The LA Times reports that Kerry isn't expected to see the kind of support that Kennedy got from Catholic voters 1960.
Even though Kerry will be the first Catholic to be a presidential nominee since Kennedy, Kerry can't count on the support of the nation's 63.4 million Catholics. Catholics are not as homogeneous as they were in 1960 when eighty percent of Catholic voters supported Kennedy. According to the LA Times:
"Today, there's an argument to be made that there's no such thing as the Catholic vote," said John Kenneth White, a professor of politics at Catholic University of America. "It looks an awful lot like America."
[. . .]
In 1960, voters worried that Kennedy was so Catholic that the Vatican would have undue influence in the White House. The question today is whether Kerry is sufficiently Catholic, whether he hews closely enough to the church's teachings to be given the sacraments — or even to align himself publicly with his faith.
"Now the pressure is coming from the bishops, not the suspicious Protestants in Kennedy's time," said Edward Sunshine, associate professor of theology at Barry University in Miami Shores, Fla.
The two men's challenges are not all that have changed. Kennedy was not asked to take a public stand on polarizing issues like abortion, which was legalized in 1973, or same-sex marriage.
Catholics, once heavily Democratic, now are nearly as likely to be Republicans as Democrats. And they have reached economic parity with Protestant voters.
The New York Times reports that the Church's hierarchy doesn't to be seen telling members how to vote:
The Church hierarchy seems as conflicted as American voters.On Thursday, Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington, who is chairman of a committee of bishops studying the relations between church teachings and Catholic politicians, warned that the hierarchy should not appear to be telling Catholics how to vote by singling out politicians for church sanctions during election campaigns.
He was reacting to the impression given by Cardinal Francis Arinze, a high Vatican official, a week ago and by earlier statements from several American bishops that the hierarchy was charging headlong into the presidential election.
Comments