Battling The Bishops

摘要

It made only the faintest blip on John Kerry's campaign radar screen-or anyone else's-when an Archbishop from St. Louis, Mo., told a local television station four months ago that the Massachusetts Senator with a staunchly pro-choice voting record should "not present himself for Communion" in that archdiocese. In the frenzied days when Kerry strategists were gearing up for their first nationwide round of primaries, they were far more preoccupied with introducing Kerry to voters as a decorated Vietnam veteran, untangling him from the contradictions of his Senate voting record and figuring out how to dodge the inevitable "Massachusetts liberal" label. In all their internal discussions of the candidate's personal strengths and liabilities, a top adviser recalls, nobody ever even raised what was perhaps the most personal one of all: Kerry's Catholicism and the fact that he could become the first person of his faith since John F. Kennedy to run as the nominee of a major political party.