A Holy union

"I believe in a president whose views on religion are his own private affairs."
--John F. Kennedy

For the second time in 44 years, and only the third time in American history, a Catholic is running for president on a major party ticket.

The man is John Kerry. The party is the Democratic Party -- just as it was twice before.

In those 44 years, we've gone from a nation where John Kennedy -- the only Catholic president -- had to tell Protestant crowds that a vote for him wasn't necessarily a vote for the Pope. Today, we have a president who was born again, and declared Jesus to be his most admired political thinker, to the point where George W. Bush declared a "Jesus Day" while governor of Texas.

Thirty presidential elections ago, a speaker identified the Republican Party as the one that wasn't for rum, Romanism and rebellion. Since then the Gallant Old Party has come around. They like Catholic votes, and no wonder. Nearly one in four Americans -- 63 million, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops -- are Catholic.

But Republicans don't necessarily like Catholics.

The main issue Republicans use to pander to Catholics is abortion. Church dogma opposes it. However, that seems to be the only issue where the Catholic Church and Republican Party agree.

Fundamentalist Christians -- who can be downright hostile to Catholics -- are taking over the Republican Party. While on the campaign trail in 2000, Bush went to Bob Jones University, a private "Christian" college that calls Catholicism a cult and describes the pope as an Antichrist.

Although the United States was founded on ideas of religious freedom, that didn't include Catholics, who would have only been accepted in three of the original 13 colonies. Maryland was founded by a Catholic, Rhode Island truly practiced religious freedom, and Georgia was a prison colony, so they weren't very discriminating.

Since the 1840s, Catholics swarmed to America, be they of Irish, Italian or Hispanic descent. One of the first opposition parties -- the Know-Nothings -- was founded on anti-Catholic precepts. Since their arrival, Catholics in the United States have found bigotry. My mother's mother, of Lebanese and Greek descent, had a cross burned in her front lawn, near Canton, Ohio, in the 1920s.

It was in this world that Al Smith, the governor of New York and favorite of New York City's Tammany machine, ran for president in 1928. He ran against Herbert Hoover, a Quaker. Hoover won, and the nation collapsed around him (he was the first Quaker elected president until...you're never gonna believe this one...Richard Nixon).

Another New Yorker ran against Hoover in 1932 and won: Franklin Roosevelt.
One of the main reasons Smith lost was because of his desire to repeal Prohibition. The Puritans in America were still having their way, and Prohibition allowed organized crime -- a business nearly exclusive to Irish and Italian Catholics -- to flourish. After that, Catholics voted in lock step for Democrats. FDR's New Deal had elements of socialism, but the Church supports charity and direct relief.

Catholicism and socialism mesh. I'm making a distinction between communism, which replaces the church with the state, and socialism, which boils down to "from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs." Jesus said, "If you have two coats and the man next to you has none, give him one." For hundreds of years, usury -- the loaning of money with interest -- was a sin.

Capitalism and Catholicism don't always mix. Jesus also said, "No man can serve God and Mammon."

Republicans started to get a Catholic following as they came out as stronger anti-Communists, and then abortion was legalized in 1973. All life is sacred to Catholics, and that includes the unborn. Democrats became the pro-choice party, and Republicans became the pro-life party. There was no place at the Democratic table for a practicing Catholic like former Pennsylvania Gov. Bob Casey.

Kerry supports the right to choose, or the right to abortion, however you want to frame the argument. Some priests, no doubt jockeying for their own political advancement, said they would deny communion to any politician who favored abortion, and the bishop of Colorado Springs went so far as to say that anyone who voted for a pro-choice candidate, or one who favors stem cell research or euthanasia, would need to confess that as a sin.

So I can vote for a president who is against abortion but favors pre-emptive war in the Middle East, leading to the deaths of thousands of real, live people? I seem to recall Jesus somewhere saying "Judge not lest ye be judged," and I'm pretty sure that was in red letters. Any problems a Catholic politician might have reconciling abortion with his or her beliefs are between the politician, THEIR priest (not some grandstanding bishop who seeks to remove the speck in his brother's eye while ignoring the plank in his own) and the Almighty. To be fair, this is not just a Democratic problem. Tom Ridge is a pro-choice Republican and Catholic. I'm not sure if the first or second thing kept him away from the vice-presidential nomination. But some other Catholic beliefs don't have a place in the Republican Party.

Catholics don't favor the death penalty. Our president signed hundreds of death warrants while governor of Texas, where a third jaywalking offense is a capital crime. I don't agree with every preaching of the current pope, but he opposes
the war in Iraq. There's something about pre-emptive war in the Middle East that's emblematic of the Church at its most corrupt (can you say Crusades?).

So the question to millions of Catholic voters is do you vote for the Catholic who allows for the right to choose, or do you vote for the fundamentalist?

My mind's made up.