Some on Religious Right Miffed as Bush Courts Catholics

President Bush is reaching out to Roman Catholics, courting one of the most important groups of swing voters whose support has gone increasingly to Republican presidential candidates in the last three elections.

His aggressive focus on developing an easy relationship with the church’s leaders, exemplified by two events this week, comes as he seeks to build support for his program to ease the way for government help for charitable organizations.

And it presents an unexpected turn of events: An early campaign miscue raised expectations that Bush would encounter difficulties among Catholics. That has not been the case. And, the anticipated swelling of support among conservative Christians for his faith-based initiative has failed to materialize.

Woven throughout is the political unease with which evangelical groups and Roman Catholics have viewed each other and questions about whether Bush’s courtship of one group will likely come at a price: a lack of support from the other.

Bush attended ceremonies Thursday dedicating the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center at the Catholic University of America in Washington. On Wednesday evening, he received a delegation of cardinals and bishops at the White House East Room.

“I may be just passing through and I may not be a parishioner, but I’m proud to live in your archdiocese,” Bush said, with a nod to newly elevated Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington.

Indeed, one of the first social calls the president paid after being sworn in was to McCarrick, at the official residence of the archbishop of Washington.

Bush also has been calling on bishops and cardinals during his introductory travels around the country, paying short, private visits with the religious leaders.

Paying homage to Catholic leaders Wednesday evening, Bush said: “The Catholic Church is fortunate to have such strong, capable, decent leadership. And America is fortunate to have strong leaders in our midst.”

None of this has escaped the notice of evangelical leaders around the country. Their representative in Washington says they are miffed that this former Southern governor who routinely speaks about the role of religion in his life and that of the country has not been more attentive.

“He’s certainly met with more Catholics than evangelicals,” said Richard Cizik, vice president for government affairs for the National Assn. of Evangelicals. “It’s probably hurt him with the religious right because they’ve felt ignored. . . . This could come back to bite him.”

The most likely bite, at the moment, would be directed at Bush’s effort to get his White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives off the ground. The office’s goal is to look for ways that government can increase cooperation with religious and community groups providing social services.

The head of the office, John J. DiIulio Jr., journeyed to Dallas in early March to defend the program at the National Assn. of Evangelicals’ convention. He told approximately 200 participants that “Washington is not funding religion or sectarian worship.”

The association represents 51 denominations with more than 30 million members.

Well-known evangelical leaders have raised a red flag over the possibility that the program would work with the Hare Krishna group or the Church of Scientology. They also worry that accepting federal funds--with restrictions on expressions of faith linked directly to charitable acts--could change the nature of their work.

“I don’t see how anyone can be turned down because of their radical and unpopular views. I don’t know where that would take us,” the Rev. Jerry Falwell, a founder of the Moral Majority, said in an interview with Beliefnet.com.

Bush appeared to put the support of Catholics at risk with his campaign visit last year to Bob Jones University. Officials of the South Carolina school have made anti-Catholic statements.

But before that visit could become a campaign issue, Bush moved to quell any criticism. He wrote a letter to Cardinal John O’Connor of New York in which he expressed his “profound respect for the Catholic Church” and apologized for his visit to the school.

In November, Bush continued to improve on the margin of support Republican presidential candidates have won among Catholic voters. Polls indicated he won 47% of the Catholic vote to Al Gore’s 49%. In 1996, Bob Dole, the Republican presidential candidate, won 37% of the Catholic vote. Four years earlier, Bush’s father, in his failed reelection campaign, won the support of 35% of Catholic voters.

In the aftermath of the campaign stop at Bob Jones University, Bush courted Catholics throughout the campaign, said John C. Green, director of the Bliss Institute at the University of Akron and an expert on the voting patterns of religious groups. Support for Bush grew in approximate proportion to rates of attendance at Mass--with frequent churchgoers more likely to vote for him, Green said. “I think he sees them as a very important constituency,” he said.

Green said the “courtship of Roman Catholics has much more to do with electoral strategy than legislative strategy.” But, he added, Catholics are historically more comfortable than some other groups working at the intersection of religious charity and government social services.

Indeed, said Cizik, of the evangelicals’ group, many of the denominations he represents have sought to keep their distance from government, suspicious of restrictions that could be applied to their traditional work reaching out for new members.

But, given the support conservative Christians have shown for Republicans in recent years, he added: “Who would have thought a few short months ago that the chief criticism would be coming from the president’s own right wing?”