An uncivilized discourse: the fixation on abortion by conservative Catholics and the church hierarchy during the 2004 US presidential elections was a disservice to the whole electorate.

ON NOVEMBER 2, 2004, Catholics in the United States went to the polls and, having chosen the winner of the popular vote in every election since 1972, continued their streak of picking the next president. Fifty-two percent of the "Catholic vote" went to President George Bush; just forty-seven percent selected Democratic candidate and fellow Catholic, Senator John Kerry.

During the campaign, many prochoice activists were disheartened by Kerry's inability to articulate a clear, values-based argument for his support of the right to choose. Instead, we witnessed the candidate struggling to justify his position, clearly on the defensive. The opposition, however, targeted Kerry for being prochoice, with one conservative Catholic activist going so far as to charge him with heresy.

An old conversation has been revived during the campaign. From John F. Kennedy to Mario Cuomo to Geraldine Ferraro and others, individual Catholics in public life have faced attacks and accusations based upon their faith and the positions on public policy. In 2004, the public scrutiny and judgment of Catholic politicians took on a new dimension as photographers sat in churches trying to capture a shot of the candidate receiving communion with everyone from columnists to renegade bloggers making snap and public judgments about an individual's conscience.

THE RIGHT INTERVENES

Conservative Catholics were out in force during the 2004 campaign, and they were among the loudest to take issue with Sen. Kerry's faith. During this period, conservative Catholic organizations and political operatives engaged in an unprecedented degree of electioneering against Catholic policy makers who support the right to choose. Loud and aggressive attacks on candidates and voters permeated election coverage.

Priests for Life, a conservative antichoice outfit headed by Fr. Frank Pavone, explicitly urged voters to elect candidates opposed to abortion and violated its 501(c)(3) charitable status by encouraging readers to download web banners and brochures to help direct people on how to vote. (The 501(3)(c) status is an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) designation for tax exempt organizations that may not intervene in campaigns for public office.)

The group Catholic Answers developed and, again acting against charitable law, distributed the partisan "Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics" at churches and via the dioceses of St. Louis and Chicago.

The American Life League repeatedly released its so-called "Deadly Dozen" ads under the headline "You Can't Be Catholic and Pro-Abortion" with the names, photos and contact information of Catholic policy makers who support reproductive rights. It also published a series of full-page ads in the Washington Times targeting everyone from John Kerry to, bizarrely, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

William Donohue of the Catholic League attacked two Kerry campaign religious outreach staff, boasting, "I got two scalps and I'm proud of that." (National Catholic Reporter, September 24, 2004)

Austin Ruse and his Culture of Life Foundation publicly labeled Kerry as a "bad Catholic" and distributed articles suggesting that Catholics may not vote for "pro-abortion politicians." Nominal Democrat and former ambassador to the Vatican Ray Flynn published an open letter to Kerry in the New York Times, chastising him for his promised appointment of judges who would uphold Roe and lecturing him on the mandates of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The Republican Party and the Bush administration also sought to push the Catholic button during this race. Breaking with all protocol and perhaps sailing in completely uncharted waters, President Bush used his June 4 trip to the Vatican to court political support, complaining, "Not all the American bishops are with me." (National Catholic Reporter, June 11, 2004) Republican National Committee chair Ed Gillespie solicited Catholic parish directories to aid his efforts. When a sex scandal disgraced Deal Hudson, special Bush campaign advisor on outreach to Catholics, the Federalist Society's Leonard Leo was quickly appointed to fill his shoes and deliver the Catholic vote.

POLICY MAKERS AT THE ALTAR

Perhaps most disturbing for Catholics seeking moral guidance and leadership from the hierarchy was the fixation of a minority of US bishops on abortion and their near silence on other vitally important issues that had relevance in this election, such as the war, social justice, international aid, health care, education and poverty.

