While We Wait...
A Promotion from Substack, and Young Adult Catholic Voters
I’m still working my way through Pope Francis’s new encyclical Dilexit Nos, and I’m probably going to wait until there’s an official English translation of the final document from the Synod on Synodality before commenting on it (as of today, there is only the original in Italian and an official German translation). In the meantime, I wanted to share a couple of things with you.
The first is a special deal that Substack is offering over the next few days. Some of you may receive an email from Substack, or may have already received it, offering you what is called a Substack-funded gift subscription. This basically means you get a one-month gift subscription to Window Light where you get all the content that a paid subscriber would get. The catch is, unlike a regular gift subscription, Substack will pay me for the subscription. So, it’s a win-win! Then when the one month is up, you can decide to continue with a paid subscription, and continue to get access to all Window Light articles, or you can go back to a free subscription.
This promotion seems like an effort to get more Substack readers to use their app. And with good reason; the app is helping authors find new readers, and personally I prefer reading articles on the app rather than in my email or on the web site. But it sounds like Substack is only offering this promotion to certain readers. Unfortunately, if you already have the app, I don’t think you will be eligible. If you do receive the promotion, you will need to follow the instructions and download the app and then access the promotion from there. (So maybe don’t download the app on your own for a while, just in case you get an email for the promotion?)
Hopefully some of you do receive the promotion and take advantage of it! And if you’re not yet a subscriber to Window Light, you can always take out a free subscription!
The other thing I wanted to share was the last section of my most recent article analyzing the results of a National Catholic Reporter poll of Catholic voters in seven swing states. My full analysis is available to paid subscribers, but I wanted to share the section on young voters, in part because it is a sample of the content you can get as a paid subscriber, but more importantly because it is something a little hopeful here in the last anxious days before the election on Tuesday. Enjoy!
Although this data suggests that most Catholic voters are shaped more by partisanship than by Catholic social teaching, there are signs of hope among young adult Catholics. Catholics in the 18-29 age group included in this survey demonstrated a surprising openness to drawing on their faith in their political lives, despite the fact that an increasing number of people in their age cohort are choosing not to identify as religious.
My favorite question asked in the survey is whether the respondents plan on praying before they vote. Believe it or not, but 62 percent of those in the 18-29 age group said they did plan on praying, the highest among all age groups. The numbers gradually decrease among the older age groups, with only 46 percent of those 50-64 saying they will pray before voting, and only 49 percent of those 65 or older.
Young adults were also significantly more open to the influence of Catholic social teaching. A whopping 81 percent of those in the 18-29 group reported that Catholic social teaching influenced how they think about social and political issues, compared to 70 percent of those 30-49, 59 percent of those 50-64, and 60 percent of those 65 and older.
Catholic young adults are also far more likely to look to religious authorities for guidance on the election than those older than them. Among those in the 18-29 age group, 53 percent reported that priests had influenced their voting decision, 43 percent said the same of religious sisters, 43 percent for the bishops, and 48 percent said Pope Francis had influenced their decision. These numbers drop off dramatically in the older age groups. For example, among those 65 or older, the numbers are 26 percent, 18 percent, 18 percent, and 22 percent, respectively. Defying stereotypes, 22 percent of those in the 18-29 age group report having read Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, compared to only 8 percent of those in the 50-64 age group and 6 percent of those 65 or older.
One of the most interesting trends among young adult Catholic voters is an evolving sense of what it means to be “pro-life.” Although only 38 percent of those in the 18-29 age group identify as “pro-life,” which is significantly lower than in the older age groups, a larger number identify a broader range of issues with the “pro-life” moniker. Among those aged 18-29, 27 percent consider poverty a pro-life issue, and likewise 27 percent consider war and peace a pro-life issue. Again, 18 percent consider the death penalty a pro-life issue and 16 percent think immigration is a pro-life issue. I would suspect that most of those who categorize these issues as “pro-life” are among the 38 percent who identify themselves that way, which perhaps means a majority of those who identify as pro-life have adopted a stance consistent with Pope Francis’s comprehensive approach to understanding human dignity, reflected in the recent Vatican document Dignitas Infinita.
These results are encouraging because they suggest not only that young adult Catholics may be more open to Catholic social teaching than older Catholics, but also that they are more willing to look at the issues in a way that is more independent of partisan lenses. Of course, these results reflect the responses of a self-selected group of young adults who identify as Catholic and therefore they don’t necessarily reflect the attitudes of young adults as a whole. Still, they provide evidence that there is an unexpected opportunity for the Church to reach out to young adult Catholics who are yearning for a new way of doing politics. It’s also important to remember that an increasing number of these young adult Catholics are Hispanic Catholics, which, as the survey suggests, shapes their views on politics, as well. The risk, however, is that the older Catholics to whom these young adults may turn for guidance appear to be more hardened in their partisan views and more disconnected from the Church as an important influence on their political participation. So, those of us who believe a better Catholic politics is possible have a responsibility to connect with young adult Catholics and encourage them to engage in the political process in new and creative ways.
