THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 4, 1995 TAG: 9509040032
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ESTHER DISKIN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: Long : 146 lines
The Christian Coalition, which until now has appealed mainly to evangelical Christians, will start a Catholic auxiliary this fall to gain members and distribute voter guides at Catholic churches.
The coalition already has about 250,000 Catholics among the 1.7 million donors on its mailing lists. The coalition's Catholic Alliance is envisioned as a way to boost Catholic membership to between 1 and 2 million by the year 2000, said Ralph Reed, the coalition's executive director.
``They'll have a staff, they'll have their own letterhead, they'll have their own activities. They'll hold a series of meetings around the country,'' said Reed. ``Their job will be to get as many voter guides as possible in the Catholic churches in 1996.''
But that plan is headed for problems on the coalition's home turf. The Catholic diocese of Richmond, which includes Hampton Roads, has a policy of refusing voter information material prepared by any outside groups, including the Christian Coalition. That isn't likely to change, said Stephen Colecchi, special assistant to Bishop Walter F. Sullivan.
``Outside groups typically have a bias, both in the range of issues they select and in the phrasing of each person's stance,'' he said. ``Even though they are supposed to be nonpartisan, you can tell self-evidently that they've endorsed one group.''
The coalition's Catholic Alliance will have a panel of nationally prominent Catholic lay leaders, a staff in Washington, and a range of activities geared to Catholic voters. It will get its kickoff just before
Pope John Paul II's visit to the United States on Oct. 4.
``It's a fully owned subsidiary. It's not a separate organization,'' Reed said in an interview. ``Catholics identify with Catholic leadership, Catholic ideas and with Catholic identity. You need to have the name, `Catholic,' and Catholic leaders involved to bring those people in at the numbers you want.''
Reed says Catholics and evangelicals can have enormous impact if they unite around core issues, such as fighting abortion and pornography, and promoting government-funded vouchers to offset the cost of private and parochial education. Many of those issues are goals of the coalition's 10-point legislative agenda, ``The Contract with the American Family.''
The Catholic Church has tackled many of these issues - often through broader themes such as human dignity and rights of workers - with written and spoken statements from the pope, the United States Catholic Conference, and local diocesan offices. Priests are encouraged to speak about how faith can inform political choices in public life.
Reed says that the coalition is a distinctly political lay movement, so he does not intend to consult with the Catholic Church's hierarchy in launching the Catholic Alliance.
``It is a way for Catholics who hold to these values to have a place that they can call home, politically,'' he said. ``So I want to make it clear that, although we expect to make the bishops aware of what we're doing, we're not really asking them to bless it or anoint it.''
National and local leaders in the Catholic Church say bishops aren't likely to offer their blessings, since they already provide moral guidance on political issues through the lens of Catholic theology and social teaching.
``Everybody has a right to organize in whatever way they choose. The test will be who joins,'' said John Carr, director of the U.S. Catholic Conference's office of social development and world peace. ``Catholics already have a place. It's called the Catholic Church.''
John Langlois, a 33-year-old television producer and active volunteer at St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Virginia Beach, said he finds common cause with the Christian Coalition on issues from school choice to welfare reform, though he's not a member of the group. He doesn't favor distributing their voter guides in Catholic churches.
``That's an outside organization coming in. It's different from your community working on issues,'' Langlois said. ``On issues that affect Catholics, it's up to the clergy to lead the people. They say, `Here are the issues, here's the moral thinking; make up your own minds.' ''
The Catholic Alliance is one part of Reed's long-range vision to build and broaden the coalition. The group, founded by Christian businessman Pat Robertson, has an annual budget of $25 million, which Reed aims to quadruple by the end of the decade.
Catholic leaders said it's not surprising that Reed would seek to forge an alliance with Catholics, who were part of a national swing to the right in the November 1994 elections. For the first time in recent history, more Catholics voted Republican than Democrat in an off-year election.
And there are gaps in Catholic political organizing, said Peggy Steinfels, editor of Commonweal, a New York-based 22,000-circulation magazine published by Catholic lay people. Catholics in large Northern cities, where many Catholic immigrants settled, have been well-organized politically, but that has not been true of Catholics who settled in the suburbs.
``They may not be politically homeless, but outside the big cities they have been unlikely to see Catholicism and politics linked, as Catholics in big cities do,'' Steinfels said. ``It may be that the Christian Coalition wants to take advantage of that unorganized position. There's nothing to object to about that.''
Reed's efforts to start other auxiliaries aren't roaring ahead. A Jewish alliance is ``in play,'' but isn't happening soon, he said. He's been talking with African-American and Latino pastors about starting a minority auxiliary, but ``they want to be involved in the organization and not have a separate entity,'' he said.
Some local Catholics share that suspicion of a spinoff group. ``It leads me to believe that Catholics aren't welcome in the main group,'' said William J. Dale, priest at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Norfolk. ``Separate but equal, it sounds like to me. Why would he make a distinction?''
It's a sign of respecting differences, not an action to divide followers of Christ, said Keith Fournier, a Catholic lawyer who is executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice, a legal firm also founded by Robertson.
Even as Catholics and evangelicals cooperate together on political issues, Fournier stressed that both groups need to respect distinct religious beliefs. In particular, some Catholics worry that they will be proselytized, he said. ``We shouldn't be looking at each other as the mission field. We need to look at those who don't know Christ as the mission field.''
Yet even political issues where Catholics and evangelicals tend to unite, like opposition to abortion, may be complicated by each group's distinct, faith-based approach to the issues.
For example, Catholics are taught to consider abortion under what church leaders call ``a consistent ethic of life,'' which includes opposition to abortion, the death penalty and euthanasia. Evangelical Christians often approach abortion as a single issue, not tied through theology to other political issues.
Not all Catholics endorse their church's teaching on the ethic of life. Del. Robert F. McDonnell, R-Virginia Beach, is a Catholic who takes a strong public stance in support of capital punishment. He said Catholic teaching ignores some biblical writings on punishment, which would indicate that the death penalty is warranted for anyone who takes an innocent life.
McDonnell, who got a perfect rating on the Christian Coalition's 1995 General Assembly scorecard, said he would favor distribution of the coalition's voter guides in Catholic churches.
``Many Catholic pastors are more reticent to do anything political than are Protestant pastors,'' he said. ``We don't do enough in church to inform the membership about those issues that should be important to them.''
Judy Schorr, a Virginia Beach resident who has been active in Catholic causes for many of her 50 years, says the Catholic Church doesn't need voter guides to inform its members about social issues.
For her, the church's guidance comes from exploring contemporary problems through teaching the Bible and writings of Catholic thinkers. The role of faith is to raise each individual's conscience, not galvanize followers to flex political muscle under one banner, she said.
``Why do we have to come under one umbrella to vote what our consciences are? When I go out into the world, I've reflected enough on what I am, so that I don't have to belong to a big group.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Ralph Reed...
KEYWORDS: RELIGION IN POLITICS POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE VOTER
GUIDES by CNB