Bishops to pressure Catholic politicians

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As the 2004 election season heats up, certain candidates might be looking over their shoulders at an unlikely special-interest group: the U.S. Catholic bishops.

America's 275 active bishops are gearing up a new task force that could bring Catholic politicians in line in a way not seen before in American politics.

Announced at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops annual meeting last month, it is headed by Washington Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick. The task force will produce guidelines on how to deal with recalcitrant politicians. But Cardinal McCarrick hedges when asked about their most potent weapon: excommunication.

"I wouldn't be in favor of that," he said.

But the bishops have felt pressured to come up with sanctions with a bite to them ever since January, when the Vatican came out with a 17-page "doctrinal note," a document on how Catholics in politics should behave.

"Those who are directly involved in lawmaking bodies have a grave and clear obligation to oppose any law that attacks human life," it said. "For them, as for every Catholic, it is impossible to promote such laws or to vote for them."

Besides abortion, the document listed euthanasia, slavery, religious freedom and the sanctity of marriage as black-and-white issues for Catholic politicians.

Ever since the Holy Roman Empire in pre-medieval Europe, the Vatican has seen the church as a public institution entitled to negotiate with political figures, says David Walsh, a political-science professor at Catholic University. Given the bias toward separation of church and state in American politics, U.S. bishops have hesitated to intervene.

"They'd rather say that even more than being religious issues, these are human rights issues," he says. "I think that'd be the kind of rhetoric McCarrick would be more comfortable with."