Kerry, Kissling, and Fraud on the Church

The recent opinion piece by columnist Ellen Goodman (link here) well illustrates my fears about the potential for scandal to the faithful posed by the nomination by a major political party of a candidate for president who claims membership in the Catholic Church and yet strongly disavows central Catholic teachings on the sanctity of human life and the vitality of the family to civil society. The central and predictable theme of the Goodman column is that religious faith is but a private matter of isolated conscience, little more than a hobby, that should have no implications for public life. In other words, an individual citizen, or at least a politician, should lead a splintered life, carefully segregating matters of faith from everything that is public-regarding. That of course is bad enough.

Perhaps even more troubling is the resurrection of anti-Catholic attitudes and figures masquerading as reasonable and authentic alternative Catholic voices. While the Catholic Church is large and diverse, it is not open to everything such that it stands for nothing. Goodman’s column devotes entire paragraphs to lengthy quotations from Frances Kissling of the deceptively named Catholics for a Free Choice (CFC). Kissling is a former abortion clinic operator and head of the abortion industry trade group, and, moreover, acknowledges that she does not pray nor take Communion (so much for being Catholic). The CFC is not a membership organization and instead funded by wealthy foundations aligned with the abortion industry. Even beyond its pro-abortion line, CFC is a virulently anti-Catholic organization, with sweeping rejections of everything that is distinctly Catholic, from Church leadership to sexual teaching to any religious witness to the culture, often expressed in the most stereotypical of anti-Catholic language.

John Kerry’s nomination thus may provide respectable cover and even moral support to anti-Catholic entities like Catholics for a Free Choice, further damaging the integrity of Catholic Social Teaching as a meaningful and coherent set of teachings and subverting the witness of the Church to the world. In my view, on certain fundamental matters like human life, no public figure can call him or herself Catholic with integrity unless he acts to protect the defenseless unborn. But, at the very least, surely we can agree that Kerry is obliged to clearly and loudly acknowledge that he believes in the sanctity of unborn life as a matter of personal faith and moral teaching and that he emphatically distances himself from fraudulent and notorious anti-Catholic figures like Frances Kissling.

Greg Sisk