The accusation of anti-Catholic bias seemed especially galling to some
of the Democratic senators who happen to be Catholic.

Four of the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are Catholic.

In fact, 57 percent of the Catholics in the House and the Senate are
Democrats, according to the forthcoming Vital Statistics on Congress,
2003-4 edition.

Like many Americans of Irish descent, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of
Vermont, the ranking Democrat on Judiciary, said he grew up hearing
his father talk about the bad old days when Irish Catholics were
greeted with signs saying they "need not apply."

He added, "It was a horrible part of our history, and it's almost like
you have people willing to rekindle that for a short-term political
gain, for a couple of judges."

Senator Richard J. Durbin, who is Catholic, said he reached his limit
at a committee meeting on Wednesday when Senator Jeff Sessions,
Republican of Alabama (and a Methodist), began explaining Mr. Pryor's
positions as "what a good Catholic believes."

Mr. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who personally opposes abortion but
backs abortion rights, added, "I understand the painful process I have
to go through with the elders of the church on many of these issues,
explaining my position. But it is galling, to say the least, when my
colleagues in the Senate, of another religion, start speaking ex
cathedra."

Many Catholic elected officials are, perhaps, particularly sensitive
to the line between religious faith and public responsibilities.

It was a line drawn most vividly by President John F. Kennedy, the
first Catholic president, who had to deal with widespread fears that a
Roman Catholic president would serve both Rome and the American
people.

Kennedy responded by declaring, "I believe in an America where the
separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate
would tell the president, should he be a Catholic, how to act, and no
Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote."

In recent years, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo reasserted that line,
particularly regarding abortion.

Behind the anger of many Democrats is the suspicion that this
advertising campaign is part of the Republican Party's courtship of
Catholics, an important swing vote.

In general, Andy Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the
People and the Press, said Mr. Bush was "doing pretty well with white
Catholics" lately.

It is all part of a politics that has changed radically since 1960.

Among the nine Democrats on the Judiciary Committee accused of working
against the interests of Catholic judicial nominees is, of course,
John Kennedy's brother, Senator Edward M. Kennedy.



From The New York Times, 7/27/03:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/27/politics/27TALK.html


By ROBIN TONER

WASHINGTON --

The battle over judicial nominations has grown ever more bitter on
Capitol Hill, but Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee say they
are particularly outraged over the latest turn: the accusation that
their resistance to some conservative nominees amounts to
anti-Catholic bias.

In a recent newspaper advertising campaign, run by groups supporting
the Bush administration's judicial nominees, a closed courtroom door
bears the sign "Catholics Need Not Apply."

The advertisement argues that William Pryor Jr., the Alabama attorney
general and a conservative, anti-abortion nominee to the federal
appeals court, was under attack in the Senate because of his "deeply
held" Catholic beliefs.

Democrats say they oppose Mr. Pryor because of his record, including
what they assert is a history of extreme statements on issues like
abortion and the separation of church and state.

______________________________________________________

Typical right-wing demagoguery.

Harry