The bishops speaking out will make a huge difference, I would say 12% among even nominal Catholics. Catholics are about 27% of the population, so this would be 3.24%, which will have double that effect if those votes are taken from Obama and go to McCain instead; thus 6.48%. I think McCain is behind further than this, based on my very informal survey. Within 1 hour of my home in outstate Minnesota, I never saw a single Clinton sign and only a couple bumper stickers --- and yet he twice won the election. Now, I drive through these same little towns and probably 40% are Obama, 55% McCain, and maybe 5% other.
I don't think many people realize how closely the decline in American society is tied to the auto-demolition since Vatican II in the 1960's of Latin-rite Catholicism. Recent sociological studies indicate that "vitality" among the Protestant groups is about the same as it was in 1960, or even a little higher. An example would be that Protestant attendance at weekly services is about the same, whereas Catholic Mass attendance has plummeted from 75% in 1960 to numbers today virtually the same as mainline Protestantism, which is probably about 25%. The Legion of Decency used to be strong enough that Hollywood paid some attention to it, but shortly after Vatican II the offices were abandoned, and supposedly a satanic church now operates from these same offices.
It is my opinion that white self-loathing is founded in European self-loathing of its Christian identity, which was fed by the self-demolition of Catholicism since the '60's. That is one of the biggest reasons I am on this site, because I see the abandonment by white European peoples from their historical destiny as destructive not only to whites, but to all humanity. The vortex created by our self-destruction would be so great as to destroy all.
The Russians and Ukraine are also key to this as a kind of slightly-distorted mirror image of the West, a people who can supply what we in the West now lack.
A series of liberal popes didn't help matters at all. Under the current pope, a remarkable transformation seems to be occuring where many bishops have suddenly grown backbones. But it is too late, and only about 4 would dare present a societal model that would confront the current Republican-Democrat fake system, nor does the pope.Edited by: Observer
