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If the polls are relatively accurate, this year's presidential election looks to be another razor-thin race. So it's no wonder our political parties are anxious to avoid a repeat of 2000. But ensuring voters make it to the booths on November 2—and actually vote for the candidate they thought they were voting for—may not be the biggest story of 2004. According to journalists like Reuter's Ellen Wulfhorst, the story we should really be paying attention to is what the American Catholic voter is thinking.

Senator John Kerry has made no apologies for running as a Catholic—even when American Catholic archbishops like John J. Myers of Newark warned the faithful that their obligation to oppose abortion outweighed any other issue. For months now, Republicans have been hoping to capitalize on Catholics disenchanted with secular liberals in the Democratic party.

But Kerry's conflict with his own church reveals a shift that goes beyond just the battle over abortion. John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign created significant Protestant angst over a Catholic occupying the White House. And while Catholics voted overwhelmingly for Kennedy (70 percent), a majority of Protestants voted against him. To understand how much has really changed over the past 40 years, let's go back to the nation's early history for a peek at just what Protestants and Catholics thought of each other.

George J. Marlin's The American Catholic Voter (St. Augustine's Press, 2004) is a reliable guide told from his Catholic perspective. Marlin's book takes his readers on a time trip to the British colonies, where American colonists had little love for Catholics. John Adams, for example, complimented Puritan founders who curbed "the power of Monarch and Priest lest government become the man of sin, the whore of Babylon, the mystery of Iniquity." When Britain's parliament gave Catholics in conquered Quebec religious freedom in 1774, the American colonies vociferously condemned the "hellish" plan, believing it endangered the security of Protestant Americans.

Why all the hysteria? Until 1789, France was a solidly Catholic nation, and a sworn enemy of Protestant Britain. And the animosity sparked by Catholic-Protestant wars in Europe after the Reformation continued to smolder in the New World. Even Maryland, the only colony promising Catholics freedom of religion, reneged when Protestants stormed the City of St. Mary's in 1690 and repealed the original charter, enacting laws that severely limited Catholic liberties. In 1704, the Maryland Assembly passed a law fining and imprisoning priests attempting to convert children to Catholicism, and in 1715 the assembly declared that any Catholic wishing to run for office must sign a declaration condemning the pope.

But when America declared her independence from Britain, the fledging republic had a decision to make. With Philadelphia located so close to Maryland's Catholic population, military strategy trumped other factors. If Congress did not win Catholics to the cause, they might side with Britain, and open the republic to its deathblow. Moreover, Congress needed the support of Catholic France or Spain to fend off the vastly superior British navy.

So George Washington courted Maryland's most prominent Catholic, George Carroll, promising Catholics greater religious freedom in exchange for his service. Carroll, in turn, signed the Declaration of Independence, and threw his considerable weight and wealth behind the revolution. And when Britain admitted defeat at Yorktown, Carroll's aspirations were rewarded. Washington assured Catholic leaders, "Your fellow citizens will not forget the patriotic part which you took in the accomplishment of their Revolution …. nor the important assistance which they received from a nation in which the Roman Catholic religion is professed."

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