Catholic Church must retain, protect its public voice, priest says

Published: 2004-06-08

NEW YORK (CNS) -- Catholicism is a "resolutely public tradition," and the bishops are right to resist efforts to privatize it, a priest told an interreligious forum on religion in politics June 7. Jesuit Father Mark S. Massa of Fordham University in New York said disputes over involvement of religious groups in public issues should be handled not by excluding religious voices but by developing a "protocol for public discourse." Such a protocol should leave religious groups free to express their differences publicly, but in a way that shows respect for other views, he said. The priest, who holds a doctorate in history from Harvard University and directs Fordham's Center for American Catholic Studies, told consultation participants that the church-state position set forth by presidential candidate John F. Kennedy to the Houston ministers in 1960 was something "no Catholic can say." Kennedy told the ministers, who were evangelical Protestants, that he believed in an America "where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act ... (and) where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source."

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