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As a Catholic I can tell you that almost everyone I know in the church embraces war and the death penalty while voting almost exclusively for the "pro-life" candidate.
There is an assumption that someone on death row or facing off against America in a war must "have it coming" somehow. If you bring up collateral damage they tell you that it was the fault of their government for picking a fight with the US, we bear no responsibility. If you bring up inmates freed on DNA they shrug it off. The fetus, meanwhile, is viewed as an innocent person.
Upon reflection of K-HS Catholic education, the efforts to brainwash me on this topic have no parallels in my life. I sat in HS classrooms with pictures of aborted fetuses on the walls. We saw videos of bloody operations, we saw dramas where women who had abortions lived out lives of depression and worthlessness, their guilt was overwhelming. We were told that if we ever got a girl pregnant we had a 'right' to father the baby - even if the mother did not want the baby we should force her to have it through legal means if she did not see the light. It seems amazing, but it was commonplace.
And this happened in Philadelphia, PA - so you can imagine what goes on in red state America.
And here we come back to Obama's comments about poeople 'clinging' to things they can change. The average Amercian does not think they can stop a war, and that doing so is an unpatriotic act. They don't concern themselves with death row inmates, who tend to be unlike them demographically. But they see that fight against abortion as winnable, and thus worthy of the effort. It is change they can make reality.
The Vatican is realistic about what it can get from American Catholics, and we do pay a lot of the bills. So they've been pretty hands-off on the war and death penalty when push comes to shove.
