The Vatican and Kerry
The headline on my morning paper says "Vatican implies Kerry should be denied communion." I have problems with this on several levels. The basic one is that I don't think a man's relationship with his church is anybody's business but his and his church. I realize this is a minority opinion is this country because a politician is virtually unelectable for national office unless he finds a way to express his relationship with God (and it goddamn better be the judeo-christian God with whom he's having this relationship) in a manner that satisfies the unwashed masses.
My second problem is with the church. Some vatican mook, Cardinal Francis Arinze, is cited as saying that a politician who is pro-abortion is not fit to receive the eucharist. Now, I'm no expert in Vatican political/spirital pronouncements and it's not really my place to tell the Vatican how to run its church, but it seems to me that, in keeping with what I've heard of the church's teachings (If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means. - Catechism 2266-67), the church should perhaps apply the same standard to American Catholic politicians who support capital punishment as has been presented in the case of abortion.
Finally, there's my favorite whipping boy, the press. Sometimes, usually it seems, members of the press just react to a story and don't seem to give a lot of thought to its nuances or even whether it really is important. I think, if this story ends up with legs, it may fall into that category. We'll see a lot of gnashing of teeth and wailing from various factions of the media about what this means for Kerry. Personally I think Kerry isn't required to answer to anybody how he feels about what his church has just said, but if this is an issue worth covering, then it's an issue larger than Kerry, and the question of how politicians follow the teaching of their particular faith or their holy book is relevant across the board. I don't expect to see it happen.
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