Abstract

Kerry and Communion

Is it a sin for Catholics to vote for former altar boy John Kerry? Bishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis has barred Kerry from accepting Communion, and bishops in Boston, New Orleans and Portland, Oregon, have suggested that it is inappropriate for Kerry and other Catholic candidates who support abortion and gay rights to partake in the central ritual of the church. Of course, millions of Catholics--including Kerry, Senate minority leader Tom Daschle and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi--are Democrats. Catholics, who make up roughly 26 percent of the voting-age population, favored Al Gore over George Bush by a 50-to-47 margin in 2000, according to exit polls. But the charge that Kerry is a "bad Catholic" and that it is morally wrong to vote for him, or for other Democrats who are social liberals, could be a factor in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Mexico and Arizona, which have substantial Catholic populations. Thus, when bishops go after Kerry and other pro-choice Democrats, they are playing political hardball. Critics of Archbishop Chaput, Bishop Sheridan and other conservative Catholic leaders say that by focusing single-mindedly on abortion and neglecting issues of war and poverty, anti-Kerry churchmen fail not only to do justice to the whole body of church teaching but also abandon the principles enunciated by America's only Catholic President, John Kennedy, who declared in 1960, "I believe in an America...where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace, or the public acts of its officials."