c. 2004 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The last time a Catholic was a contender for commander in chief, minimum wage was $1 an hour, Elvis was on top of the pop charts and Barbie was brand new.

Before John F. Kennedy, the last such presidential contender was Alfred E. Smith in 1928, who was soundly defeated by Herbert Hoover. For both men, religious affiliation proved politically painful as they faced critics who claimed the pope would somehow determine policy if they were elected.

Today, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a Roman Catholic who once considered entering the priesthood, confronts questions about his faith and its impact on his political decisions. But where Kennedy took care to tell Houston pastors he would make decisions “in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates,” Kerry sometimes finds himself criticized for instances in which his political policies don’t line up with church teachings.

“What was important for Kennedy was to kind of make it clear that he wasn’t under the thumb of the church, and now it seems to be that Kerry has to demonstrate that he’s not on the outs with his church,” said Mark Silk, director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Connecticut.

Kerry is not the only candidate who differs with his church’s leaders. President George W. Bush, a United Methodist, parts company with some of his denomination’s positions or leaders on issues like the death penalty and the war in Iraq.

John C. Green, author of “The Diminishing Divide: Religion’s Changing Role in American Politics,” said Catholic leaders and laity are “making a big issue out of Kerry’s differences with the official position of the church.”

That internal dispute, Green said, brings Kerry’s situation to the media’s attention.

Green also noted fundamental differences between Protestants and Catholics.

“Policy positions of Methodists are just the opinions of Methodist leaders and in no sense binding on individual Methodists,” said Green, who also works as a political scientist at the University of Akron in Ohio. “In contrast, the policy positions of the Catholic hierarchy are not just their opinions, but the official position of the church and binding on all Catholics.”

While a lot of Methodists may not agree with Bush, Green said, adding that many also do, Methodists would “never argue that he is violating (official) teaching.”

Bush is not the only United Methodist in the race. His running mate, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the Democratic vice presidential contender, Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., are also United Methodists.

Perhaps the most problematic religious issue for Kerry is abortion, a practice that he has said he opposes personally but supports politically. The juxtaposition of his personal faith and political practice has sparked debate.

That debate has been fueled by statements made by the Vatican’s orthodoxy watchdog, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. In a letter to American bishops, the man who heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith penned two sentences that have been subject to diverse interpretations:

“A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.”

The Italian press interpreted the quote about “cooperation in evil” as a directive that bishops should withhold Communion to politicians who support abortion rights. But Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington rejected that interpretation and some Catholic Democrats have seen the statement as giving them freedom to vote for an abortion rights supporter for reasons other than abortion.

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Even within a single state, such as Alabama, Catholic clergy disagree over Kerry, his Catholicism and Communion.

Asked what he would do if Kerry came to him for Communion, Archbishop Oscar H. Lipscomb of Mobile, Ala. said, “I will not tell you because I wait till John Kerry comes.” Lipscomb said he has banned those with active memberships in the Ku Klux Klan from receiving the Eucharist.

Noting the bishops’ statement regarding politicians and the Eucharist in a June 25 column in The Catholic Week, Lipscomb wrote: “The highly publicized action of denying Communion over this issue requires moral certitude of the interior disposition of one’s conscience before God as well as a public flaunting of an indisposed conscience in approaching the Eucharist.”

The Rev. William James, pastor of St. Patrick Catholic Church in Robertsdale, Ala., said he would give the Massachusetts senator Communion “in a second.”

“ … I don’t think that we should limit the sacraments,” he said. “And the people have a right to the sacraments just as a priest or a bishop or a pope has a right to sacraments. And we should leave those conscience issues to God and to the individual conscience.”

The Rev. Christopher J. Viscardi, chairman of the theology department at Spring Hill College, a Jesuit school in Mobile, said he, too, would give Kerry Communion.

“I personally think that refusing Communion as a way of excluding politicians who do not vote on abortion legislation according to the teachings of the church for reasons that they understand to be in line with their conscience, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Viscardi said. “In Sen. Kerry’s case, I respect his conscience. I don’t agree with his way of interpreting things.”

While the debate about Catholic politicians and Communion has centered on abortion, that topic isn’t all that concerns Catholics in this election year.

“Issues that involve life, human life, certainly are more important, which means certainly you start with abortion,” said the Rev. William J. Skoneki, pastor of St. Dominic Catholic Church in Mobile. “You’re going to deal with issues like capital punishment. You’re going to deal with then the issues about providing some quality of life, social justice and such, that come with those kinds of things.”

Skoneki said he has “always been more comfortable with Democratic politicians’ approaches to social justice issuesâÂ?¦,” but felt that “with regard to moral issues, the Democratic Party has left me.”

Not everyone, however, is interested in how well the candidates reflect their church’s policies.

The Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Washington-based Interfaith Alliance and a pastor at a Baptist church in Louisiana, said he would like people to focus on how candidates might serve the nation’s common good as civil leaders _ not religious ones.

“We are not electing a religious leader,” Gaddy said. “We’re electing someone charged with defending the Constitution and acting in the best interest of this nation.”

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