c. 2004 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Sen. John Kerry, who has come under fire from Catholic bishops for his support of abortion rights, is the senator who most frequently votes in line with the church’s legislative priorities, according to a report issued by Senate Democrats on Wednesday (June 2).

The report, compiled by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., gave the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee an overall score of 60.9 percent, the highest of all 24 Catholics in the Senate.

On domestic policy Kerry scored 95 percent, along with 50 percent on international policy but just 11 percent on “pro-life” issues, which surveyed votes on abortion, the death penalty and contraception.

Durbin ranked just behind Kerry at 60.5 percent, and Ted Kennedy, the other Catholic Democrat from Massachusetts, ranked third at 60.4 percent.

“John Kerry has been a man of faith his entire life and today’s scorecard is another indication that shows how he has put his beliefs into action,” said Mara Vanderslice, director of religious outreach for Kerry’s campaign.

The report looked at 24 of the 101 issues that were identified by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops as legislative priorities in the current Congress, as well as a 2002 vote authorizing war in Iraq.

Issues included, among others, an increase in the minimum wage, labor policy, immigration reform, capital punishment and abortion. Senators were scored based on their support of or opposition to legislation in which the bishops had staked a position.

“None of us can expect to measure up perfectly against the church’s full agenda of political engagement,” the report said.

“What Catholic politicians can hope to see, however, is an attempt to evaluate their work comprehensively, not on the basis of only a narrow slice of the church’s teachings.”

Overall, Republicans scored lowest on a host of issues in Catholic social teaching that Democrats say have been overshadowed by an preoccupation with abortion.

Only three GOP senators _ Mike DeWine of Ohio, Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois and Sam Brownback of Kansas _ scored better than 50 percent, compared to 11 Democrats who voted with the church at least 50 percent of the time.

Sen. Rick Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican who is one of the most conservative and outspoken Catholics in the Senate, dismissed Durbin’s survey as election-year politics.

“It’s clear to me that this is a selective attempt to pick out selective issues to make John Kerry and a whole host of liberal Democrats … look like faithful Catholics,” said Santorum, who scored 40.8 percent in Durbin’s survey.

A spokesman for the bishops’ conference said the report had not been studied and declined to comment. The report included a note that it was not “endorsed by (the bishops’ conference) and does not speak for the church.”

The report, the second in as many months issued by Catholic Democrats on Capitol Hill, is the latest salvo in a public scuffle between Catholic politicians and some bishops who would censure them for deviations from church teaching.

A senior Vatican cardinal has said Kerry should not receive Communion, and four U.S. bishops have said he would be turned away in their dioceses. More than a dozen others _ including Kerry’s own archbishop, Sean O’Malley of Boston _ have urged dissenting politicians to abstain from Communion.

Durbin said such threats “cross the line in terms of what most Catholic Americans find acceptable” in the interaction between church and state.

Still, church conservatives insist there is no wiggle room on abortion, and say it is improper to equate it with other policy positions taken by public officials or the church hierarchy.

“It’s like a guy who is arrested for killing his wife, and then he says, `Stop, wait a minute, listen to all the good things I’ve done,”’ said the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the conservative journal First Things.

“You have to stop him and say we’re talking about something that is intrinsically everywhere and always wrong.”

A similar scorecard compiled by House Democratic Catholics was not publicly released. On May 10, 48 Democratic Catholics in the House wrote to Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington to complain that threats of denied Communion “bring great harm to the church.”

“We would remind those who would deny us participation in the … Eucharist that we are sworn to represent all Americans, not just Catholics,” the House members said.

McCarrick is heading a task force of bishops to determine the best ways to handle dissenting politicians. Susan Gibbs, a spokeswoman for the cardinal, said he received Durbin’s report but declined to comment on it.

“We’re not focused on partisan politics, we’re focused on teaching our faith, obviously starting with the primary right, which is the right to life, with the other issues flowing from that,” she said.

DEA/PH END ECKSTROM