c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Eugene Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author most recently of “My Brother Joseph,” published by St. Martin’s Press.)

(UNDATED) Presidential candidate George W. Bush has a tin ear for Roman Catholics, but he certainly knows how to trump the church’s bishops.

Some of their clergy, too, because his vice-presidential choice has taken the wind out of the sails of the armada they have been busily equipping to kill off, in the name of pro-life, any pro-choice Catholic who might have been on the ticket.

First, Bush has various groups advising him on the “Catholic vote.” This must be based on leftover memorandums from a Reagan campaign a generation ago. It was out of date even then because its hypothesis is that Catholics constitute a univocal bloc _ thinking the same on every issue and ready to follow the marked ballot handed out by their bishops and priests on a specific candidate or issue.

This is not an immaculate conceptualization of Catholic Americans, for it treats them as if they are just over from the Old Country instead of just out of college or graduate school as they are in numbers equal to or exceeding members of any other denomination. Catholics are variegated, sophisticated citizens who differ widely on many questions and, in fact, are more like the rest of Americans than they are like some lock-step group ready to vote together on the basis of their religious faith.

Most of a century ago, the then-archbishop of Boston, Cardinal William O’Connell, famously rallied Catholics to vote against incumbent Mayor Michael Curley, but nowadays Catholic bishops cannot _ and, until now, have not tried to _ deliver an election by telling their people how to vote.

The bishops have their hands full just trying to get their people to pay attention to what they hand on to them from Rome. They may reinforce the opinions and beliefs of some Catholics but they cannot form or change them after, following Catholic theological teaching, their parishioners study church teachings, weigh them in the balance of their conscience and make up their minds on a moral matter.

Do the bishops think they can make Catholic parents or Catholic families, almost all of whom have and love a gay relative or relatives, believe homosexuals harbor an “objective disorder” and their relationships traffic in “evil,” as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith insists?

Most clergy, at least those who have been pastors, are spiritually sensitive and would not wound good people by pressing such insupportable opinions on them.

Nor do you hear good bishops or pastors do more than instruct their people on their responsibility to consult Catholic doctrine in making decisions in the close and sacred quarters of their intimate lives. They encourage their people, they trust them, they stand by them in sorrow and in joy, too, but they do not stand next to them in the voting booth.

But if Bush is getting bad advice on Catholics in general, he has terrific instincts in dealing with Catholic bishops in particular.

For months now, the bishops, joined recently by a supposedly national network of priests, have been feeling righteous and well pleased with themselves for, of all needs in the moral inventory of the country, choosing to embarrass and unseat, if they can, any Catholic official or officeholder who takes a “pro-choice” position on abortion.

There has been a long and serious debate about Catholic officeholders and their need to support the law of the land on this question. Perhaps we can grant some elected officials have been self-serving or politically expedient in adopting a public position with which they personally disagree. Bishops, how much like Thomas More would you be in their shoes?

But the only outcome for a campaign to harass Catholic politicians is to lessen their chances of being elected and, therefore, of bringing their Catholicity, even if imperfectly, to bear on the range of issues that shape the common good and the general culture.

Lessening Catholic presence and influence in the public square is the sure outcome of their forcing Catholic governors and congressmen to be “pro-life” or be invited out of parishes, church halls, Catholic colleges and perhaps out of elective office altogether.

As a wise pastor said to me, “We’ve got to cut these Catholic politicians some slack or we won’t have any Catholic officeholders at all.” What a wonderful outcome. The bishops are like generals, destroying the town in order to raise their flag over it.

But Bush just trumped them by picking a non-Catholic as a running mate.

Congratulations, most reverend fathers. You have succeeded in making it politically impossible for a Catholic to run as vice president. Your campaign triumphed and collapsed at the same time. How will you ever top this in the forthcoming campaign?

DEA END KENNEDY