Catholic bishops should beware of Kerry’s ‘respect’

In a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., concert hall, presidential nominee John Kerry told a crowd:

I know there are some bishops who have suggested that as a public official I must cast votes or take public positions – on issues like a woman’s right to choose and stem-cell research – that carry out the tenets of the Catholic Church.

After the crowd shouted “No!” reported the New York Times, Sen. Kerry went on to say:

“I love my church. I respect the bishops; but I respectfully disagree.”

And that won Kerry a standing ovation.

Think about that. He claims he loves his church and respects its bishops.

Was this oratory – and his accepting an ovation from this gathering – in any way respectful disagreement?

Or wasn’t this really his expressed defiance of the Catholic bishops and the church he says he loves – in which he relished this crowd’s shouting “No!” as well as the ovation they gave him for publicly defying his allegedly beloved church, its teachings and its bishops, who are the ecclesiastical successors to Jesus Christ’s 12 apostles?

Can anyone fail to imagine what would happen to any Kerry senate staffer, or campaign aide of Kerry’s, were he to address the Lowell, Mass., Rotary Club and tell them:

I love my job. I respect Sen. Kerry. But I respectfully disagree with his telling the public he believes a human life begins at conception and that he is opposed to same-sex marriage – while he votes against every bill or amendment to stop partial-birth abortion and same-sex marriage. He thus votes against what he tells us is his conscience.

How long would such a staffer go unfired?

Suppose John Kerry lost his faith entirely, while at Yale, accepting the 19-century German philosophical idea called “The Christ Myth” – that Jesus Christ never existed – which led him to stop believing in the existence of God as well.

But, while being politically ambitious he realized that leaving the Catholic Church in which he was raised, would not be at all popular in heavily Catholic Massachusetts so that after being nominated for the presidency he were to announce:

I will continue to attend mass and receive the sacrament, even though I believe it is based on a myth, because I love my church and I respect the bishops, but I respectfully disagree with them that the Last Supper ever happened.

What would the Catholic archbishop of Boston do in such an event?

Hopefully, he would do more than he is doing in allowing the sacrament to be given to a Catholic U.S. senator who votes for toleration of both the semi-infanticide of partial-birth abortion and sodomist matrimony.