Religious Bias Charges Aired in GOP Race

Allegations of religious bigotry dominated the Republican presidential race Sunday, as George W. Bush declared his “profound respect for the Catholic Church” and, for the first time, apologized for his appearance at Bob Jones University in South Carolina.

“On reflection, I should have been more clear in disassociating myself from anti-Catholic statements and racial prejudice,” Bush wrote about his visit to the fundamentalist university in a letter to Cardinal John O’Connor in New York. Bush wrote it Friday but released it Sunday.

Meanwhile, rival John McCain struggled in a television interview to explain conflicting statements about mass telephone calls his campaign made in Michigan criticizing Bush over his appearance at Bob Jones. McCain acknowledged approving the calls but denied trying to mislead the public about his role when he earlier disavowed knowledge of them.

Bob Jones, in Greenville, S.C., is a powerful force among South Carolina religious conservatives--but it also prohibits interracial dating, and has leaders who have made anti-Catholic statements. In a speech there the morning after his loss in the New Hampshire primary, Bush said nothing about those issues, though he did criticize the stances later when asked by reporters.

The Bush letter marked a major change in his public posture. Until now, Bush had refused to apologize for his appearance. But in his letter to O’Connor, he called his failure to denounce the interracial dating and anti-Catholic statements “a missed opportunity, causing needless offense, which I deeply regret.”

Bush was even more apologetic at a news conference with reporters in Austin on Sunday. Asked why he had not commented earlier, Bush said, “I thought long and hard about the speech I had made. I regret having gone there and not speaking my heart. I wish I had clearly condemned sentiments that pit one religion against another.” He added: “I wish I had gotten up there and seized the moment.”

Catholics loom as a major voting bloc in several key upcoming primaries, including New York and Ohio, which will vote March 7. In the letter, Bush expanded beyond his apology to argue that his call for expanding the role of church-based charities in delivering social services is rooted in Catholic thinking.

“I have profound respect for the Catholic Church--a sympathy beyond mere tolerance,” Bush wrote. “I hope and intend that anyone closely examining my agenda will see reflections of a much greater tradition, a tradition of social justice defended and represented by the Catholic Church.”

The controversy over Bush’s appearance at Bob Jones University and the McCain camp’s utilization of it dominated McCain’s day as well. Appearing on ABC-TV’s “This Week,” McCain acknowledged approving the mass calls to Catholic voters in Michigan criticizing Bush for his appearance at Bob Jones.

McCain was then asked why he had denied knowledge of the calls in television interviews last week, including one on the “Today” show. Drawing a narrow distinction, McCain suggested that he had refused to take responsibility for the calls in the interviews because they were portrayed as accusing Bush of harboring anti-Catholic sentiments, while the actual script never made such a direct accusation.

The calls, in fact, never accused Bush of bigotry but did say he had “stayed silent” about “anti-Catholic bigotry” while “seeking the support of Southern fundamentalists.”

“They were portrayed as some calls that were somehow accusing Gov. Bush of being anti-Catholic or a bigot,” McCain said on ABC. “That’s not true. And that’s not what I take responsibility for.”

Actually, in the interview Wednesday, NBC reporter David Gregory did not characterize the calls at all, except to say to McCain: “He had allies making calls criticizing you. You had allies criticizing him.”

In that interview, McCain then answered: “The calls that were made that I--that I had anything to do with--although I didn’t, I don’t know who paid for them--had to do with pointing out that Gov. Bush did go to an institution that prohibits racial dating, that is anti-Catholic.”

The day’s events opened yet another front in the bitter dispute between the two campaigns over the role of religion in the GOP race. Former Sen. Warren B. Rudman of New Hampshire, the national co-chairman of McCain’s campaign, accused Bush supporters of anti-Semitism in targeting him with “vicious calls” in South Carolina.

Rudman, who is Jewish and supports abortion rights, was the principal target of mass calls that Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson made to socially conservative voters in Michigan last week. But Rudman said on “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he was also targeted by South Carolina calls “that were made referring to me by my faith, with pronunciations of my name that were inaccurate.” Rudman did not say who he believed sponsored the calls.

Sitting only a few inches from Rudman, Bush’s chief strategist Karl Rove immediately insisted that “no one associated with our campaign in a formal way would have anything whatsoever to do with [that].”

Rudman said he was not accusing the Bush campaign of approving such calls, but said “that there was certainly no one in that campaign who stood up and said, ‘Let’s stop this.’ ”

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Times staff writer Robert A. Rosenblatt contributed to this story.