The threat alone is crippling. My grandmother, who divorced her alcoholic husband, had to sit in her pew while others climbed over her to get to the Communion rail. She was a pariah in the parish, so stricken by her exclusion that she eventually stopped going to church altogether.
Kerry supporters among the Catholic hierarchy have mostly remained silent. It's easy to see why. The gentle Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington said he felt "uncomfortable" with what some of his fellow bishops were doing. For his trouble, he got hit with an ad in the Washington Times with a picture of Jesus being crucified under the headline, "Cardinal McCarrick, Are You Comfortable Now?"
Following a decade during which the bishops squandered much of their authority mishandling their own moral crisis, this would seem the wrong moment for them to go into politics. Their lawyers must have figured out that you can lose your tax-exempt status for endorsing a candidate, but not for excommunicating one. In the process, they've become the worst kind of cafeteria Catholics, choosing abortion while ignoring church doctrine on social justice, the death penalty (as governor of Texas, Bush led the Western world in executions) and war (on which God has sent a distinctly different signal to the pope). By singularly obsessing over abortion, the church runs the risk of becoming just one more special interest group, the NRA of the soul.
To fight the fatwah, the reticent Kerry has tried a little emoting. Last Sunday, Kerry quoted Scripture, sang "Amazing Grace" and swayed at a church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. For once, he pushed back against those who say he's sinning: "I love my church. I respect the bishops, but I respectfully disagree."
But Kerry can't go prayer-to-prayer with Bush. Catholics follow the warning of Jesus, as reported by Matthew: "When thou prayest, enter into thy closet." Not to mention the instruction to render unto Caesar and God, separately. If politicians were exempt from these strictures, no one wrote it down.
It may be that the bishops can shepherd the flock into Republican pastures. Their message is one that instills the deepest fear of all: While Bush and Dick Cheney go around saying we'll all be killed by terrorists if we vote for Kerry, the bishops claim we'll all go to hell. This may help explain why late Kerry-leaning deciders are having such trouble making up their minds.
