The action against McGreevey, along with possible similar steps the Catholic Church is contemplating against Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry—the first Catholic to run for president on a major party ticket since John F. Kennedy—are rearguard efforts by the church hierarchy to counter the historic trend in favor of women’s rights.

McGreevey did not attend the service, saying he had longstanding appointments elsewhere. Church officials said that the governor had previously told them he would be there.

Galante said at the April 29 news conference that the governor’s support for a woman’s right to choose and for stem cell research were contrary to church doctrine. He made a special point of his charge that McGreevey divorced and then remarried without obtaining an official annulment of his first marriage.

The bishop said that if McGreevey presented himself for Communion, a key aspect of the Catholic Mass, then he would “give him a blessing” instead. “In his case, he can’t go to Communion,” he insisted.

McGreevey refused to comment publicly on the bishop’s accusation about his divorce. “The governor has remarried but he has never discussed whether he sought or received an annulment,” said his spokesman, Micah Rasmussen. “It is something he always considered a private matter.”

After the ceremony, a spokesman for the bishop said that Galante had been speaking hypothetically on this matter, and “did not know the status of McGreevey’s previous marriage.” Neither side backed off on other issues in dispute, however.

McGreevey’s position of support for a woman’s right to choose, which he contrasts to his personal opposition to abortion, has particularly incensed church leaders.

One month earlier, Bishop John Smith of Trenton said that when the governor “refers to himself as a devout Catholic and supports legislation and programs that are contrary to the teaching of the Holy Father and the bishops, he is not a devout Catholic.”

McGreevey “cannot compromise what it means to be a Catholic,” said Smith. “I speak as your bishop, for the devout Catholics of the Diocese of Trenton. Jim McGreevey does not.” Trenton is the state seat of government.

Reporting the comments, the New Jersey Star Ledger said, “McGreevey has long highlighted his Irish Catholic roots, both on the campaign trail and as a mayor, state lawmaker and governor. But his support for abortion rights and the death penalty have put him at odds with the church, and he recently signed laws allowing stem cell research and domestic partnership, both opposed by the Vatican.”

Without mentioning McGreevey by name, Newark archbishop John Myers weighed in on the issue in a pastoral statement released May 5.

“That some Catholics…are willing to allow others to continue directly to kill the innocent is a grave scandal,” wrote the archbishop under the heading, “Communion is not private.” He went on, “The situation is much much worse when these same leaders receive the Eucharist [Communion] when they are not objectively in communion with Christ and His Church. Their objective dishonesty serves to compound the scandal.”

In other words, Catholic politicians who do not toe the line on the church’s abortion policy should not seek Communion.

“With abortion,” Myers said, “there can be no legitimate diversity of opinion.”

That same day, McGreevey announced that he would not receive Communion at public services. He “refused to say if he would take the sacrament from a priest in private,” reported the Associated Press.

“I believe it’s a false choice in America between one’s faith and constitutional obligation,” McGreevey said. “In America we have a longstanding policy of separation between church and state.”  
 
Kerry also under fire
The New Jersey governor is not the only prominent Catholic politician to draw fire from members of the church hierarchy. The Washington Post reported April 24 that church officials in the United States are debating “how to respond to Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry’s position in favor of abortion rights.”

The Post quoted the comments of Vatican official Cardinal Francisc Arinze, who said in Rome April 23 that a politician who supports abortion rights is “not fit” to receive Communion.

According to the Washington Post, Arinze also “made clear that decisions about whether to deny Communion to Kerry and other U.S. politicians would be made by the U.S. Catholic bishops,” and not by the leadership of the church in Rome.

Christopher Coyne, a spokesman for Archbishop Sean O’Malley of Boston, Kerry’s hometown, said a ban was unlikely, reported the Post. “When people come forward to receive communion, we give them communion,” he said.

Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis said in January that he would deny communion to Kerry.

Speaking April 23 to pro-Democrat organizers of the March for Women’s Lives, Kerry—who presents himself as better qualified to lead the so-called war on terror than President George Bush—identified women’s rights with a “stronger America…. We are going to have a change in leadership in this country to protect the right of choice,” he said. The 20-year senator said that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.”

The presidential candidate did not appear at the march, which drew around a million people. Sizable contingents of Catholics for Free Choice participated in the action.

The day after the march, Ben Widdicombe reported in the April 26 New York Daily News that Kerry’s stance might jeopardize his invitation to a campaign event for the bourgeois presidential candidates.

“Will Edward Cardinal Egan try to block Sen. John Kerry from the 59th Alfred E. Smith Dinner?” wrote Widdicombe in his column about goings-on in New York. The October dinner—a yearly gathering of capitalist politicians, businessmen, and celebrities—is sponsored by the Archdiocese of New York, headed by Egan.

“Egan may take a hard-line against the Democratic candidate because he supports abortion rights,” said Widdicombe.

Writing in the April 28 USA Today, Thomas Cox, the publisher of the National Catholic Reporter, was outraged that bishops might “intentionally try to harm the candidacy of a Catholic Democrat.” If elected, Cox said, Kerry would be the first Catholic president since Kennedy—a span of 44 years.  
 
Rearguard action by prelates
Behind the acrimonious controversy is a rearguard attempt by right-wing church leaders to reverse the growing support for abortion rights among Catholics and within broader society. Opinion polls charting the steady decline in opposition to a woman’s right to choose register no difference between Catholics and non-Catholics.

In a document prepared for the Bipartisan ProChoice caucus, Catholics for Free Choice (CFC) say that a Belden Russonello and Steward survey conducted in October 2000 shows that “two-thirds of Catholics say it should be legal for a woman to have an abortion” while “fifty-eight percent of Catholics describe themselves as pro-choice.” Furthermore, “less than one-fourth of U.S. Catholics agree with the bishops’ position that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances.”

In addition, stated the document, “Catholic women in the United States are as likely as women in the general population to have an abortion,” and “a majority of Catholic women (52 percent)…prefer a hospital in their community that offers elective abortions to one that does not.”

The CFC also noted that “on birth control as on abortion, Catholics follow their consciences.”

Dozens of members of the U.S. Congress who identify themselves as Catholic take a pro-choice stance. At the same time, pro-choice politicians of both parties have joined the bipartisan offensive to restrict access to abortion, starting with the 1977 Hyde amendment, which cut off Medicaid funding for the operation. Democratic president James Carter signed that amendment into law.  
 
 
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