Donald Trump may or may not have won the Catholic vote in 2016 – polling analysts are surprisingly divided over the question. They are divided too over whether there really is such a thing as the Catholic vote. There are certainly millions of Catholic voters, however: one out of every five Americans is Catholic. Trump’s success in 2020, or the success of his eventual Democratic opponent, will depend in great part on those voters.

But while Democrats have a clear-cut strategy for appealing to Catholics, namely by focusing on the burgeoning ranks of recent Catholic immigrants, Trump and the Republican Party he has remade appear at first glance a hard sell to those in communion with Rome. He has appointed judges and justices who appear to be inclined to uphold an originalist understanding of the Constitution, which may lead to the overturning of Roe v Wade if the Supreme Court ever has occasion to revisit its reasoning. Yet Trump is far from a social conservative’s ideal, and Catholic conservatives in particular may wonder whether Trump’s vision for the Republican Party is both good and feasible.