April 15, 2004
Op-Ed: Putting Kerry on the 'Wafer Watch'
by Ellen Goodman
The Boston Globe
WHAT NEXT? Will we have a political reporter to cover John Forbes Kerry at each Sunday Mass from now to November? Will there be a Holy Communion beat? A wafer watch?
One of the more unseemly stories of the Easter weekend hovered around the controversy over Kerry and Catholicism. The intra-church debates about whether a prochoice, pro-civil union Kerry could consider himself a good Catholic ratcheted up into a public spectacle about whether he would step up to the altar and whether a priest would offer him the sacrament.
The whole thing, fumed Frances Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice, turned us into a nation of "eucharistic Peeping Toms": "I hope the bishops are satisfied that the sacraments of the church are now the subject of a media frenzy."
Of course, anyone who's ever been to the Paulist Center on Beacon Hill where Kerry worships had little doubt he would be welcomed by a community that "expresses the good news of Jesus in a contemporary society." But ever since the primaries, there has been a conservative rumble from parish to Web log about whether Kerry is a good enough Catholic to be president.
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