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Mon Dec 1, 2014, 06:01 PM Dec 2014

How Will the Pope Play in 2016?

Francis’s softer brand of Catholicism kept his bishops out of the midterms—and they’re likely to tone down their message next time too.

By TOM KINGTON
November 30, 2014

As Barack Obama’s foes lined up against him during the mid-term elections, one warring party was conspicuously absent from the battlefield: America’s Catholic bishops, the “culture warriors” who have fought hard against Obama’s health care provisions on contraception and against same-sex marriages.

It could hardly have been a coincidence that, across the Atlantic, the bishops’ boss, Pope Francis, had expressed his disapproval for the politicization of the church, and urged a softer, more accommodating approach to traditionally incendiary issues like gay marriage, contraception and immigration. Or that within days of the midterms, the pope unceremoniously fired Cardinal Raymond Burke—who during the 2004 presidential election said he would deny communion to Democratic candidate John Kerry or any Catholic politician who supported legalized abortion — from his position as head of the Vatican’s highest court and removed him to a largely ceremonial post as patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Assuming the pope’s tenure continues, it’s reasonable to think that America’s Catholic leadership will tone down their political activities in 2016 as well.

After replacing protestant preachers as America’s religious watchdogs in the last decade, the bishops’ apparent retreat from the 2014 fray was, for many, the first sign that American politics is feeling the effects of Pope Francis’s less confrontational brand of Catholicism.

“Pope Francis has discouraged conservatives and emboldened moderates – his message is that hurling political anathemas from the pulpit is not a good idea,” said John Allen, associate editor of Catholic news site Crux. “During the mid-terms this year we saw no threats to deny communion to candidates and no pastoral letters from bishops which made it impossible for Catholics to vote Democrat. My sense is the bishops will keep a robust pro-life agenda but with less of a rhetorical edge.”

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/11/pope-francis-2016-elections-113213.html#.VHzkRMlXuQs

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