On my way back from Mass recently, I walked past Alex Padilla, the uber left-wing California senator, coming out of St. Joseph’s on Capitol Hill. The incident was just the latest reminder for me that the Catholic Church is increasingly functioning as the new mainline church in American politics where left, right, and center gather to receive Christ. St. Joseph’s is located about a block away from the conservative Heritage Foundation, and a friend of mine has spotted the leader of the centrist Make America Healthy Again movement, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., at the parish as well.

The development of the Catholic Church as a haven for all members of the political divide is a fulfillment of what Alexis de Tocqueville said about American Catholics, who “constitute the most republican and the most democratic class of citizens which exists in the United States.”

Since Tocqueville’s time, Catholics have percolated throughout important Washington institutions. A majority of the justices on the Supreme Court from both Democrat and Republican appointments are Catholics. They include Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Clarence Thomas, and Chief Justice John Roberts. …

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