"Alito and the Catholics"

First Things editor Joseph Bottum has this piece, "Alito and the Catholics:  The Decline of an Institution and the Rise of its Ideas," in the Daily Standard.  In the essay, he explores the possibility of a "connection between the rising rhetorical influence of Catholicism and the declining political influence of the Church."  And, he raises the

interesting question whether the leading evangelicals would grant Catholicism its current role if Catholics still had the kind of ethnic-voter unity they used to show. We may be seeing the emergence of one of those uniquely American compromises: A Catholic philosophical vocabulary is allowed to express a moral seriousness the nation needs, on the guarantee that the Catholic Church itself will not much matter politically.

The Catholic clergy's particular sins, especially against children, produced a shame that is deep and well-deserved, and through their class-action suits, the victims are about to strip away the endowment left by five generations of ethnic believers. The bricks-and-mortar Catholicism of the last hundred years--the intense desire of all those hard-working immigrants to build a visible monument of parishes, schools, hospitals, and orphanages--may well have disappeared by the time the total damage is calculated.

He also discusses the recent New York Times op-ed by David Brooks, "Losing Alitos":

"By the late 1960s," Brooks noted,

cultural politics replaced New Deal politics, and liberal Democrats did their best to repel Northern white ethnic voters. Big-city liberals launched crusades against police brutality, portraying working-class cops as thuggish storm troopers for the establishment. In the media, educated liberals portrayed urban ethnics as uncultured, uneducated Archie Bunkers. The liberals were doves; the ethnics were hawks. . . . The liberals thought an unjust society caused poverty; the ethnics believed in working their way out of poverty.