Ratzinger directly helped Bush beat Kerry

One would think with all the hysteria surrounding judges who supposedly read foreign judicial opinions to inform themselves, there would be the same hysteria surrounding the new Pope's interference with US electoral politics last fall.  It's not just that Ratzinger obnoxiously inserted himself in last year's election, but that Bush specifically requested assistance from the Vatican, something no other president in America's history had ever done.

Remember when we all heard something about bishops urging priests to deny John Kerry Communion in their churches?  I remember thinking to myself they were just a bunch of self righteous, cafeteria style Catholic pedophiles who were trying to distract their flocks from their heinous behavior.  Well, it was Ratzinger who sent out the "Deny Kerry Communion" memo to America's Catholic church leaders.

In Salon, Sidney Blumenthal has more (free day-pass required) on the Ratzinger-Bush bond:

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a letter to the U.S. bishops, pronouncing that those Catholics who were pro-choice on abortion were committing a "grave sin" and must be denied Communion. He pointedly mentioned "the case of a Catholic politician consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws" -- an obvious reference to John Kerry. If such a Catholic politician sought Communion, Ratzinger wrote, priests must be ordered to "refuse to distribute it." Any Catholic who voted for this "Catholic politician," he continued, "would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion." During the closing weeks of the campaign, a pastoral letter was read from pulpits in Catholic churches repeating the ominous suggestion of excommunication. Voting for the Democrat was nothing less than consorting with the forces of Satan, collaboration with "evil."

It worked:

In 2004 Bush increased his margin of Catholic support by 6 points from the 2000 election, rising from 46 to 52 percent. Without this shift, Kerry would have had a popular majority of a million votes. Three states -- Ohio, Iowa and New Mexico -- moved into Bush's column on the votes of the Catholic "faithful." Even with his atmospherics of terrorism and Sept. 11, Bush required the benediction of the Holy See as his saving grace. The key to his kingdom was turned by Cardinal Ratzinger.

Ratzinger and Bush are now two peas in a pod.  Together they will continue to dismantle the foundation of our democracy by pushing ecclesiastical influences into our courts and the government in general.  How can it be, in today's world, that the Founders had a more enlightened understanding of the role of religion and government than our own current president:

They were not anti-religious, though few if any of them were orthodox or pious. Washington never took Communion and refused to enter the church. Benjamin Franklin believed that all organized religion was suspect. James Madison thought that established religion did as much harm to religion as it did to free government, twisting the word of God to fit political expediency, thereby throwing religion into the political cauldron. And Thomas Jefferson, allied with his great collaborator Madison, conducted decades of sustained and intense political warfare against the existing and would-be clerisy. His words, engraved on the Jefferson Memorial, are a direct reference to established religion: "I have sworn eternal warfare against all forms of superstition over the minds of men."

As Blumenthal so deftly puts it, these two men, Bush and Ratzinger, "have set themselves on a collision course with the American political tradition."

Comments

[Kari Chisholm]

You write, Bush specifically requested assistance from the Vatican...

Where is the evidence for that? Not in your post, anyway...

[Sid]

Kari-

From Sidney Blumenthal's piece in Salon:

Bush lobbied Vatican officials to help him win the election. "Not all the American bishops are with me," he complained, according to the National Catholic Reporter. He pleaded with the Vatican to pressure the bishops to step up their activism against abortion and gay marriage in the states during the campaign season.

If that's not asking for assistance...

[Heidi-ho]

I remember when Bush went to grovel in front of the Popester last year. It was like, 'hey, Pope, I know you're mad at me about dropping a bunch of bombs on Iraq and killing a bunch of people, but do you mind helping me out here? You know, on the abortion thing and the gay deal. I know those are the only two things we agree on, but please help me.'