So in the Kerry case you think the Church Hierarchy members were just making noise to hear themselves talk?
Because it was John Kerry?
No. They made the noise in order to get the word out that the official diocesan position on Kerry was “don’t vote for him”. However, that doesn’t mean they expected or even hoped that the laity was going to march in lockstep to that tune. They would, I’m sure, like the laity to do so, but I doubt they were deluded enough to believe it was going to happen.
Miller has a good point, as well. Kerry did more damage to Kerry than the Church did. You can’t possibly look at the Kerry campaign in '04 and seriously suggest that the bishops talking him down was the definitive factor in driving the Catholic vote away. I think the Catholic vote being down was more a side-effect of Kerry’s godawful campaign than anything in itself.
The thing that bothers me about the Kerry thing is the indication that the Bishops care more about possible damage to the Church than actual damage to the US.
Having a prominent figure such as Kerry as President be openly in violation of the Church’s policy seems more dangerous to them than turning the US over to someone who has demonstrated incompetency over a four year term.
And, if you look at the figures, the Catholic vote wasn’t really driven away. Here’s a look at the Catholic vote in 2004 by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, at Georgetown University (in PDF)
http://cara.georgetown.edu/Press112204.pdf
It points out that:
- 63% of Catholics voted in the general election (as opposed to 57% of Catholics in 2000, and a general voter turnout of 50%)
- About 52% voted for Bush and 47% voted for Kerry (as compared to the general public, in which 51% voted for Bush and 48% for Kerry)
- Of those Catholics who said they attended Mass at least once a week, 56% voted for Bush, and 53% voted for Kerry. Of those who said they attended less frequently, 50% voted for Bush and 49% voted for Kerry.
- Catholics voted similarly to the general population in all but 9 states. Of those 7 states, although Iowa, New Mexico, and Nevada went to Bush, Catholics leaned toward Kerry. Although Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and New York went to Kerry, Catholics leaned toward Bush.
So, it looks like Catholics didn’t vote very differently than the American population as a whole.
Actually, sir, that is exactly what I would expect from them. Not that I’m saying it should not bother you, and I know it must, just that it’s what I would expect of them, going by their record on other issues AND taking into consideration the sort of Bishop that Wojtyla and Ratzinger would appoint to the leadership in the US.
As to the specific issue in this thread, meh… as has been mentioned, this is not an ex-cathedra dogma, it’s a restatement of established polic; I don’t see it changes anything significant from what was the official line during the JP2 papacy, who from day One WAS concerned that liberal Catholics were being too loose in their politics (e.g. crackdown on Liberation Theology, forcing Fr. Drinan to quit Congress, etc.). Heck, never mind politicians, it’s the overall papal exhortation to just about everyone in the Church for a LONG time: *“Hey! You’re supposed to be Catholics, not [Pagans/Gnostics/Protestants/Masons/Socialists/secular liberals/whatever is popular]! ACT like it!” * And I expect it to be about as effective as before. As per the stats mentioned, the Catholic bloc did not particularly swing much differently than the general population.
I know, and that just add to the unease. Whether or not the current US Catholic population pays attention is sort of immaterial. That statistic could change and they could start heeding those having more loyalty to their private group and their own posistions than to the US.
Frankly, as a gay, pro-choice apostate former Catholic, I worry more about the Protestant Right than the Catholic Right. I know Catholics. I was raised Catholic. And let me tell you, sir, there’s no way the Vatican is going to get American Catholics to start following orders about everything they say in large enough proportions to make a huge difference.
Abortion - The only real issue on which American Catholics in very large numbers actually fall in line with the Church, and that’s not even close to being “most”, the number being inflated by a lot of Catholic elementary and high schools bussing huge groups of children to Rosary Rallies and such.
Death Penalty - Church is against it. American Catholics are all over the map, with the more conservative types being the furthest from the Church on the issue.
Iraq War - Again, all over the map, with the more conservative types being furthest from the Church on it. (JPII proclaimed the Iraq War to be immoral)
Gay rights - All over the map, one of the few issues on which conservative types are more in line with the Church position than liberal Catholics.
Birth Control - rolls around on the floor laughing
Then we’ve got the worry field covered. 
I hope your faith in your ability to see into the future is justified.
Things change, people change. Your assessment is doubtless correct as of now. However I’ve seen Herbert Hoover go from being widely hated to a highly respected figure (with a few diehards). And he didn’t have behind him a rich organization with a strong emotional hold over many people and the power to consign them to the lake of fire.
The Pope and the Bishops haven’t really cracked down. When they did, I notice that Father Drinan, who was mentioned above, went from a pretty vocal critic to quietly teaching law at Georgetwon.
I don’t see any immediate threat either, but eternal vigilance and all that.
I’m not sure that the current statement by Benedict XVI is significantly different than earlier statements. I’ll have to wander out and see how some of the Catholic pundits are reacting to it.
However, one idea that has run through this thread probably needs a bit of clarification. There was no position by “the bishops” regarding Kerry and there was a significant lack of unanimity among them on the topic. The ones who got the most publicity (and the most internal criticism in the church) were the ones who made claims that Kerry (or other candidates) “had” to behave in certain ways or that Catholic voters “had” to consider specific issues.
