Although a leading Vatican cardinal states that Catholic teaching is clear about denying communion to a politician who supports abortion rights, two key U.S. bishops say withholding the sacrament from a dissenting Catholic like Massachusetts Senator John Kerry is not a likely option.
When 1,000 “faithful” Catholics packed a Washington hotel ballroom for the first-ever National Catholic Prayer Breakfast on April 28, noticeably absent was the man who could be the first Catholic president in 44 years. Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts probably would have found few kindred souls at the Mayflower Hotel, where organizers promised to uphold church teaching against abortion in a tumultuous election year.
President Bush and his presumed Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry, are in a virtual dead heat among American Catholic voters, according to a poll released in mid-April by Georgetown University. The survey of 1,001 Catholics found that Kerry drew support from 46 percent, Bush 41 percent. With the poll’s 3 percentage-point margin of error, the two candidates are virtually tied.
A landmark study of American evangelical Christians has determined, among several noteworthy findings, that evangelicals oppose gay marriage but are lukewarm in their support for a constitutional amendment to ban it.
The survey of more than 1,600 respondents found that, while 85 percent of evangelical Christians oppose gay marriage, only 41 percent of those who oppose the practice felt the Constitution should be amended to do so. Instead, 52 percent of evangelical gay-marriage opponents said it is enough for states or nonconstitutional federal laws to prohibit same-sex marriage.