Obama, the candidate of change, has ignored the real changes in the U. S. Catholic Church brought about by the election of John Paul II in 1978.
Kerry thought his altar boy story, his Catholic background and ethnicity, would overshadow his dissent on social issues.Our Church is no longer a place where telling a few “Pat and Mike” jokes and stories about Notre Dame football or Georgetown basketball can take the place of basic Catholic beliefs.
That kind of Catholic identity was born out of the age of assimilation when many Catholics, immigrants, or descendants from immigrants achieved the American dream of college and a home in the suburbs.
John Paul II, and now Benedict XVI, led American Catholics away from their infatuation with secularism and the culture of death it espouses. True Catholic identity, they reminded us, is established by embracing the Church's view of life, marriage, and the family, positions particularly despised by secularists and leftists.
Politicians who won’t take the risk of being ostracized for their Catholic beliefs won’t attract the Catholics who revered John Paul II and who cheered Benedict XVI on his recent visit. They look at politicians like Joe Biden and John Kerry and ask simply, “Why doesn’t he believe what our Holy Father believes?”
Well, some of us anyway.
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