Amazing Gall: The Catholic Attack on Kerry
When I was at Catholic school, I wondered how our basketball players, who crossed themselves before every free throw, could lose to a public school. Wasn't God on the good guys' side?
George W. Bush isn't the type to entertain such doubts. In the same way he turned his drinking over to God on his 40th birthday, he turned his presidency over to him after Sept. 11. Asked whether he consulted his father about Iraq, he said he hadn't, preferring to consult with his "higher father." That's why Bush will never admit a mistake. If your initial decision is the result of divine guidance, inflexibility becomes an act of faith.
Bush's hotline to heaven is one reason the churchgoing vote has proved such an elusive prize for John Kerry. As a former altar boy who carries a rosary, Kerry might have thought he had a shot at the faithful. He needs them. Regular churchgoers are regular voters, and more than 70% of all voters want a president grounded in religion. In many swing states, the Catholic vote could make the difference. So last week, while Kerry went goose hunting in Ohio, Bush went Catholic hunting in Pennsylvania, going for a private, but well-publicized, visit with the archbishop of Philadelphia.
John F. Kennedy, the only Catholic to win the presidency, had to reassure the electorate that Catholicism would play no part in his public policy. Forty years later, running against an evangelical who claims to be guided by the Almighty, Kerry has to reassure the electorate that it would. Early on, Bush strategist Karl Rove enlisted Catholic academic Deal Hudson to advise the White House how to get more of the Catholic vote. When it turned out Bush would be facing a Catholic, Hudson set upon a brilliant scheme: Rather than appeal directly to the laity, he would get the bishops to condemn Kerry for being a secular Catholic at odds with the church on abortion.
When Hudson's multiple marriages ending in annulments and an earlier affair with a student became public, he quit advising Rove. But his vision lives on. Two weeks ago, at the request of a high-ranking Vatican official, an American expert on church doctrine wrote a letter condemning Kerry as a "heretic" who should be excommunicated. Just last week, the bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling, W. Va., sent letters to 86,000 Catholics warning that it would be a "grave evil" to vote for someone who condoned legal abortion. Several bishops said if Kerry came to Mass, they would deny him Communion.
