towards those they deem as less than that they are able to either run us out of the country or kill us.
None of this should have been a surprise, so why are they acting like it is?
Perhaps it’s because they truly did not believe that the leopards would eat their faces. Perhaps they truly forgot that in the dominant strain of thought that underlies the Christian nationalist movement, they were never going to be included when all is said and done.
They’re getting what they wanted on abortion. We live in a post Dobbs world after all. And with abortion and trans healthcare increasingly merging into a single political framework, they’re getting their transphobia cookies too.
But I have to ask if it was worth it?
Because they might have won (for now) on this singular issue, they are losing their ability to actually enact any other aspect of Catholic social teaching. And to rub salt into the wound, they lost that ability over something that the majority of American Catholics do not agree with…or even view as a top priority at the polls.
Pre-election data indicates that abortion was generally a middle ground priority for Catholic voters across five key issues in 2024. In fact, across racial lines, the majority of US Catholics actually believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, including 73% of other Catholics of color, 62% of white Catholics, and 57% of Hispanic Catholics. It’s frankly absurd just how out of touch the USCCB is with the Catholic faithful in this country.
From where I stand, I don’t think they gained anything worth everything that they sacrificed. And they certainly gained nothing worth the lives that have been destroyed and lost as a direct result of their complete and utter lack of multi-issue thinking.
I do think, however, that it is a sobering cautionary tale about where the future of religious liberty in this country is headed. “Religious liberty” is rapidly becoming conditional on political loyalty tests. You can practice and express your faith freely…so long as it aligns with the preferred politics of the White House. Anything else is “anti-Christian bias,” even if you yourself are Christian. Because the only “real Christians” to this administration are those whose theology supports the goals of Christian nationalism. This is only going to get worse with the move to stop enforcement of the Johnson Amendment in order to allow houses of worship to endorse political candidates, because that too will become a loyalty test.
Religion must stay out of government, or the government will always start to dictate what forms of religion are acceptable. You cannot have it both ways.
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Kat (they/them) is a queer lawyer, activist, and theorist focusing on the intersections of law, queerness, religion, and politics, with the occasional bit of theology, political theory, and legal theory thrown in for good measure. Originally from rural southern Indiana, Kat earned their B.A. in Political Science in 2019 before continuing on to earn their J.D. in 2022, both from Indiana University- Bloomington. A former Equal Justice Works Fellow for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Kat has spent their professional career fighting for the separation of church and state and LGBTQIA+ rights. Outside of work you can find them at a ballet or contemporary dance class, sipping on dirty shirleys at their local gay bar, or playing video games with their cat, Merlin.