Politics cloud Kerry’s Easter plans

Easter is this coming Sunday and where Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic candidate for president, will attend church suddenly has become a political issue.

If the Roman Catholic senator sticks to his home Boston Archdiocese, he faces the implied threat from Archbishop Sean O’Malley of being refused Communion.

Archbishop O’Malley has said since the summer that pro-choice Catholic politicians are in a state of grave sin and cannot properly take Communion, though he mentioned neither Mr. Kerry nor Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, another Massachusetts Democrat.

Two months ago, St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke said Mr. Kerry “must not present himself for Communion” at any church in the city. However, “I might give him a blessing or something,” the archbishop added.

Mr. Kerry was in St. Louis on March 28, but he sidestepped the Communion issue by attending New Northside Missionary Baptist Church, where he quoted a few verses from the second chapter of James.

Yesterday, Mr. Kerry again worshipped at a Protestant congregation: Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church in Dorchester, Mass.

“We’re thankful that there’s going to be a revolution in this country … a new movement,” the Rev. Gregory Groover saidfrom the pulpit during the Palm Sunday service. “And we say, God, bring him on, the next president of the United States.”

The Kerry campaign has declined comment on his faith and his Easter plans.

Catholics are obligated to attend Mass on Sundays and all Holy Days, but they do not have to receive Communion. It is specifically recommended, however, that Catholics go to confession at least once during Lent, and failing Sunday obligation is a grave sin that makes one ineligible for Communion.

“O’Malley has been quoted as saying if you are pro-abortion, you shouldn’t go to Communion,” said the Rev. John Putka, a political science professor at the University of Dayton in Ohio. “Kerry says he intends to go. All you need is one time where he is denied Communion and there’s a national incident.”

Mr. Kerry’s positions favoring human stem-cell research; the right to abortion, including partial-birth abortion; and civil unions between homosexuals are contrary to church teachings and have turned a vocal and active group of conservative Catholics against him.

When news accounts showed the senator attending Mass during a recent Idaho ski trip, the American Life League (ALL) issued a news release pointing out that the senator had arrived late and had been dressed in a ski suit at Our Lady of the Snows parish in Sun Valley.

In recent months, the senator has provided a few details about his Catholic past: service as an altar boy, wearing rosary beads during his Vietnam War service, one-time plans to become a priest. On Ash Wednesday, he emerged from a Catholic church with a smudge on his forehead signifying penance.

“People ask: ‘Is he making up his beliefs to take the red states?’” said Timothy Thibodeau, a history professor at Nazareth College in Rochester, N.Y. “Kerry’s problem is that people doubt his sincerity. They think he is cooking up his religion just in time to run for the election.”

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