John Kerry, like the Supreme Court in 1973,
is doing what centuries of prelates could not and would not do: uniting millions
of Protestants and Catholics. Just as the Court's Roe vs. Wade decision pushed
leaders of both groups to unite against abortion, so Kerry's views are also prompting
a political shift.
Look at it this way: In 1960, John F. Kennedy's Catholicism,
although nominal, prompted many Catholics to vote for him. In 1980, Jimmy Carter's
overt evangelicalism turned off many Catholics. In 2004, according to a recent
Pew poll, a majority of Catholics plan to vote for George W. Bush, an overt evangelical,
against John Kerry, officially a Catholic.
How nominal is Kerry's Catholicism?
Just look at his 1998 interview with American Windsurfer, the journal of a charming
sport that has become a Kerry metaphor. The senator said: "I am a believer in
the Supreme Being, in God. I believe without any question in this force that is
so much larger and more powerful than anything human beings can conceivably define."
Sounds more like "Star Wars" than Christ on the cross.
Is Kerry a CINO,
a Catholic in name only? He goes to Mass but windsurfs theologically: He has "always
been fascinated by the Transcendentalists and the Pantheists and others who found
these great connections just in nature, in trees, the ponds, the ripples of the
wind on the pond, the great feast of nature itself."
Does Kerry speak about
sin? Can't find that anywhere in his published speeches, but he did tell American
Windsurfer: "So much of the conflict on the face of this planet is rooted in religions
and the belief systems they give rise to. The fundamentalism of one entity or
another." He does have ardent praise for the Dalai Lama, who "is certainly telling
us there is life from enlightenment -- here and hereafter, but I think, whether
or not we're going to be (enlightened) is the great test that all of us are struggling
with."
Is this Catholicism? Doesn't sound like it, but these mixed messages
are apparently common at Sen. Kerry's home church, the very liberal Paulist Center
in Boston. Jonathan Last of The Weekly Standard attended a Center service and
observed a reciting of an edited version of the Nicene Creed, with the section
on believing in only "one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten
of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God," dropped
out.
Once the theological ball is dropped, other balls -- marriage, sanctity
of life and so on -- also hit the floor. The noise of all those balls dropping
is mixed with the sound of most Catholics fleeing the Kerry campaign -- and also
backing Bush because of a common social vision. As Catholic scholar George Weigel
writes, Catholics now teach that "the free and virtuous society is a complex set
of interactions among a democratic political community, a free economy and a public
moral culture. ... The culture is the key to the entire edifice. A culture that
teaches freedom-as-license is going to wreck democracy and the free economy, sooner
or later."
A decade ago, I wrote a book about 18th century America, "Fighting
for Liberty and Virtue," that pointed out how evangelicals like Patrick Henry
and Samuel Adams noted freedom's dependence on morality. They argued, as does
Weigel, that liberty sets loose enormous human energy, and that a free society
can survive only if people have "bottom," to use the 18th century expression:
A society, like a ship, needs some weight or it is blown around by the winds.
Most
Catholics evidently see Bush as having bottom on Iraq and domestic policy, and
Kerry lacking it. The root cause of bottomlessness is usually theological confusion,
and Kerry exhibits that, big time.
©2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Marvin
Olasky writes daily commentary on Worldmagblog.com
Read
Olasky's biography
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