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Catholic Church is riven by election politics
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'Voter guide'
Brian Burch, president of Fidelis, said the group had created the video as “a voter guide for the 21st century.” Many Catholic churches across the country have put it on their Web sites, and Mr. Burch said some statewide advocacy groups had been distributing it to their members.
At the Cathedral of St. Peter, the Rev. Joseph Cocucci has displayed the video prominently on the church’s Web page, and at each Mass he is urging parishioners to view it. Father Cocucci noted that the video also features smaller visual references to Catholics carrying peace signs and marching for civil rights.
“The video does say life is the most important issue, but if you notice it isn’t only abortion,” he said.
In the final push to Election Day, the intrachurch election debate is increasingly spilling into public view.
Last week, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the head of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. in Missouri had stormed out of a Mass because his priest had invoked Hitler’s name in condemning Democratic support for abortion rights. The Cincinnati Enquirer published a column commending several archbishops for instructing Catholics not to vote for supporters of abortion rights but lamenting that the archbishop there had not done the same.
In the aftermath of the 2004 election, many liberal Catholics complained that parishes had distributed millions of copies of a voter guide created by a group called Catholic Answers that highlighted five “nonnegotiable” issues: abortion, stem-cell research, human cloning, euthanasia and same-sex marriage.
In response, liberal groups like Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance quickly began preparing alternative guides emphasizing a broader spectrum of the church’s social justice teachings.
Then the Bishops Conference, perhaps to forestall a blizzard of competing pamphlets, all but banned third-party voter guides from parishes, requiring the explicit endorsement of the presiding bishop.
But some, including the bishop of La Crosse in Wisconsin, a swing state, have nevertheless chosen to authorize distribution of the “nonnegotiable” guides this year. The liberal groups are trying to distribute their material through direct mail and at meetings of lay Catholic groups.
Alexia Kelley, executive director of Catholics in Alliance, said her organization was spending more than $250,000 on radio, print and billboard advertisements in Scranton and other heavily Catholic areas. The advertisements emphasize what Ms. Kelley described as the broader spectrum of Catholic concerns about the “common good,” including health care, jobs and home foreclosures.
Douglas W. Kmiec, a Catholic legal scholar who was a legal counsel in the administrations of President Ronald Reagan and the first President George Bush, has been telling Catholic audiences in Pennsylvania and other swing states that Mr. Obama’s platform better fits Catholic social teaching, including reducing the abortion rate.
Mr. Kmiec, who recently published a book on the subject — “Can a Catholic Support Him? Asking the Big Question about Barack Obama” — was speaking in Scranton last week when Bishop Martino issued his letter rebutting those arguments.
Asked how his former Republican colleagues were responding to his Obama evangelism, Mr. Kmiec acknowledged some resistance. “Some remind me that George Washington gave orders for Benedict Arnold to be shot on sight,” he said.
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