To paraphrase E.J. Dionne’s dictum about the Catholic vote, there is no Catholic bloc in Congress, and yet, the Catholic members of the House and Senate matter a great deal.
According to a report released earlier this month by the Pew Research Center, 28.2 percent of the members in the newly elected Congress identify as Catholic, compared with about 20 percent of the U.S. population who do so. Though Republicans have narrow majorities in both chambers, 55 percent of the Catholics in Congress are Democratic—far less lopsided, and closer to the total U.S. population, when compared with the six-to-one advantage Democrats enjoyed among Catholics in Congress in the mid-1960s.
The 150 Catholic members in the new Congress (two more than in the last session) make Catholicism the single denomination with the most members. While 55.5 percent of Congress identify as Protestant, that group is divided among more than a dozen churches, from Baptist (14.1 percent of all legislators) to Pietist (an offshoot of Lutheranism with one adherent on Capitol Hill, the Republican Congresswoman Tracey Mann of Kansas). Only three members of Congress (0.6 percent) say they are “unaffiliated” with any religion, though Pew estimates that 28 percent of all Americans fall into this category.
While there hasn’t been a Catholic speaker of the House since Democrat Nancy Pelosi (and, in between her tenures, Republicans Paul Ryan and John Boehner), Catholics are still well represented in House leadership positions, including three of the top five Republicans in the chamber (Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana, Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota and Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain of Michigan) and two of the top five Democrats (Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar and Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Ted Lieu, both of California).
Catholics are not as well represented in the leadership of the U.S. Senate; Richard Durbin of Illinois, the minority whip for the Democrats, is the only Catholic among the six highest leadership positions in either party.
A less pronounced Democratic tilt
According to the Pew report, Catholics make up 32 percent of all Democrats in Congress and 25 percent of all Republicans, but that gap has shrunk over the past several decades, mostly because of the election of more Catholics on the Republican side.
Data compiled by the Brookings Institute show that Catholics made up 26 percent of all Democrats in Congress in 1965, when the party had overwhelming majorities in both chambers, compared with only 9 percent of Republicans. By 1995, when the Republicans took control of the House after being in the minority for four decades, Catholics accounted for 33 percent of all Democrats in Congress and 23 percent of Republicans. In other words, the Republican Party seems to have achieved parity in Congress only after it began running more Catholics.
Catholics in the House now include 70 Democrats and 56 Republicans, compared with 66 Democrats and 56 Republicans two years ago. Catholics in the Senate include 13 Democrats and 11 Republicans, compared with 15 Democrats and 11 Republicans in the previous Congress. But the Republican total in the Senate may change depending on who is named to succeed JD Vance, a Catholic in Ohio who left after being elected vice president, and who replaces Marco Rubio, a Catholic in Florida, if he is confirmed as secretary of state.
New and departing Catholics in Congress
Pew reports that 21 out of the 73 new members of Congress are Catholic (13 new members are Baptist, out of a total of 34 who identify as Protestant). All three of the members who identify as unaffiliated (also known as “nones”) were elected last fall: Democrat Yassamin Ansari and Republican Abe Hamadeh, both of Arizona, and Emily Randall, a Democrat from Washington.
The Catholic newcomers to Congress this year include two senators: Democrat Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Republican Bernie Moreno of Ohio. The addition of Mr. Gallego and Mr. Moreno means that there are now seven Latino senators, a historical record. (At the same time, the number of Latinos in the House is dropping this year from 48 to 45.) But four Catholic senators will be missing: Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, who was narrowly defeated after serving three terms; Mike Braun of Indiana, who left the Senate to successfully run for governor; Bob Menendez of New Jersey, a three-term senator who resigned last summer after being convicted on corruption charges; and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who declined to run for re-election after serving two full terms.
The loss of these four senators is another sign that the “Catholic bloc” in Congress, such as it is, is mirroring the U.S. church itself in shifting toward the South and West and becoming less concentrated in the Northeast and Midwest.
