Defending and Explaining Catholicism In and Out of (Voting) Season

A conversation with Karl Keating, founder and president of Catholic Answers

IgnatiusInsight.com: What made you and the folks of Catholic Answers decide to create the Voter’s Guide For Serious Catholics? What was your goal?

Karl Keating: The goal was to help Catholics apply the Church’s moral teaching when they entered the voting booth. Over the years we’ve received thousands of e-mails indicating that there was confusion among serious Catholics—those who are trying to be good Catholics--and so we wanted to give them the Church’s teaching in a way that was very usable. We didn’t see anything out there that they could use, that would help them narrow down the issues when it came to a particular proposition or candidate.

IgnatiusInsight.com: What has been the response to the Voter’s Guide so far in general and by bishops? How many do you expect will be distributed by the time the election takes place?

KK: Among lay people there have been two distinct reactions. Catholics who are apparently knowledgeable in their faith are welcoming the Voter’s Guide and giving us compliments and praise for it. Catholics who are not adhering completely to the Church’s teaching are complaining about it. This morning, for example, I received four or five e-mails from Catholics saying, "How dare you tell me how to vote!" They don’t accept the Church’s teachings on the five non-negotiables. The think they can be good Catholics while ignoring Church teachings. We receive more and more of those responses as the Guide goes out, but that’ fine. The Guide is putting nominal Catholics on the spot and forcing them to think about what the Church teaches.

I’ve not heard from bishops directly. Some bishops, such as Archbishop Burke in St. Louis, have endorsed the use of the Voter’s Guide in their dioceses. No bishop has publicly criticized or "disendorsed" the Voter’s Guide, but some lesser diocesan officials have protested the use of the Guide. For instance, the legal counsel for one Midwestern diocese wrote a letter in opposition to the Guide, but he was hardly a disinterested party. For three elections running he has given the maximum allowable financial contribution to a pro-abortion Congressman, a man who has received a 100% rating from NARAL. I presume the lawyer interpreted the Guide as working against the Congressman he supports.

The Voter’s Guide is reaching a lot more people than we initially expected. We estimate it will be seen by fifteen million people by Election Day. I’ve received lots of calls from major newspapers, such as the New York Times and the Washington Times, wanting to know if we’d like to place a full-page ad in their pages. The New York Times said that a full-page ad is normally $138,756 but that it would give it to us for only $42,000 [laughs].

IgnatiusInsight.com: Catholic Answers has been criticized for the Voter’s Guide. What are some of the common criticisms?

KK: As I said, some people say, "How dare you tell me how to vote!" Others claim that we leave out important issues that have equal weight with the five non-negotiables, issues such as helping the poor, the death penalty, and economic issues. They’re mistaken, but in their minds they have those issues on the same level as the non-negotiables. We’re also told that the Guide is an attempt to endorse a particular candidate over another. But it isn’t.

IgnatiusInsight.com: You’ve worked in apologetics for more than two decades. What is the state of Catholic apologetics in North America now compared to the mid-1980s? Are critics of apologetics mostly based in the world of academia?

KK: Catholic Answers was incorporated in 1982, and this year marks twenty-five years that I’ve worked in apologetics. Back when I started, apologetics hardly existed. I was not aware of any apologetic groups in the country. For many years Catholic Answers was a one-man operation. Today there are dozens of apologetics groups, some regional and some national. So apologetics is much more widely done than a quarter century ago, and the stigma that used to be attached to apologetics has largely been overcome.

I don’t think the academic world is particularly opposed to apologetics, although to some professors who are nominal Catholics apologetics always will be considered anathema. The most interesting switch of attitudes has been among clergy. They were more opposed to apologetics in the early days than they are today. Opposition today comes from those who are bothered by the success of the New Apologetics because that success points to their own failure, especially the failure to win converts. What these people do is endorse apologetics, then redefine what apologetics is, and then eliminate the kind of apologetics that works. For example, Fr. Thomas Rausch, who has been very critical of me and of the New Apologetics, admits that among his students he never has had a convert.

IgnatiusInsight.com: What have been the biggest challenges you’ve faced as an apologist and as head of an apostolate over the years?

KK: There are two: personnel and money. Good apologists are hard to find, whether they are people who can go out and do speaking or who work in the office. They need to have a good knowledge of the Faith and an ability to convey it in a winning style, with humility and depth. There are people I’d like to have on staff, but we don’t have the funds to bring them on. I could double our apologetics staff if we had the money.

IgnatiusInsight.com: What changes and new challenges do you think apologists will face in the next ten to twenty years?

KK: There will be more of an emphasis on two groups: the unchurched and nominal Catholics. Catholic Answers started with answering Fundamentalists and their attacks on the Church. We weren’t so much trying to help Catholics come to a right understanding of the Faith as we were trying to help them defend the Church from attacks. That work continues, but it is proportionately smaller than it was years ago. We are working more to reach non-Catholics and nominal Catholics, using the Voter’s Guide, Catholic Answers Live, and other means. We want to be more in an offense and less in a defensive mode. We will be telling people the country needs to be Catholic and that the Catholic Faith is the solution to our problems--the only real solution, as others won’t hold up.

IgnatiusInsight.com: If you could give two or three pieces of advice to those interested in apologetics, what would they be?

KK: First, read voraciously. Read the books I list at the end of Catholicism and Fundamentalism. Then read even more widely. Second, start doing apologetics at the parish level. You need to be put on the spot; you need to go public in some way. Finally, if you are successful at both of those, call me!

IgnatiusInsight.com: Are you currently working on any books or projects?

KK: [Laughs] My progress is so slow that if I told people I was working on a particular book they might end up thinking that it will come out this millennium, so I’d better not say anything for attribution.

Related Links:

- Voter’s Guide For Serious Catholics (Catholic Answers)

- "Catholic Answers vs. Catholic 'Choice'" (Ignatius Insight.com)

- The American Catholic Voter: 200 Years of Political Impact by George J. Marlin (Ignatius Press)