Catholic Lobby Flexes Its Muscle Ahead of Pope Francis’s Visit

By Catherine Ho
Washington Post
September 22, 2015

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2015/09/22/catholic-lobby-flexes-muscles-as-pope-francis-visits/

Pope Francis kisses a child as he arrives at the Plaza of the Revolution to celebrate a Mass, in Holguin, Cuba, Monday, Sept. 21, 2015. Francis arrives in Washington on Monday, and will find a Catholic lobby that is very powerful politically. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

In August, when President Obama took the podium in the East Room to announce his plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions, standing behind him was Sister Joan Marie Steadman, head of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the nation’s largest group of Catholic nun leaders.

Steadman didn’t speak, but got a shout-out from the president, who thanked her for helping “rally Catholic women across America to take on climate.”

He added: “And she’s got a pretty important guy on her side. As Pope Francis made clear in his encyclical this summer, taking a stand against climate change is a moral obligation. And Sister Steadman is living up to that obligation every single day.”

[President delivers impassioned plug for his Clean Power Plan]

The show of solidarity for Obama’s aggressive climate change plan offers a window into the powerful role that Catholic groups, many of which have existed for hundreds of years, play in today’s Washington. Many Catholic advocacy leaders balk at the term “Catholic lobby,” preferring to identify as social justice advocates. But their influence is significant.

As Pope Francis arrives in the nation’s capital, Catholic lobbyists see themselves as pushing for more humane treatment of migrants and rallying against sex trafficking, for example, rather than as traditional Washington power players. But they also weigh in on the nation’s hottest political debates from the environment, to immigration, to health care and abortion rights. Catholics meet regularly with lawmakers and the administration, and their support is coveted — even as polls show Americans are becoming more secular.

[Christianity faces sharp decline as Americans are becoming even less affiliated with religion] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/05/12/christianity-faces-sharp-decline-as-americans-are-becoming-even-less-affiliated-with-religion/

“I wouldn’t exactly call it a lobby — none of us are making the big bucks bringing the word of Catholic social teachings to Congress,” said Shaina Aber, policy director for the Jesuit Conference, the largest Catholic male religious order. “But we do coordinate around various issues that are part of our faith tradition.”

Many of the Catholic groups’ political wins are more incremental than sweeping. After five years of lobbying Congress to end nighttime deportations — a practice that often results in women being assaulted in towns near the U.S.-Mexico border — a group of Catholic and other faith-based groups scored a small victory when the Department of Homeland Security and the Mexican government in June agreed to new rules discontinuing the practice in Arizona.

“We were working on that since 2010,” said Aber. “Something so small, to redo the bus schedule [for deportations]…That’s what we’re trying to do, bring sense of humanity to the immigration system.”

The sprawling Catholic lobby, which includes more than two dozen groups with members of other faiths, however, isn’t unified.

Many Catholic groups collaborate, taking aim together at economic inequality by advocating for better paid sick leave benefits for low-wage workers, lobbying to make permanent tax credits for low-income families, and backing measures to reduce greenhouse gasses and the White House’s $3 billion pledge to help developing countries fight climate change.

But some issues — like health care coverage and abortion rights — show a stark divide.

Catholic groups disagreed over the Affordable Care Act mandate that initially required employers to provide contraception to employees. After the White House amended it so that insurers rather than religious employers paid for contraceptives, it won the support of the Catholic social justice lobby NETWORK and the Catholic Health Association, the nation’s largest group of nonprofit healthcare providers. Its executive director, Carol Keehan, is often heralded as a critical player in getting the law passed.

[‘I love nuns’: Obama appeals to religious allies as his landmark health care law awaits Supreme Court decision] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/06/09/i-love-nuns-obama-appeals-to-religious-allies-as-his-landmark-health-care-law-awaits-supreme-court-decision/

But the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) continued to oppose the contraception mandate, saying it violated some employers’ religious liberty.

“On health care, they disagreed with us,” said Sister Simone Campbell, NETWORK’s executive director. “That was the most public disagreement we ever had. But we work closely with them on immigration and some poverty issues.”

Campbell, along with some other controversial figures — including Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay U.S. Episcopal bishop — were invited to the White House welcoming ceremony for the Pope. But the Vatican is unhappy with some of these guests, worrying that photos of them will be interpreted as support for their causes. The Vatican fell out with Campbell and NETWORK, for instance, over what it perceived as a lack of support for its policies on abortion and euthanasia.

But often the Vatican and U.S. Catholic groups work together.

The Vatican and the USCCB offered their support for the Iran nuclear deal, with the head of the conference’s Committee on International Justice and Peace, Bishop Oscar Cantu, sending a letter to Congress, calling it “progress in global nuclear non-proliferation.”

Virtually every Catholic group with a D.C. presence is now finishing up months-long efforts to get their agenda front-and-center ahead of the pope’s visit — mainly focused on immigration.

The Jesuits Conference timed the release of its new report on migrant abuse to the Pope’s visit. The report documents abusive treatment of migrants by U.S. border patrol agents and deportation practices that separate families. For six years, Jesuits have worked to address this through the Kino Border Initiative, with centers on both sides of the border, which offer meals and medical care to deported migrants.

“We’re very interested in … hopefully getting some attention from the Pope since he’s taken an interest in the Kino Border Initiative before,” Aber said. “[We’re hoping to] capitalize on his presence to lift up the voice of the border community and get some policy change.”

NETWORK is preparing to send proposals to congressional staff before the pope congressional speech. The group advocates closing family immigrant detention centers and making the child tax credit permanent. Taxpaying undocumented immigrants qualify for the credit because it doesn’t require a Social Security number.

“We’re all using this time to get very pointed messages to congresspeople,” said Sister Marge Clark, a lobbyist for NETWORK. “A lot of the Catholic groups feel strongly that the people have a right to migrate when they need to. We allow money and goods to be transported freely all over world, but we don’t allow people to be transported freely all over the world.”

NETWORK is also sponsoring the Nuns On the Bus, a nationwide bus tour that kicked off Sept. 10 in St. Louis and ends in Washington on Sept. 22.

USCCB is participating in a series of media and congressional briefings on criminal justice and migration leading up to Francis’s arrival. Several of the group’s leaders are slated to meet with the pope at Saint Matthews Cathedral in Washington and greet him in Washington and Philadelphia.

Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami, who is part of USCCB’s migration committee, said he hopes the papal visit will change the divisive immigration narrative.

“I don’t think we expect the Pope to get into the nitty-gritty of policy, and I don’t know whether he’ll be able to effect a change of heart in Congress,” Wenski said. “But hopefully his actions will plant a seed for the future and he will have us listen to our better angels. If we do that, we can negate the policies of hate and our nation can once again honor its heritage as a nation of immigrants.”

USCCB lobbies in favor of comprehensive immigration reform, endorsing legislation that includes a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. USCCB also supported President Obama’s executive actions announced last November shielding the children of some illegal immigrants from deportation.