The catholic "consistent life ethic" and attitudes toward capital punishment and welfare reform

American Catholic Bishops have advocated a combination of issue positions t hat is unique within American political culture. The "consistent life ethic " combines opposition to abortion with liberal stances on other issues conc eptualized as life-affirming. Based on evidence that very few people hold t his combination of attitudes, previous researchers have concluded that the Bishops' advocacy has had little or no success (Kenski and Lockwood 1988; C leghom 1986; Jelen 1990). We argue, however, that success of consistent lif e advocacy is best evaluated in terms of the strength of association betwee n attitudes toward abortion and other issues. Furthermore, most previous re search has failed to analyze Catholics separately from other Americans, eve n though lay Catholics are the advocacy's central target. Using data from t he 1996 National Election Studies, we analyze the relationship between atti tudes on abortion and two other issues. capital punishment and welfare refo rm. We find that abortion opposition strongly predicts capital punishment o pposition among Catholics, but also among Mainline Protestants. Among Catho lics, this relationship is strongest for frequent Mass attendees. Abortion opposition among frequently-attending Catholics also predicts opposition to the welfare "child cap." Contrary to most other scholars, but in accord wi th Kelly and Kudlac (2000), ive conclude it is likely that consistent life advocacy has affected attitudes of some Catholics.