If you're going to have a rapist lead your party, why wouldn't you embrace the church that continues to conduct the largest criminal conspiracy in human history, covering up SA of children? (Note: I was raised in the church & confirmed at age 17 but am now an atheist).
Theres a weird subculture of fascist catholics. They are a result of attempt to mimic evangelicals and adopt a warrior culture. It's sick and an affront to god.
There's definitely a lot of chuds who have latched onto trying to be modern day crusaders, or think becoming Catholic is the first step to being a Warhammer 40k space marine.
It's because they think (questionably) that the Catholic Church is authentically anti-modern, and anti-Enlightenment. Basically if you wanted to reverse the French Revolution and everything else that followed
Comments
I may have personal feelings about this...
Recall that Bannon visited Pope Benedict after the election of Pope Francis, which I suspect was to convince him to re-take the Papacy.
It's a looser definition than "normal".