February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
This year has defied that truism, no doubt because of the age in which we now live, the age that began on Sept. 11, 2001. Many of us, perhaps even most of us, learned on that day that politics and world events really do matter, and are more than just the raw material for late-night comics. The age of terror has injected presidential politics with an urgency that seemed absent last time around, or the time before that.
But with Labor Day upon us, the campaign will become even more urgent, as the candidates for national office scramble to win over key states and constituencies in an election that figures to be extremely close.
For some Catholic voters, Labor Day also happens to be a pretty good occasion to reflect on the controversy that has surrounded John Kerry, the first Catholic presidential nominee since John F. Kennedy.
During the late spring and into the summer, a number of Catholic bishops made it clear that they consider John Kerry unworthy to receive the Church’s most-solemn sacrament, Holy Communion, because he has a pro-choice voting record.
Some clergy and lay people, following the lead of these bishops, have denounced Kerry as a bad Catholic, a lapsed Catholic, and worse.
As a reporter, I am an advocate of neither candidate. But I have, on occasion, written favorably about Kerry in various outlets with strong Catholic readerships, including this one. As a result, I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that John Kerry is a bad Catholic who is out of touch with church teaching and so anyone who has anything good to say about him must be likewise.
I’ll pass on the chance to defend my own credentials, but on Labor Day, it might be interesting to see how John Kerry, and other politicians, stack up against church teaching on social issues, like the right to organize, the right to a fair wage, the right to be treated not as an instrument of capital but as human being marked with the sign of God.
The Irish, and Irish Catholics, were in the forefront of the labor movement in this country. The Knights of Labor, presided over by the legendary Terence V. Powderly, a Clan na Gael man and a politician in addition to being a trade unionist, came to the defense of coal workers in Pennsylvania in the 1880s. The Knights took on the oppressors — and that’s the right word for them — who ran the coal mines and became rich while miners worked and died in the pits near Scranton and Wilkes Barre.
The Knights were a decidedly Catholic organization, though certainly not one sanctioned by the church. Under Powderly’s leadership, membership grew into the hundreds of thousands by the late 1880s. The success of the Knights helped lead to the very creation of Labor Day, first celebrated in New York in 1882 under the auspices of Powderly and other Irish Catholics.
Catholic priests have also been in the forefront of labor’s demands for decent wages, safe working conditions and simple human dignity in the workplace. The Vatican recognized the rights of labor with the publication of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical, “Rerum Novarum,” which championed labor’s causes in the United States and elsewhere.
And what does any of this have to do with the question of whether John Kerry’s Catholicism?
The senator clearly is at odds with Church teaching on abortion. But his pro-labor voting record puts him squarely behind the church’s social teachings, including those of Pope John Paul II. His opponent, a Protestant who, in a great historical irony, agrees with the Catholic church’s position on abortion, is not particularly known for his sympathy with organized labor. His party historically opposes pro-labor measures like increases in the minimum wage, while it supports industries that export high-paying jobs to low-wage countries.
So who’s the better Catholic, so to speak, on labor issues?
Or does that not matter?
Many Catholics, as I have learned, consider this debate closed. The bishops have spoken — well, only a few of them, actually — and they have declared John Kerry a virtual apostate based of his positions on abortion. It doesn’t matter that John Kerry’s positions on labor and its rights probably could have been written by the American bishops, and maybe even by the very pro-labor John Paul II. (Actually, Kerry probably is not pro-labor enough for the pontiff.)
Millions of Catholics, however, will pay scant regard to John Kerry’s adherence to Catholic teaching on labor. And so November promises to bring about an anomaly of historic proportions — many Catholics will vote for George W. Bush, a card-carrying members of the nation’s WASP aristocracy — because they believe he is more in line with Catholic teaching than the Catholic candidate, John Kerry.
When John Kennedy ran for president in 1960, he had the overwhelming support of his fellow Catholics, and was a symbol of the Catholic rise to power and, yes, a kind of respectability in America.
In 2004, the Catholic vote will not automatically go to the Catholic candidate. In fact, the Republican Party is making an aggressive pitch to Catholics, seeing them as a key swing vote.
Many would argue that this is a sign that Catholic voters are far more sophisticated than they were in 1960, when they voted for one of their own because he was, after all, one of their own.
This time around, many Catholics consider the Protestant candidate one of their own, because he sides with the Vatican on abortion. And it’s the Protestant candidate who got a campaign photo-op with the pope.
Hold on, now – the pope met with the Protestant candidate? What in the world would Al Smith have made of that?