Mile Huckabee Out Reach To Catholic Voters Increasing

The Catholic Knight has the details.

I have been wanting the campaign to get more active on this. However, I am aware for the past year we have been pretty much broke and concentrating efforts in places that because of quirks of Demographics were not full of Catholics. Since we have some money rolling in I expect to see more and more of this. Of course prominent Catholics and parts of the Catholic Press have thankfully been pointing out Huckabee's record. Here is an excerpt:

“Catholics were a major source of support for me in Arkansas. And they have been nationally. And it’s not only because of the pro-life and pro-family issues,” he said, refering to his opposition to abortion rights and gay marriage.“I certainly believe that Catholics are right about talking about poverty, disease and hunger. Things I talk about … I think a lot of evangelicals have not talked enough about it quite frankly,” he said.Huckabee’s remarks point to a strategy that sees a broader coalition than the old “Religious Right” — one that unites not only socially conservative Catholics and Evangelicals but also those who see Biblical sanction for helping the poor.

I think this is a good point. What is being missed I feel is that Catholics that have a urge to live the full Gospel that includes a Catholic Social Justice ethic are looking. This includes Catholics that are politically liberal and politically Conservative yet want to mesh their politics with the demand of their Catholic faith. IE Subsidiarity which Mike Huckabee was talking about my goodness just days ago in New Hampshire.

Ia he perfect on all these issues? Heavens no. I have yet to find a person running for office that is. In fact if you have 10 Catholics in a room and said what were the requirements for such a person to meet they could not even agree. See the Vox Nova comment sections where this debate goes on Daily for a example of that.

Sadly it appears that some political Catholcs in the blogsphere are out to lunch and are still obsessed over him being a evangelical minister. I largely find, to be fair though ,that his being a active minister inthe past is often not the real problem. They are generally supporting or liking someone else and the "anti Catholicism" card gets played all under the guise of what is truly anti evangelicalism or at best ignorance of again what all these folks believe.

It is becoming apparent to me that a lot of Catholics and the non Evangelical world in general knows as much about Evangelicals as Evangelicals do about lets say the Eastern Orthodox. I used to find the ignorance of these comments at times humorous but now they are downright silly. It is amazing how the general public is so clueless about what some of their neighbors believe.

Anyway on the positive. Huckabee has and is reaching out. We must think long term here. Huckabee is speaking in a language and talking about issues that Catholics talk about and we should welcome it. Many Catholics have caught on. If he is not "rewarded" for that or at least given a hearing , I wonder if perhaps anyone will bother to do it again for a while. That would be truly devastating.