The selection of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the new Pope is being met with concern by many interested in issues of social justice and social progress in the Catholic Church, and in the world. As head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the same office that led the Inquisition, Ratzinger has been known as the man who have made issues of abortion, euthanasia and homosexuality the top priorities of the church — far and away over such historic concerns as war and peace, and social and economic justice.

These priorities have also risen to the top of the list of concerns of the U.S. Catholic Bishops. This manifests itself most obviously when American Bishops denounce and refuse communion to prominent candidates for office. This happened most egregiously last year when president George Bush visited the Vatican and told Pope John Paul II that he needed a little help with some of the Bishops.

Writing on Salon.com, Sidney Blumenthal reports on Ratzinger’s attack on candidate John Kerry. “About a week later, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a letter to the U.S. bishops, pronouncing that those Catholics who were pro-choice on abortion were committing a ‘grave sin’ and must be denied Communion. He pointedly mentioned ‘the case of a Catholic politician consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws’ — an obvious reference to John Kerry, the Democratic candidate and a Roman Catholic. If such a Catholic politician sought Communion, Ratzinger wrote, priests must be ordered to ‘refuse to distribute it.’ Any Catholic who voted for this ‘Catholic politician,’ he continued, ‘would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion.’ During the closing weeks of the campaign, a pastoral letter was read from pulpits in Catholic churches repeating the ominous suggestion of excommunication. Voting for the Democrat was nothing less than consorting with the forces of Satan, collaboration with ‘evil.’”

Blumenthal notes that Bush got 6 points more of the Catholic vote than he had in the 2000 election. “Without this shift,” Blumenthal concludes, “Kerry would have had a popular majority of a million votes. Three states — Ohio, Iowa and New Mexico — moved into Bush’s column on the votes of the Catholic ‘faithful.’ Even with his atmospherics of terrorism and Sept. 11, Bush required the benediction of the Holy See as his saving grace. The key to his kingdom was turned by Cardinal Ratzinger.”

This blatant intervention in the American presidential election is only the latest and most dramatic example of a long term trend.

In the wake of the 2000 election, I analyzed the State of the Christian Right for The Public Eye magazine. Part of that discussion was about the rise of the Catholic Right in the U.S. and Vatican aggression against the separation of church and state and the culture of religious pluralism. Among other things. I wrote: “In 2000, the Vatican… issued a proclamation called Dominus Jesus that seemingly overturned four decades of ecumenical dialog and Catholic acknowledgement of the possible validity of other spiritual paths. It declared that Jesus and the Catholic Church were the only possible means of spiritual salvation, and that other Christian churches ‘are not “churches” in the proper sense.’ The decree [issued by Cardinal Ratzinger] denounces the ‘philosophy of religious pluralism,’ and emphasizes conversion over ecumenical dialog. The Vatican declared it a ‘definitive and irrevocable’ doctrine of the church. The reaction ranged from disappointment to outrage among Protestants-including evangelicals. The Vatican soon thereafter invoked Dominus Jesus to denounce a book supportive of religious pluralism authored by a Jesuit theologian. Such official religious supremacism is also reflected in Fr. Frank Pavone’s teaching that ‘it is not just the church that must obey God. So does the state. So does the government. Separation of church and state doesn’t mean separation of God and state…. God and his law are the very foundation… of the state.’ Pavone’s attack on church-state separation is consistent with the Christian nationalism that is integral to the theology of most if not all of the leaders of the Christian Right, from Bill Bright and Pat Robertson, to the Promise Keepers and the theologians of Christian Reconstructionism. All see religious pluralism and constitutional guarantees of separation of church and state, as a bulwark that must be breached if any of the sectors of the Christian Right are to accomplish their aims.”

“PFL and its leader Fr. Frank Pavone waged a media campaign during the summer of 2000 calling on Catholics to mobilize politically… Pavone met with candidate George W. Bush and declared him to be p’pro-life,’” while attacking candidate Al Gore as ‘an apostle for abortion.’”

Pavone has recently founded a new order, under the auspices of the Bishop John W. Yanta of Amarillo, Texas, whose purpose is to train priests, seminarians and others in militant antiabortion activism and electoral politics. According to the initial press release the, group will be known as Missionaries of the Gospel of Life. Meanwhile, Priests for Life will move its headquarters to Amarillo, while maintaining “its current offices and staff in New York, Washington D.C., Virginia, California, and Rome, Italy.”