Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island says he has officially switched his voter registration to the Republican party because the Democratic Party is just too pro-abortion.
“The a-ha moment for me was the 2012 Democratic National Convention. It was just awful,” Tobin, 65, told the Rhody Young Republicans during an event at the Holy Rosary Band Society Hall in Providence. The leader of Rhode Island’s roughly 621,000 Catholics said he had been a registered Democrat since 1969.
“I just said I can’t be associated structurally with that group, in terms of abortion and NARAL [Pro-Choice America] and Planned Parenthood and [the] same-sex marriage agenda and cultural destruction I saw going on,” Tobin said. “I just couldn’t do it anymore.”
Tobin switched his affiliation to the Republican Party effective Jan. 5, according to voter records reviewed by WPRI.com. He is registered to vote from a house on the 140-acre grounds of the diocese’s Gate of Heaven Cemetery in East Providence.
“Personally I think the abortion issue is really key, but it’s not the only issue, and there’s a balance there,” the bishop said, though he called opposition to abortion “the linchpin, the foundation, around which all our discussion of human life has to be built.”
CLICK LIKE IF YOU’RE PRO-LIFE!
Townhall columnist Daniel Doherty wonders how any Catholic could remain a Democrat, especially a bishop:
This must have been a long time coming, no? How a Catholic priest could ever support a president, let alone a political party, that increasingly supports abortion-on-demand is beyond me …
Of course this is not to say that every self-professed Catholic is pro-life or supports traditional marriage. Many do not. But the truth is that the Democratic Party has shifted so far to the Left in recent years on the issue of abortion that pro-life Democrats are harder to come by. There’s simply no room for Bishop Tobin (or any Catholic leader or lay person) in the Democratic Party who is fully committed to defending the unborn. The Eunice Kennedys of the world are a dying breed. And Catholic leaders, it seems, are finally starting to realize this.
