Bush, Kerry and the Church
As the presidential election campaign in the United States enters its final phase, the American public – indeed, the whole world – is becoming increasingly polarised.
Polls indicate that most US voters have long decided which candidate they plan to support on November 2. Thus, the campaign strategies of the incumbent, President George W Bush, and his challenger, John Kerry, have sought not so much to sway public opinion about the respective candidates, but to consolidate and cement existing support.
This has, regrettably, led to extraordinarily nasty campaigns, with the Republican election campaign being particularly mendacious.
Not for the first time in US electoral history, the Catholic population is being seen as the decisive “swing vote”. This is remarkable, because not so long ago, political scientists argued convincingly that the “Catholic vote” had become a myth. Opinion polls at the time suggested that Catholic voting behaviour reflected almost exactly that of the general American population.
More recent polls show that regular Massgoers are now more likely to vote for Mr Bush than most Americans. Thus, the Catholic vote may well tip the balance.
At the same time, a small but vociferous group of US bishops suggested that Mr Kerry, a practising Catholic, should be banned from receiving Communion on the basis of his consistently pro-choice voting pattern.
Mr Kerry has answered his critics by saying that he divorces his private position, which he says is anti-abortion, from his political mandate, which he sees as being pro-choice.
Some bishops even suggested that Catholics who vote for pro-choice candidates should recuse themselves from receiving Communion.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican’s doctrinal chief, has since indicated that only those Catholics who vote for a pro-choice candidate in order to advocate abortions should not present themselves for Communion.
It is curious that some Catholic bishops should take what amounts to a partisan position against a Catholic presidential candidate, only the third in US history. For them, abortion is the sole litmus test.
Ironically, on most other points of Church teachings, especially their social dimensions, Mr Kerry’s positions are in almost complete harmony with the Church.
By contrast, Mr Bush’s policies violate most of the Church’s social teachings, especially on issues such as peace, poverty and justice.
Mr Bush, of course, also launched a war against Iraq under the false pretext of Saddam Hussein’s putative weapons of mass destruction (evidence increasingly suggests that the Bush administration deliberately misled the world about what they did and did not know).
The Church, including the US bishops, were among those who warned the Bush administration that the invasion of Iraq would produce many innocent deaths and greater terrorism. They were right.
Many thousands of civilians have died in the aftermath of the invasion, and more than 1000 young soldiers, too. As a result of the poorly conceived US occupation, Iraq has become a hotbed of terrorism, thus posing a much greater threat to international security than the contemptible Saddam Hussein ever was.
And so American Catholics are faced with a complex choice: whether to vote for a candidate whose political actions have helped to destroy thousands of unborn lives, or for a president whose political actions have destroyed thousands of born lives.
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