Friday, April 23, 2004
Eat This
One of Karl Rove's political wet dreams has been to peel Catholic voters away from the Democrats. Today's announcement by a top Vatican cardinal that politicians who favor abortion should be refused communion might help peel a few, should its consequences eventually fall on John Kerry. The Reuters story linked above concludes with a fine irony: "In Kennedy's days, non-Catholic voters were afraid another senator from Massachusetts might follow papal doctrine too strictly. Now, some conservative Catholics are criticizing Kerry for not adhering to it closely enough." On a purely religious basis, as opposed to the political one, it's unlikely that the typical mainstream American Catholic will care. American Catholics are not always swayed when the Pope himself makes such pronouncements, let alone cardinals from the Third World, whose particular brand of Catholicism is often so different from the American variety as to be irrelevant. And Americans of most faiths tend to adopt Kerry's position that most religious matters are private. But for Rove's purposes, this is a useful political club, especially if Kerry tries to put himself through another contortionist, have-it-both-ways explanation like the one regarding his vote on the Iraq war. Such a thing can be spun as hypocrisy, or flip-flopping. At the very least, it can be used to brand Kerry one of those awful moral relativists not blessed by the moral clarity that Bush wears like a halo.
One of Karl Rove's political wet dreams has been to peel Catholic voters away from the Democrats. Today's announcement by a top Vatican cardinal that politicians who favor abortion should be refused communion might help peel a few, should its consequences eventually fall on John Kerry. The Reuters story linked above concludes with a fine irony: "In Kennedy's days, non-Catholic voters were afraid another senator from Massachusetts might follow papal doctrine too strictly. Now, some conservative Catholics are criticizing Kerry for not adhering to it closely enough." On a purely religious basis, as opposed to the political one, it's unlikely that the typical mainstream American Catholic will care. American Catholics are not always swayed when the Pope himself makes such pronouncements, let alone cardinals from the Third World, whose particular brand of Catholicism is often so different from the American variety as to be irrelevant. And Americans of most faiths tend to adopt Kerry's position that most religious matters are private. But for Rove's purposes, this is a useful political club, especially if Kerry tries to put himself through another contortionist, have-it-both-ways explanation like the one regarding his vote on the Iraq war. Such a thing can be spun as hypocrisy, or flip-flopping. At the very least, it can be used to brand Kerry one of those awful moral relativists not blessed by the moral clarity that Bush wears like a halo.
