The Catholic Question

Regarding the recent kerfuffle over John Kerry's standing as a Catholic politician, we would do well to remember the rise and fall of New York Governor Al Smith, the Democratic candidate for president in 1928.

Thomas Fleming recounts Smith's campaign in a 2000 article called "The Catholic Question: How Religion Defeated Al Smith":

… the Protestant establishment attacked Smith savagely. A prominent Episcopalian lawyer published an article in the Atlantic Monthly, questioning Smith's ability to function as president as long as he owed ultimate allegiance to the Pope. …

… A devout Quaker, [Republican candidate Herbert] Hoover made no attempt to exploit Smith's Catholicism. But his backers showed no such qualms. Scurrilous pamphlets circulated, predicting that as President Smith would annul all Protestant marriages and make Catholicism the state religion.

For most of the 20th century, this was the obstacle facing Catholic politicians in America. Their ultimate loyalty was questioned. Would they fulfill their oath to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States? Or was their ultimate loyalty to some foreign pope?

The pope, after all, could subject such politicians to spiritual blackmail — he could excommunicate them, damning their immortal souls to hell. All Catholic politicians, therefore, were suspect.

In the first election of the 21st century we're witnessing the inversion of this attack. John Kerry is being attacked because he seems unwilling to place loyalty to a foreign pope (and to a brazenly ambitious wanna-be pope, Bishop Arinze) above his loyalty to America and its Constitution.

This is bizarre.

The attacks on Al Smith — which were repeated against John F. Kennedy in 1960 — were based on distortions and lies. But at least it could be said that if those distortions and lies had been true that Smith's qualification for the presidency would have been suspect.

The attacks on Kerry seem to be based on the idea that he should be less loyal to the Constitution than he is. My response, as a citizen and a Christian, is WTF?

I do not want a president who thinks that Humanae Vitae ought to trump Griswold v. Connecticut. Such a person would be incapable of fulfilling his oath of office.

Griswold is the 1965 Supreme Court decision striking down state laws making the use of birth control illegal. Humanae Vitae is the 1968 papal encyclical declaring the use of birth control a sin. (Memo to the Vatican: I am deeply suspicious of any "doctrine" that's younger than I am.)

The two documents do not conflict. They have different jurisdictions. One is civil, legal, temporal. The other is spiritual, ecclesiastical.

It is entirely possible for a Catholic politician to support and uphold the Supreme Court's decision in Griswold without violating the teachings of his/her church. Griswold doesn't force Catholic couples to use birth control, after all. Nor does it punish them for following their church's new doctrine.

It would be absurd for a Catholic bishop to suggest that a Catholic politician ought to be denied communion for upholding the laws of the United States as outlined in Griswold. If the politician in question went beyond the freedom of choice allowed in Griswold to support, say, a policy mandating the use of birth control, then church officials (as well as constitutional scholars) would be right to be upset.

But John Kerry has advocated no such nonsense, and to suggest therefore that he be denied communion for supporting the law of the land seems a gross distortion of both Amendment I and Vatican II.