Bob McDonnell: More Catholic than the Pope?

As the furor over Robert F. McDonnell's apparently paleo-conservative views on working women and contraception and the like roil his campaign for governor in Virginia, what has gone largely unquestioned is the assumption that the Mass-going Catholic is simply -- and faithfully -- reflecting the paleo-conservative views of his church.

In fact for many, the ideas that the Republican candidate espoused in his 1989 master's thesis, which was unearthed by The Washington Post on Sunday, would seem to make Bob McDonnell at least as Catholic as the pope.

In the thesis, McDonnell -- then 34 years old and a married father of two -- wrote that working mothers are "detrimental to the family," blasted federal tax credits for child care expenses because they encouraged women to enter the workforce, and ripped as "illogical" a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples. In the 15-point "action plan" at the end of his paper, titled "The Republican Party's Vision for the Family: The Compelling Issue of The Decade," McDonnell also opposed any legalization of abortion, even in cases of rape or incest.

Sounds like he could be an altar boy, if not a bishop.


Maybe not. Certainly McDonnell's opposition to abortion puts him right in line with the catechism, even though pro-lifers have for decades conceded on rape and incest exceptions out of political necessity. And while church teaching against contraception remains firm, most clergy and lay people have made a separate peace on that issue, and the bishops are no more ready to campaign to ban sales of contraceptives than they are to try to outlaw divorce.

Interestingly, in his thesis McDonnell argued for "covenant marriage" laws, which are aimed at bolstering marriage by making it harder to obtain a divorce. But as some states, mainly in the South, began enacting such laws in the 1990s (McDonnell failed in four attempts to have Virginia adopt a covenant marriage program) the Catholic bishops balked at supporting them. They argued that such laws could lead to government usurping the church's role in marriage preparation. They also took a higher view of marriage than McDonnell, saying that for the Catholic Church, marriage is forever, while under covenant marriage, couples are counseled on divorce if it should come to that. (Covenant marriage laws have also been a major disappointment to their backers, with studies showing just one percent of couples using them, with little resulting impact on divorce rates.)

As far as women in the workforce, McDonnell's views echo some of the rhetoric of Catholic leaders, who have long argued that social policy should do everything to help mothers stay at home with young children. But the church has also been much more progressive on this issue, so to speak, in its words and in its deeds. The U.S. bishops (who once declared sexism a sin in a pastoral letter on women that was not adopted) have promoted equal pay for women in the workplace, and they have argued for the very tax and child care policies that McDonnell argued would subsidize "a dynamic new trend of working women and feminists that is ultimately detrimental to the family by entrenching status-quo of nonparental primary nurture of children."

Church leaders may be especially enlightened on this topic since lay women make up the vast majority of the workforce in parishes and other church institutions -- up to 80 percent by some estimates. Catholicism would pretty much shut down if they were to walk off the job.

Even the Vatican, which has been employing lay women for decades, has maternity benefits that would be the envy of the most liberal Democrat: two months off before the due date at full pay, and then four months after delivery at full pay, and another six months at half pay. Or, a woman can return to work at full pay four months after the birth, only working one-third less. Not too shabby, and apparently not detrimental to families.

(McDonnell has said his views have "evolved" since he wrote his thesis, though reports show that in recent years as a state legislator he tried to enact 10 out of 15 of the action points in his 1989 paper.)


But Catholic teaching as enunciated by the bishops has long backed the ethical necessity of a progressive tax system, one that would tax the wealthy to redress the growing imbalance between rich and poor.

In their landmark 1986 pastoral letter, "Economic Justice for All," the American bishops wrote that "the tax system should be structured according to the principle of progressivity, so that those with relatively greater financial resources pay a higher rate of taxation. The inclusion of such a principle in tax policies is an important means of reducing the severe inequalities of income and wealth in the nation. Action should be taken to reduce or offset a disproportionate burden on those with lower incomes." It also said that those below the poverty line should pay no taxes.

So is McDonnell a "good" Catholic? Only his confessor knows for sure. But from a political perspective, he may be better viewed as a good Evangelical.

That's because what may illuminate McDonnell's views on faith and politics more than Catholic teaching is the fact that he wrote his thesis while at Regent University, the Virginia Beach campus founded by televangelist and onetime Republican presidential candidate Pat Robertson. McDonnell selected Regent over Catholic schools even though he was the only Catholic in his graduating class. The university seeks to educate conservative Christians and place them in governmental positions. (It boasted of having 150 graduates in the administration of George W. Bush, though the careers of some, like Monica Goodling, the former top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, did not end well.)

More important, the affinity between Regent and McDonnell is emblematic of the political and theological bonds between conservative Evangelicals and Catholics that were being forged in the years that McDonnell attended Regent. That alliance was formally sealed with the 1994 initiative, "Evangelicals and Catholics Together," started by the late Father Richard John Neuhaus, a "theocon" Catholic with close ties to the GOP, and the convicted Nixon official and born-again activist and commentator Chuck Colson.

Like Evangelical Christians, McDonnell tends to favor restrictions on abortion far more than most Catholics do, and he opposes same-sex relationships more than most Catholics. The same is true for views on premarital sex and contraception, as well as governmental tax and spending policies and priorities.

In short, McDonnell is in many respects out of step with both the official church and his fellow Catholics.

On the other hand, in Virginia, neither of those facts is such a bad thing, at least politically.