One of Ours

The governor of New Jersey, James McGreevey, under intense pressure from his bishops, has said he will no longer receive communion. McGreevey opposes abortion but does not believe the government should make it illegal in all cases. This topic is complicated in many ways. It's no violation of the separation of church and state, in my view. It's about how a church deals with its members in public life. But that doesn't make this new shift any less momentous. What's particularly stunning about the McGreevey case is that his withdrawal from Communion was not, apparently, simply about abortion. It was also about his support for domestic partnerships for gay couples and stem-cell research. To bar someone from Communion for that array of beliefs strikes me as new territory. Bottom line? From now on, I think, it will be harder and harder for any sincere public Catholic who is a Democrat to continue to be a part of the sacramental life of the church...Very few leading Democrats are pro-life. If those issues are the criteria for allowing someone in public life to receive Communion as a Catholic, then the Church, in effect, is endorsing one political party over another...This is the dream of the religious right: to destroy the Catholic base of the Democratic party, create a hard-right rump of true believers, and integrate the latter into the G.O.P. I can barely believe that the Catholic hierarchy is doing Karl Rove's work for him...