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Hudson says the behavior he has commented on has wide consequences. And criticizing that behavior, he says, now has consequences in his own life. He points to his recent article noting that moderator of the "Catholics for Kerry" e-mail list, Ono Ekeh, was a full-time employee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. (Ekeh was forced to resign after Hudson's article was published and picked up by William F. Buckley in his syndicated column.)

The Catholic blogs are going to be all over this story. One big place to start: Amy Welborn's Open Book, which already has hundreds of comments in the two posts she's devoted to the news. So far, the sense among her (mostly conservative) readership seems to be that even if the allegations against Hudson are true, they don't disqualify him from political engagement or editing Crisis. "This issue belongs strictly between Hudson and his wife, not to mention his confessor and God Himself; but not with the rest of us," says one post on Open Book. Another writes:

I'm not sure what infidelity actually has to do with undercutting a pro-life, pro-marriage, (and so forth) message, especially among people who assume that we're all sinners.

I guess some sins are more politically convenient to peg on people than others, especially when others' public sins are being ignored (or one wishes them to be ignored). People forget that someone else's sins do not excuse our own.

Anyway, I feel sorry for him, and sorry for any Catholic movement that requires sinlessness for its spokespeople. I can imagine a medieval NCR, annoyed at St. Patrick's evangelization, bringing up the matter of St. Pat being rumored to have murdered someone in Ireland in order to escape slavery … how dare such a man represent the Church!

Hudson's distancing himself from the Bush campaign doesn't mean that the Republicans no longer have connections to conservative Catholics. In his interview with several Christian publications, Bush said that First Things editor Richard John Neuhaus "helped me craft what is still the integral part of my position on abortion, which is: Every child welcomed to life and protected by law." Neuhaus and Hudson were both at that meeting (as was Russell Shaw, who writes for Our Sunday Visitor and other Catholic publications), and both are former evangelical Protestant pastors (Hudson was a Southern Baptist, Neuhaus a Lutheran).

One person angling for the "position" vacated by Hudson is surely Catholic League president William Donohue, who was almost completely forgotten until he singlehandedly brought down two religious outreach directors in the Democratic Party. Donohue today defends Hudson, joking that "Effective today, the Catholic League has a new requirement for all future employees: all candidates must show proof of being immaculately conceived, that is, they must demonstrate that they were conceived without sin."

Religion & politics:

• Group aims to rouse Catholic voters | Ex-mayor Flynn kicks off campaign (The Boston Globe)
• Conservative views becoming the norm | Despite efforts to marginalize particular issues as "culture war" relics, the reality is that the majority of Americans support certain fundamental principles that are readily described as conservative (Todd Young, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
• Beliefs, policies and the law | What do you do when religion and sex clash in the workplace? (Diane Stafford, The Kansas City Star)

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August (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48