Religious blowback
Quote of note:
None of that has been lost on the Kerry campaign. "It's one thing for a bishop to tell Catholic politicians to refrain from taking Communion but quite a different thing when the church hierarchy begins to bring that pressure to all Catholics," says Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter. President Bush's campaign also sees the issue as producing a potential upside for Kerry. A top Bush strategist is concerned that it unsettles the moderate slice of the Catholic electorate that both parties are courting, puts Kerry in the sympathetic position of being a victim and—worst of all, as far as the Bush campaign is concerned—makes people aware that he is a Catholic. Indeed, one of the more striking findings of the TIME poll is that fully a third of Americans know Kerry's religion, which is slightly higher than the percentage who named some version of Protestantism when asked the religion of Bush.
One of the reasons the quote is notable is one of the CNN weekend anchorsmade half a reference to that last sentence. They said "only about 30%" of people knew Kerry's religion but made no mention that even fewer named Bush as a Protestant.
Anyway…
Battling the Bishops
Is Kerry Catholic enough? There's evidence the question is backfiring on his critics
By KAREN TUMULTY / WASHINGTON
Posted Sunday, June 13, 2004
It made only the faintest blip on John Kerry's campaign radar screen— or anyone else's—when an Archbishop from St. Louis, Mo., told a local television station four months ago that the Massachusetts Senator with a staunchly pro-choice voting record should "not present himself for Communion" in that archdiocese. In the frenzied days when Kerry strategists were gearing up for their first nationwide round of primaries, they were far more preoccupied with introducing Kerry to voters as a decorated Vietnam veteran, untangling him from the contradictions of his Senate voting record and figuring out how to dodge the inevitable "Massachusetts liberal" label. In all their internal discussions of the candidate's personal strengths and liabilities, a top adviser recalls, nobody ever even raised what was perhaps the most personal one of all: Kerry's Catholicism and the fact that he could become the first person of his faith since John F. Kennedy to run as the nominee of a major political party.
If that didn't seem like such a big deal then, it does now. A handful of other church leaders have since echoed Archbishop Raymond Burke's declaration that Catholic politicians who vote against church teachings are unfit for the sacrament that more than any other symbolizes a Catholic's ongoing connection to the faith. At least one of those leaders—Colorado Springs, Colo., Bishop Michael Sheridan—has even suggested that unrepentant Catholics who so much as vote for a pro-choice politician should stay away from the Communion rail.
…It is proving painful as well for the American Catholic hierarchy, which is still trying to re-establish its credibility after the sexual-abuse scandal that shook it in 2002. A deep divide has opened between a vast majority of Catholics and the newly vocal minority of bishops and priests who are publicly advocating a hard line with Catholic politicians—and even voters—who stray from church teachings. In a TIME poll conducted two weeks ago, three-quarters of Catholics said they disagree with the bishops who would deny the Eucharist to politicians who disagree with the church on abortion, and nearly 70% said the Catholic Church should not be trying to influence either the positions that Catholic politicians take on the issues or the way that Catholics vote. That held true even among majorities of Catholics who consider themselves very religious and who attend Mass at least once a week.