Note that the USCCB never published anything close to an endorsement of Bush or anything resembling a condemnation of Kerry. (Most analyses of the USCCB publications on the two parties’ platforms gave significantly more support for the overall tenor of the Democrats.) All the harsh statements were issued by individual bishops. And the louder or harsher their statements, the more likely that a reporter would stick a microphone in their face and ask them to repeat it. Those bishops who stated that the church had positions on issues, but that many competing issues had to be evaluated in light of the whole of Catholic teaching, not focusing on single issues, and that it was not the role of the church to attempt to judge any candidate either in terms of his politics or his theology got ignored because no one could fit their statements into an eight second sound bite.
Had Kerry (or any candidate) sponsored legislation explicitly to remove all the limited constraints on abortion remaining in Roe v Wade, the bishops might have issued a joint statement condemning him. However, since the interaction of the state and abortion is generally bound up with a marvelous snarl of interwoven rules and regulations that provide funding for medical support, housing, and other services for the poor, only the most extreme bishops (of whom there are fewer than a dozen–although they make great theatre on the news) would actually claim that a legislator who “funded” abortions needed to be removed from office or denied the sacraments. (Rather more than a dozen bishops leaned toward Bush–many on the issue of abortion–but far fewer made the draconian pronouncments regarding preventing him from the sacraments and only two (if memory serves) got close to mentioning excommunication.)
the Bishops, acting as an official group may never have said anything about Kerry. However, the only Bishops who were talking did so. All of the others were silent and made no protest whatever. Those Bishops talking were obviously doing so in an effort to discredit Kerry, a candidate for President, during an election campaign.
Not one Bishop that I know of said that public pronouncements about an individual’s practice of his religion are out of line. That such things are a private affair between Kerry, his family and possibly his local Priest.
The obvious intent was to get Catholics not to vote for Kerry on grounds that he was a bad Catholic and no high church official that I heard of, protested.
It certainly has an effect. (anecdote alert) I see it in my parents routinely. It serves as a reminder and a motivator to get to the polls. What I wonder is why things like the death penalty and world peace aren’t given the same weight as abortion, homosexuality and euthanasia. When they make these political statements, if they want to be seen as standing up for morality and church teachings and avoid looking like just another wing of the republican party, they really need to include all their moral stands and not just the ones that’ll motivate people to vote a particular way.
Well, to be fair, world peace and the death penalty are treated by the Church differently than abortion and euthanasia.
The Church recognizes some times when a war may be just, and while the last pope doubted that the death penalty as currently practiced could ever be morally justified, it wasn’t completely put out of bounds by any ecclesiastical authority.
Abortion and euthanasia, OTOH, are always seen as deeply immoral acts.
In part, this is incorrect and in part this is the nature of the business.
Several bishops spoke on the issue that the blasts against Kerry were not appropriate. However, they were not widely quoted, mostly because the long, nuanced responses they gave were not easily turned into sound bites.
And, it is an unfortunate reality that people who are vehement on a topic are more likely to seek media outlets from which to make their cases than people who are more measured in their responses.
If someone wishes to condemn those bishops who might have spoken more forcefully for Kerry and chose (for whatever reason) to not do so, I will not attempt to stop them.
My explicit point was only that when folks post “the bishops” did this that or the other, the reality is quite different. Had there been a general trend among most bishops to oppose Kerry, we definitely would have seen more than the two really loud ones muttering about excommunication and the half-dozen spear-carriers mumbling about not offering Communion if Kerry showed up.
How about if Kerry (or any other Catholic Congressperson) had to vote on, say, an amendment banning abortion? My reading of the statement is that he would be morally obligated to vote for such an amendment. I didn’t get a proposed penalty from the statement, if any, but I did get a moral direction.
Do you think it is fair for a non-Catholic voter, evaluating two candidates with roughly similar positions, to ask a Catholic candidate to explicitly state that he or she would not feel obligated to vote in accordance with the teachings of the Church? (Which is not the same thing as always voting against them.) Voting under the guidance of the Pope is exactly the kind of thing anti-Catholics used to accuse Catholic candidates of , and which Al Smith and JFK had to defend themselves against.
I don’t understand this statistic. Am I reading correctly that, of those Catholics who said they attended Mass at least once a week, 109% of them voted? What’s the margin of error?
This is totally my fault, but I’d like to point out that recently, when I said I thought Catholics were mostly conservative (citing the Kerry thing as one major reason) and dopers rushed to tell me how ridiculously opposite from the truth I was, I was having smoke blown up my ass. Again, my fault for not doing my own research, but irritating nonetheless.
At least 9%. 
Since there have only been links to popular news coverage in this thread, is this the document under discussion here?
You’re reading it correctly…I just made a typo when I copied it. Of those Catholics who say they go to mass at least once a week, 56% voted for Bush, and 43% voted for Kerry.
High officials of the Catholic Church are not unsophisticated men. If they really want to get out the word that those condemning Kerry are out of line they certainly know how to do so.
Speaking for Kerry would be just as out of line as speaking against him. Whether or not Kerry follows the teaching of the Catholic Church in all aspects shouldn’t be a factor in his fitness for the office.
Point taken.
So why the nuances concerning war/peace and the death penalty and not with abortion and and euthanasia? All of them certainly have valid ‘exceptions to the rule’ (incest-rape-health of the mother and severe brain damage and terminal illness). It just shows the hypocrisy of the ‘all life is sacred’ tenant they espouse. Their lack of consistency is exactly why people can rightly argue that they’re placing their thumbs on the political process. It is one thing to advocate for issues - but they cherry pick theirs to the point of supporting one party over another.