I am a recovering Catholic, and have many problems with the church. But in all fairness, the Catholic Church is one of the most heavily vested in social justice and charity work. Salvadoran martyr
Archbishop Oscar Romero is still my greatest hero and inspiration. And the year I spent working with asylum seekers would not have been possible without the help of
Catholic Charities, especially at a time when charities are increasingly leaving poor immigrants on their own.
So it is with some interest that I have followed Rove's efforts to split Catholics from their natural allegiance to the Democratic Party.
Later in Dallas, Bush delivers a speech to the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic men's benefit society.
Aides said Bush's remarks will focus on administration programs that encourage the mentoring of prisoners' children and increase access to recovery programs for drug addicts. Bush also will promote his efforts to expand religious groups' ability to participate in government-funded social service programs.
Bush split the Catholic vote with Democrat Al Gore in the 2000 election and has steadily courted Catholic voters ever since, mindful that they represent about a quarter of the electorate. The president met with Pope John Paul II for the third time two months ago.
Bush's rival, John Kerry, is Catholic; the president is Methodist.
Bush will promote actions he has taken that his advisers think will appeal to Catholic voters: He signed a bill last year that banned the procedure known to doctors as intact dilation and extraction, but called "partial-birth abortion" by abortion rights opponents; in April, he signed into law new protections for the unborn that made it a separate federal crime to harm a fetus during an assault on the mother.
On issues of importance to Catholics, here's how the parties stand:
Abortion
It's the one place were Bush and the Republican Party platform lines up with the Catholic Church, and it's an issue in which the church has become increasingly aggressive.
Death Penalty
The Catholic Church is vehemetly anti capital punishment, while Bush presided over the largest number of executions of any sitting governor in American history.
Iraq War, Preemption, Peace Protesters
From the AP:
Pope John Paul says the anti-war movement shows a "large part of humanity" has rejected war as a means of solving conflicts between nations.
The Pope sent the message to Roman Catholic military chaplains attending a Vatican-organised course on humanitarian law.
He said the course was being held "at a difficult moment in history".
The Pope said the world "once again is listening to the din of arms" and that thoughts about the victims, the destruction and the suffering produce "deep worry and pain".
By now, he said, "it should be clear" that except for self-defence against an aggressor, a "large part of humanity" has repudiated war as an instrument of resolving conflicts between nations.
Bush was, at best, dismissive of the Pope's appeals.
On International Law
Bush has made it clear that he has no respect for international institutions. His first act as President was to abandon the Kyoto Protocols, and that was merely the warm up act. From the international criminal court, to nuclear arms treaties, to the Geneva Convention, to UN-bashing, to unilateral wars, this administration has done what it could to flip the rest of the world the bird.
And the Vatican is outraged.
The Holy See believes in international law, in part as an antidote to a "unilateral" world in which strong nations impose their will on the weak. Another, more realpolitik consideration is that international law, and especially the concept of universal human rights, offers the best protection of the religious freedom of Christians where they are a minority, such as India and the Islamic world. This conviction leads to resentment of the United States when it is perceived to weaken the international legal order. For example, a May 17, 2003, editorial in the Jesuit-run journal Civilta Cattolica, reviewed by the Secretariat of State prior to publication, excoriated the United States for holding prisoners of war at the U.S. base at Guantanamo in Cuba without the procedural rights specified in the Geneva Convention.
On Catholic bashing
Bob Jones is famous for his
scathing critiques of Catholics:
"The former head of the university, Bob Jones Jr., engaged in an astonishing series of attacks on Catholics in the 1980's, asserting that "all the popes are demon-possessed" and that Pope John Paul II was "the greatest danger we face today." "The papacy," he said, "is the religion of Antichrist and is a satanic system."
Rather than marginalize Jones, Bush made a campaign appearance at Bob Jones University as a way to woo southern religious wingnuts. And then,
resisted calls to apologize to Catholics for the appearance until a month later when it became a political necessity -- in the eve of primary contests in Catholic-rich New York and California.
Misc
There's a reason that Catholics have remained a fairly loyal Democratic constituency even as most churchgoing people defected to the Republican Party. The strong immigrant tradition of Catholics (Irish, Latin, Polish, Italians, etc.), coupled with the church's strong tradition of charity work, lined it up well with the party committed to lifting up all Americans, not the social darwinists on the Right.
Rove has wielded the abortion issue as a wedge, with some success (recent polls have the Catholic vote split in half), but fact is, on the sum of the issues, Bush has fallen far short.
Update: Ack. I forgot to add gay rights to the list, an issue in which the church and Bush have much in agreement -- the second prong of Rove's efforts to split not just Catholics, but also black church goers from the Democratic Party.