| Protestant Bush’s
papal plea is an act of desperation
Forty-four years ago, then-presidential candidate John F. Kennedy,
a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, went before an assembly
of Southern Baptist ministers in Texas to address what was then
politely called the “religious question.”
Specifically, the question he had to face was whether he, as a potential
Catholic president, would owe his allegiance to the national interest,
as he understood it, or to the pope, church doctrine or the church
hierarchy.
Kennedy’s words remain quite relevant today.
“But let me stress again,” he told the assembled ministers,
“that these are my views — for, contrary to common newspaper
usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for president [but the candidate]
who happens also to be a Catholic.
“I do not speak for my church on public matters — and
the church does not speak for me.
“Whatever issue may come before me as president, if I should
be elected — on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling
or any other subject — I will make my decision in accordance
with these views, in accordance with what my conscience tells me
to be in the national interest, and without regard to outside religious
pressure or dictate. And no power or threat of punishment could
cause me to decide otherwise.”
It’s amazing how times change and how roles get reversed.
This week we witnessed the odd spectacle of an evangelical Protestant
president from Texas seeking to goad the Catholic Church hierarchy
into dictating positions to and punishing another Roman Catholic
senator from Massachusetts because he doesn’t toe the line
on issues such as abortion rights, gay marriage and stem-cell research.
When the president met with the pope last week, he also met with
one of the pontiff’s chief advisers, Cardinal Angelo Sodano,
the Vatican secretary of state. According to The National Catholic
Reporter, he told Sodano that “not all the American bishops
are with me” on cultural issues and further urged the Vatican
to nudge the American bishops toward greater “activism”
on these issues.
Now, out of context it’s not immediately clear what such “activism”
might mean.
But perhaps the following will clarify matters.
The question of whether pro-choice politicians (particularly John
Kerry) should be denied Communion has been roiling the country’s
Catholic bishops of late. A majority of Catholic bishops appear
to oppose such a move; an overwhelming majority of American Catholics
oppose the idea, according to a recently released poll.
And even conservative cardinals at the Vatican are said to have
recommended
caution.
This week, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is gathering
in Englewood, Colo., and one key item on the agenda will be to arrive
at some guidelines or uniform approach on this issue of denying
Communion to Catholic politicians. Washington’s Archbishop
Theodore E. McCarrick heads the task force on this question, and
he has said publicly that he is “uncomfortable” with
the idea of denying Communion to Catholic officeholders.
Now, a decision that leans toward placing a sanction on Kerry would
certainly cause problems for his candidacy — if in no other
way but as an embarrassment or nuisance that would keep him from
pressing the issues central to his campaign. But others have noted
that if every Catholic politician who publicly dissented from any
aspect of Church teaching were denied Communion — death penalty,
the Iraq war, contraception, etc. — there’s no telling
where it would stop.
So one of Karl Rove’s chief conservative Catholic allies,
the editor of a small-circulation publication called The Crisis,
named Deal W. Hudson, has a solution.
“Once you open this door,” he recently told The
Washington Post, “pretty soon no one would be taking
Communion.” So what’s the answer? In the words of the
Post: “Hudson said he believes the denial of Communion
should begin, and end, with Kerry. Even better, he said, would be
if priests would read letters from the pulpit denouncing the senator
from Massachusetts ‘whenever and wherever he campaigns as
a Catholic.’”
The Rove-Hudson agenda seems as clear as it is highly focused.
Little the president does on political matters doesn’t get
a sign-off from Rove. So when President Bush complains to Vatican
officials that “not all the American bishops are with me”
and urges them to push the bishops toward greater “activism,”
just what do you think he’s getting at?
And while you’re thinking that over, is this something an
American president — where we still have something called
the separation of church and state — has any business doing?
In my book, it’s just more cynical desperation from 1600 Pennsylvania
Ave.
But I’ll let you decide. |
