Kerry, Candidate and Catholic, Creates Uneasiness for Church

[kskiska]

Senator John Kerry's support for abortion rights and stem cell research has prompted discussions among Roman Catholic bishops and Vatican officials over how to respond to a presidential candidate who professes Catholicism while taking stands contrary to church teaching.

The issue has been a topic in the Vatican this week as bishops from Florida, Georgia and North and South Carolina hold long-scheduled meetings with the pope and Vatican officials on a variety of issues.

"They are basically struggling with this, as we are," said one visiting American, Bishop John H. Ricard of Pensacola-Tallahassee, the chairman of a task force expected to produce guidelines for American bishops on relations with Catholic politicians.

Most recently, Bishop Ricard said, the bishops were troubled by Mr. Kerry's vote against a bill that makes it a crime to harm a fetus during an assault on a pregnant woman. President Bush signed the legislation on Thursday, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops immediately issued a news release applauding him.

Bishop Ricard said in Rome: "Of course we were disappointed with Kerry's voting against it. We were disappointed with others who voted against it, but as Catholic lawmakers we hold them to a higher standard."

more…
http://nytimes.com/2004/04/02/politics/campaign/02KERR.html?hp

[David Dunham]

1. Kerry will still get more Catholic votes than Bush.

[SharonAnn]

2. McCloskey is the one who's "off the reservation"

He's unbelievable. Thinks that any Catholic who disagrees with him should leave the Church, estimates it would mean that about 80% of the members should leave. Says that Catholics who disagree are called "Protestants". Never has occurred to him that he's the one who's wrong.

The Rev. John McCloskey, the director of the Catholic Information Center in Washington and a member of the conservative organization Opus Dei, said, "Senator Kerry considers himself a Catholic, but on issues that are fundamental in terms of Catholic morality, he appears to be off the reservation."

[Old and In the Way]

3. The Church, like many governments today, has been infected by

the RW. This is not the church of liberation in the 70s. Where are they on Iraq or Venezuala? In the pockets of the RW political fascists.

Perhaps they should pick up a mirror and look at their own collective soul and the problems they have within.

[cap]

4. bishops are cafeteria Catholics...

don't condemn pro-death penalty catholics, catholics who supported the war in Iraq (contrary to the Pope) and most importantly, do not heed the Pope's injunction that "government has a moral obligation to take care of the poor".

[IndianaGreen]

5. I have been a critic of many of Kerry's positions, but this is not one...

I have been a critic of many of Kerry's positions, but this is not one of them. During the 1960 Democratic primaries, John Fitzgerald Kennedy faced the issue of his Catholism head-on.

You can read and hear President Kennedy's remarks on this issue here:

Address of Senator John F. Kennedy to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association
Rice Hotel, Houston, Texas
September 12, 1960

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish--where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source--where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials--and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew--or a Quaker--or a Unitarian--or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim- -but tomorrow it may be you--until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end--where all men and all churches are treated as equal--where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice--where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind--and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

http://www.cs.umb.edu/jfklibrary/j091260.htm