U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., commissioned a study on the legislative performance of elected officials as it pertains to issues dear to the Catholic establishment. The results are not exactly what the average voter might expect.
Durbin asked his staff to look at the voting record and official position of the 24 current Catholic U.S. Senators over the last year. The legislative issues being looked at have been identified by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) as those on which Catholics hold a responsibility to society. They are renewed and made public every four years in a document entitled Faithful Citizenship: A Catholic Call to Political Responsibility. The USCCB has divided them into four Moral Priorities for Public Life: protecting human life; promoting family life; pursuing social justice; and practicing global solidarity.
Bishops
A total of 48 votes were taken on 24 social and economic issues including the death penalty, gun control, immigration, media ownership, and abortion. The latter is presented by the USCCB and their supporters as paramount. A pro-life voting record has been cited publicly by a number of priests and bishops as the determining factor in whether they would continue to offer communion to certain lawmakers.
In April of this year Monsignor Kevin Vann, pastor of the Blessed Sacrament Church in Springfield, said he would be 'reticent' to give Sen. Durbin communion in view of his pro-choice position, which is at odds with the church's teachings on life. Durbin, a practicing Catholic, said the pastor's statement was 'very painful.'
In January it was Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis who, invoking a document published by the Vatican in 2003, declared that he would deny communion to presumptive presidential candidate John Kerry. D-Mass., because of his support of abortion rights.
More recently, Bishop Michael J. Sheridan of Colorado Springs has been the most outspoken member of the clergy on this question. In anticipation of this November's elections, he is imploring his congregation to look very carefully at politicians' positions on the issues of abortion and gay marriage. Sheridan has come under close scrutiny by federal officials for his comments as some believe he is dangerously close to crossing the line separating church and state.
Chicago's Cardinal George told his priests to refuse communion to members of the Rainbow Sash movement two weeks ago—and about a dozen were turned away.
Catholic Senator Rick Santorum, R-Penn., has long been an avid supporter of the anti-abortion movement and has made numerous statements opposing equal rights for gay citizens. His view that decriminalizing sodomy would lead to the eventual social acceptability of such practices as polygamy and pedophilia were widely publicized last summer and he has followed that up with a consistent opposition to gay marriage this year.
After the release of Sen. Durbin's study, Santorum was very vocal in criticizing its findings, accusing the Democratic senator of abusing his office.
The main fault conservatives find with the Durbin scorecard is that it weighs all legislative issues equally and does not put a priority on what the Catholic Church calls 'the first life issue [or] the right to life of the innocent, defenseless unborn.' But the preface of the study does point out this difference and Durbin has himself explained that '… recent media attention has focused on one or two priorities of the Catholic Church, while obscuring others. This has made it more difficult for Catholic voters to understand the full range of issues that have been identified by the USCCB as priorities for public life.'
According to the results, which are expressed as a percentage of accordance with the USCCB positions, both Democratic senators from Massachusetts (John Kerry and Edward Kennedy) scored above 60%. Durbin is the only other lawmaker in this category. Among those with scores higher than 50% are Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Illinois's other senator, Republican Peter Fitzgerald. Sen. Santorum appears further below with a rating of 40.8%.
The USCCB meets in Colorado next month. They will hear from Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop of Washington, who leads the task force they put together to look into whether politicians should be sanctioned by the Church for supporting abortion and gay marriage. While there is no set deadline for the release of the task force's recommendations, the issue will be discussed and it is likely that an official position will be announced at the conference.
