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	Religious Interference in the American Election By Laurie Fendrich Chronicle of Higher Education October 12, 2008 http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/index.php?id=883 As I understand things, the Vatican is a sovereign state—i.e., it has its own laws, administration, and police, and is diplomatically recognized by other countries, including the United States. We maintain an embassy in the Vatican and appoint an ambassador to the Holy See. (The current one is Francis Rooney, a Bush appointee.) In other words, the Vatican is technically a foreign country in the same sense that England, France and Germany are. So imagine for a moment that a spokesperson for the English, French or German government had issued a statement during our current election campaign saying that the Democratic Party in the United States is "the party of death." What would our reaction be? I think it would be, "Who the heck are they to interfere in our domestic affairs? We don't tell the English, French, or Germans how to regard one of their own political parties." Yet "party of death" was the phrase used to describe the Democratic Party in a statement issued by the Vatican. Cut to Scranton, Pennsylvania, a city of 70,000, where half the population is Catholic. There, the Roman Catholic Church—whose headquarters are actually the Vatican—is going further. It's pressuring Roman Catholics to support John McCain for President simply because he's the anti-abortion candidate. The bishop of Scranton, Joseph Martion, had already made it clear that Senator Joe Biden, a pro-choice Catholic, would not be able to receive Communion in Scranton were he to try to do so. (The 2004 Democratic candidate for President, John Kerry, was denied Communion on the abortion issue as well.) Last week, Bishop Martion upped the ante by sending out a letter to Catholics in Scranton that was read from the pulpit in every church in the diocese. In addition to Biden's ostracism from Communion, the Bishop has now added words that amount to Catholic absolutism: "Abortion is the issue this year and every year in every campaign." According to Bishop Martion, "Catholics may not turn away from the moral challenge that abortion poses for those who seek to obey God's command. They are wrong when they assert that abortion does not concern them, or that it is only one of a multitude of issues of equal importance. No, the taking of innocent life is so heinous, so horribly evil, and so absolutely opposite to the law of the Almighty God that abortion must take precedence over every other issue. I repeat. It is the single most important issue confronting not only Catholics, but the entire electorate." To understand why a non-Catholic like me is appalled by both the Vatican's statement and the bishop's promulgation of the idea of a one-issue vote for Catholics, keep in mind that like many non-Catholics, I tend to weigh multiple issues simultaneously. I think of death as equally morally devastating when it results from poverty, war and hunger as when it results from abortion. To a non-Catholic like me, then, the Roman Catholic Church's insistence that its faithful vote a certain way, based on a list of specific issues that it determines is most important, is intrusive. From my non-Catholic viewpoint, the Vatican's statement constitutes an unwarranted interference by a foreign country in our domestic affairs. In the case of the Scranton bishop's instructions, the Catholic Church, in effect, ends up functioning as if it were a political party. And just as a political party can be dragged publicly over the coals for evidence of corruption—without recourse to pleading that public opprobrium amounts to religious bigotry—so can the Catholic Church, particularly for its horrendous record of sexual abuse (including rampant pedophilia) in this country and others. And just as a political party that controls the White House can be openly called hypocritical if it preaches fiscal restraint and then racks up record deficits, I see no reason why a Church that preaches about morals and then has to cough up hundreds of millions of dollars in sexual-abuse lawsuits (not to mention suffering any number of criminal convictions) can't openly be called hypocritical.
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