Will John Kerry Beat His Bishop(s)?

Carl Kozlowski

'Never safe' John O'Neill is a conservative, by-the-book Roman Catholic who sports "Rock For Life" T-shirts and enthusiastically lets you know when he thinks something is "kickass."  Three years ago, as the head of the citizen group Californians Against Planned Parenthood, he helped lead a successful campaign to keep a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic from being opened in his hometown of Monrovia.

But O'Neill didn't stop there. He went on an even more unusual campaign: a personal effort to prove that pro-choice Catholic politicians were receiving Holy Communion at Masses throughout the state.  Believing that they and the people who served them the Catholic sacrament were in violation of church rules, O'Neill grabbed his camera, tracked down politicos like former Gov. Gray Davis and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at their churches, and snapped photos as they ate the Communion host and drank the Communion wine.  He then super-sized the photos and placed them on giant poster boards to carry at anti-abortion protests and mailed the regular-size photos to Los Angeles Cardinal-Archbishop Roger Mahony, asking him to order churches not to serve the pro-choice politicians Communion.

Mahony announced that the churches under his rule would not deny such politicians Communion, ruling that changes in their votes would come through dialogue rather than public embarrassment. But O'Neill's efforts, and Mahony's response, underscore the battle that's secretly raging across America for the votes of Roman Catholics, America's largest religious denomination with 65 million avowed members.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) -- the nation's Roman Catholic leadership organization composed of 414 bishops -- feels a responsibility each election cycle to issue statements on a broad array of moral and social issues.  And because the bishops take conservative stands on "life issues" such as abortion, euthanasia, and federal funding for Third World contraceptive programs while espousing mostly liberal views against the death penalty, the war in Iraq, and the right of workers to unionize, politicians of all stripes try to find a way to look good in the bishops' eyes.

Because of Kerry's abortion-issue voting history -- which one Democratic senator's scorecard listed as consisting of only an 11% anti-abortion record -- the USCCB has come out strong, issuing statements and letters to Catholic parishes nationwide.

At the same time, 24 pro-choice Catholic politicians, led by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), are fighting back -- issuing their own report highlighting their voting records on other issues important to the USCCB, including labor rights and opposition to the war in Iraq and the death penalty. The idea is to show that many of the pro-choice senators actually follow the bishops' wishes more than half the time while the senators who have the best anti-abortion records often score remarkably low across most or all of the other issues.

"Unfortunately, recent media attention has focused on one or two priorities of the Catholic Church while obscuring others," said Durbin in June as he issued his scorecard. "This has made it more difficult for Catholic voters to understand the full range of issues that have been identified by the USCCB as priorities for public life."

Using this measure of voting records, John Kerry suddenly isn't tallied as a man who agreed with the bishops' pro-life views in only 11% of his abortion-related votes, but rather as a man who leads the Senate with a 60.1% record in favor of the bishops' issues overall.

But some bishops, like Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis, take the arguments against pro-choice politicians even further.  In a June 24 interview with St. Louis radio station KMOX, Burke stated that Catholics sin by voting for candidates who favor abortion. Furthermore, he added that such a voter would have to experience "true repentance" and absolution by going to confession before they could receive Communion themselves.

Bishop Michael Sheridan of the Colorado Springs diocese said that voters even need to "recant" their votes before they could receive Communion.  Such loaded language could be enough to spark fear in at least a tiny percentage of Catholics to stay home on election day, or to vote Bush on the single issue of abortion while disagreeing with him on many others.

Other Catholic officials downplay the level of attention put to Kerry's abortion stance.

"The church teaches that every person should be a contributing member of society for the good of society as much as able and that involves being involved in the civic life of one's country, educating oneself on issues and doing your civic duty to vote," said Tod Tamberg, spokesman for the Los Angeles Archdiocese. "That's quite a bit different from telling people who to vote for. But we do offer plenty of information to help Catholics understand the teaching of the church, especially on moral issues and to help them pick their way."

Will it matter in the end?

According to Frances Kissling, the head of the 10,000-member lay advocacy group Catholics for Free Choice (CFFC), the effort by bishops is "an unprecedented level of attack on Catholic politicians." However, in a poll commissioned by the CFFC that surveyed 2,239 Catholics, results showed that 70% of Catholics say the views of bishops are not important to them in deciding whom to vote for -- and only 15% of frequent churchgoers said the bishops' views are "very" important in deciding for whom to vote for.

Meanwhile, 67% of Catholic voters stated they are opposed to abortion in most or all cases.  The CFFC poll is no knee-jerk liberal survey. Seventy percent of respondents were found to support the death penalty, 74% supported public school prayer, and 56% supported receiving tuition vouchers for help in paying private or Catholic-school tuition with tax money.

So will bullying bishops exert their force, or will Catholics vote the way they survey? A contrarian view suggests a worldwide religious power institution like the Catholic Church that has existed for 2,000 years didn't get that strong by bending to the whims of every cultural shift that arose from its members.

According to Joseph Starrs of the 300,000-member pro-life organization American Life League, the church's stand on abortion and the current campaign is the very measure of its earthly purpose.

"The church and any institution has a duty and a right to stand up for those people who aren't able to stand up for themselves, and that's the whole reason the Catholic Church and many other people of good will stand up for the unborn," said Starrs.

"At heart, it's not even a religious issue but a civil rights issue -- the right to life. To those who say that the church is sticking its nose into politics, every church and every citizen has a right to speak up for civil rights and that's what this is about."

In the end, all the sound and fury will come down to a matter of conscience -- that of each Catholic voter stepping into the election booth and deciding which way to wrangle over the issue.  And come Nov. 2, those millions of private moments could decide the next four years of our future.

Carl Kozlowski is a regular Arriviste contributor and the co-author of the satirical self-help guide Life: The Final Frontier. (Pick this up!) He has also performed standup coast to coast and written for the Chicago Tribune, New City Weekly in Chicago, Chicago Reader and Pasadena Weekly.