As the Catholic Right gains strength, one man is trying to ensure the Catholic Left doesn’t get left behind
The rise of several figures to national prominence in the political life of the United States has signaled the ascendancy of the “Catholic Right” in the country.
Vice President JD Vance is a convert to Catholicism, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio is a lifelong Catholic, as is White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. They are only a few of the Catholics who have high official profiles.
If you go on social media, Catholics are among the prominent conservative voices, and there are even many figures of varying kinds and degrees of celebrity on the far right wing – including many racist and antisemitic voices – who claim to be Catholic.
This is a change in the position the Catholic Church has held in the United States since the late 1800s.
Ever since Pope Leo XIII promulgated his 1891 encyclical letter, Rerum novarum, the seminal social encyclical of the modern era, the Church has focused on workers’ rights, the promotion of trade unions, and the dignity of labor and laborers.
The Church has consistently opposed laissez-faire capitalism.
The only two Catholic presidents, John F. Kennedy and Joe Biden, were both Democrats.
Indeed, the Catholic Church in the United States was so closely aligned with social causes espoused by Democrats and embraced by the party, that people (sometimes not even half-) jokingly referred to the Church as “the Democratic Party at prayer.”
Since the 1980s, however, Catholic support for the Democratic party has been much less monolithic, and support from regular Mass-going Catholics has seen a sharp decline in the 21st century.
This raises the question: Is the Catholic Left in the United States dead?
“The reality of it is for me, as a Mass attending Catholic Democrat under 40, I probably represent less than 10 percent of the communicants on Sunday Mass, and so we need to expand the view of what the Catholic should do,” said Christopher Hale, the head of the “Letters from Leo” website and a frequent commentor on the X social media platform (formerly known as Twitter).
In a recent exclusive interview with Crux, Hale noted that especially in the post-Vatican II age – when activists argued against the Church and the Vatican over such issues as women priests and homosexuality – there was an emphasis on changing the Church, and that the Catholic Left movement needs to “have a little bit less Kool-Aid sessions on that,” and look to the future.
Hale is often on social media, where he adopts a style not unlike many active in the arena. Hale can be combative, or “plucky” in the view of his supporters.
“I think what’s remarkable is that I dialogue with the Catholic Right probably as much or perhaps more than anyone on the Catholic Left today, because it’s just I’m part of the social media native generation,” he told Crux.
“I don’t just exist behind the institutions of the Catholic Left which struggle,” he explained.
When asked about the fact the Catholic Left actually has higher representation in the “official” Church – among staff, journalists, and some religious orders – than among the average Mass-going Catholic population, he said that might be a hindrance to the movement.
“I think the disadvantage of it is that it gives us a skewed view of reality,” he said.
“There is a tendency on the Left to have a halo around PhDs, around highly educated functionaries, and I think that is a really bad way of proceeding in going into to the future because those professional credentials matter less and less to lay people and just to people in general,” Hale said.
“Obviously, we know that institutions have less sway in 2025 than they did a quarter-century ago. I think we need to focus less on occupying chanceries and pastoral councils, which I think matter, but we ourselves need to be evangelizing,” he said.
“We need to have a focus on the preferential option for those who are outside the pews. The Catholic Left is much more likely not to be in church on Sunday than to be in church,” he said.
“The best right-wing critique I have ever seen on the Synod on Synodality – and the one that strikes me and keeps me questioning – is they often talk about how those who have the ability to participate in diocesan projects on synodality, or the Vatican’s projects, typically are not folks who are Jane-and-Joe Catholics who are raising a family, trying to make ends meet, trying to live faith-filled lives,” he continued. “It does tend to be the functionaries. It does tend to be the professional Catholics.”
“Unfortunately, that does give a bias perhaps to the Left on these issues, but that is an edifice that will crumble. Eventually reality sets in,” Hale said.
“I think we need to start focusing on Jane-and-Joe Catholics,” Hale said, “those in the pews, but especially those not in the pews.”
Hale noted that Catholics outside the pews are still interested in the Church.
He brought up the example of Rachel Anne Maddow, a liberal journalist in a gay relationship, who recently returned to practicing her Catholic religion.
“Obviously, no doubt about it, she’s living outside of the Church in her sex partnership with her spouse, but I think we can rejoice that – no matter where you are on the political spectrum – that she finds something compelling to bring her back to the Church,” Hale said.
Hale also pointed to areas where the Catholic Left and Right can and should work together.
“I think all of us have an incredible skepticism toward the AI project without guardrails,” he said.
“I think from the Left to the Right in American Catholicism there is a broad agreement that the AI project – that Silicon Valley’s stranglehold over American civic and economic life – is not good,” Hale continued, “and that there need to be some guardrails.”
Hale added that looking at artificial intelligence is an “incredible unifying” project for Catholics, and pointed out that Pope Leo XIV has often spoke about it.
“I think it might get a lot of people off the sidelines,” Hale offered, noting as well that when he writes on the subject of AI, “that’s actually when we get the most attention,” Hale told Crux. “Strangely enough, I think it really awakens people’s senses that there’s an issue here that needs to be tackled.”
Traditionally in politics, the conservatives and liberals take turns ruling the United States over the years.
Hale is trying to ensure a Catholic voice is heard, no matter who is in charge.
Follow Charles Collins on Twitter: @CharlesinRome