Douthat on Dolan and More

Joan Desmond at the National Catholic Register conducted a very useful interview with Ross Douthat .

I find myself agreeing with what Douthat has to say about Catholicism’s realignment from Democratic to Republican (a very partial and complicated but real change). We face a challenge. Because the Democratic Party is increasingly dominated by a secular mentality at odds with the public role and influence of religion, religious people are moving to the Republican Party. The danger for Cardinal Dolan is that the Catholic Church will become Republican in the same way that some Catholic liberals of the old school are now apologists for the Democratic Party. The trick, it seems to me, is to get things moving in the other direction. If there is in fact a continued shift of Catholics toward the Republican Party, then we need to work to make the GOP different—in a Catholic sort of way, as Douthat says.