On April 23, the same day that Sen. Kerry addressed women's rights groups at a rally in Washington, DC, Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria responded to a reporter's question about "unambiguously proabortion" Catholic politicians by stating such a politician "is not fit" to receive communion. "If they should not receive, it should not be given," he said. (Associated Press, April 23, 2004)

While this was far from the first example of a Roman Catholic cleric using a sacrament to bully a recalcitrant, its intentions could not be misread. With the first prochoice Catholic now engaged in a legitimate race for the White House, the Vatican felt compelled to weigh in, despite repeated protestations that it did not involve itself in national or partisan politics. In July, the Italian magazine L'Espresso published an internal memo written by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a senior adviser to the pope and Prefect of Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which stated, "regarding the grave sin of abortion or euthanasia, when a person's formal cooperation becomes manifest (understood, in the case of a Catholic politician, as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws), his Pastor should meet with him, instructing him about the Church's teaching, informing him that he is not to present himself for Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin, and warning him that he will otherwise be denied the Eucharist." (Sandro Magister, "The Kerry affair: What Ratzinger wanted from the American bishops," L'Espresso, July 3, 2004) Days later, however, it was reported that Ratzinger backed off from his hard line position when he wrote in a letter to Cardinal Theodore McCarrick that he was "very much in harmony" with the US bishops' statement on Catholics in political life, which left the decision to withhold communion to the discretion of the individual bishops. (USCCB press release, July 12, 2004)

The media frenzy that followed seemed to suggest that the bishops overwhelmingly stood opposed to a Kerry presidency. Yet a tiny minority of the dioceses, 10 out of a total of 178 Latin Rite dioceses, developed policies to deny communion to prochoice Catholic politicians and about two dozen bishops suggested that prochoice policy makers should voluntarily abstain from receiving communion.

The untold story remained that the vast majority of bishops opposed communion bans. More than 130 dioceses remained silent or spoke out against these tactics. Bishop William S. Skylstad of the Diocese of Spokane, Wash., (who subsequently was elected president of the USCCB) stated, "I strongly oppose using the Eucharist as a weapon.... I believe we are called to persuade, not to bludgeon.... We should be political, without being partisan. Our concern is the common good, not the advancement of the agenda of a particular political party." (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 10, 2004)

By all accounts, American Catholics also rejected communion bans. Major polls, including the largest survey of Catholic voter attitudes during the 2004 election (commissioned by Catholics for a Free Choice), found that Catholics overwhelmingly believed (78%) that politicians who are Catholic and support legal abortion should not be denied communion. Moreover, 83% of Catholics felt that Catholic politicians should not vote on issues the way the bishops recommend. These majorities crossed party and ideological lines; Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives all stood unified against the bishops' political interventions. (CFFC, The View from Mainstream America: The Catholic Voter in Summer 2004)

As the election drew near, both Archbishop Raymond Burke of the Diocese of St. Louis and Archbishop Charles Chaput of the Archdiocese of Denver explicitly urged Catholics through official archdiocese communications and the media to vote against candidates who support abortion rights, euthanasia, reproductive cloning, gay marriage and embryonic stem cell research.

In a prescient May 2004 op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle, CFFC president Frances Kissling wrote,

   "[S]omething has changed in the Vatican
   and among conservative Catholics.... By
   attacking Sen. Kerry's practice of faith,
   conservative Bush Catholics hope to deny
   him the support of mainstream Catholics.
   What remains to he seen is the extent to
   which the Vatican and the US bishops will
   participate in this strategy. If politicizing
   the sacraments for electoral gain serves as
   an indication of the campaign ahead, we are
   witnesses to bad faith and bad theology."
   (San Francisco Chronicle, May 3, 2004)

What we know today is that they not only participated in this strategy, but some bishops actually joined the Catholic right in skirting election law and trying to influence the outcome of the election.

These aggressive and prohibited campaign activities did not pass without comment. Having collected material evidence of illegal political interventions, CFFC filed complaints with the IRS against the Archdioceses of St. Louis and Denver and their corresponding archbishops for patent violations of section 501(c)(3). CFFC also filed complaints against Priests for Life, Catholic Answers and the Culture of Life Foundation for violations of their tax status. The IRS does not comment on complaints that have been filed, and while the above organizations remain at risk of losing their status as public charities, it is unlikely that the will investigate without public pressure to do so.

While we cannot know how the influence of the Catholic bishops or the blatant disregard of conservative Catholics for election law had on the electorate, one thing remains clear: the excessive focus on the politics of faith and reproductive rights prevented the voices of individuals speaking out about a larger question of morality from swelling to a chorus. This fixation on abortion supplanted any real public conversation about other compelling and meaningful issues pertinent to a Catholic voter's choices.