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The New York Times examines Evangelical-Catholic rapprochement
Christianity Today figures heavily in a Saturday "Week in Review" article by New York Times religion reporter Laurie Goodstein. A quick summary of the piece: Instead of worrying about a presidential candidate who's Roman Catholic, evangelicals are now concerned about a candidate who's not Catholic enough. That's because evangelical and conservative Catholic leaders over the last decade have been "laying the groundwork for a religious realignment," especially to fight "culture war issues" and hyperindividualism.

In summary, Goodstein is generally right. There has been a significant rapprochement between evangelical Protestants and conservative Catholics over the last decade or so. And she's right in hitting some of the main events signaling this new relationship: the prolife movement, Evangelicals and Catholics Together, and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

Still, there's some important things that should be added to this story, and a few items that need correction.

Let's hit a few of the less significant issues first. Goodstein uses the Left Behind book series as an example of lingering evangelical suspicion of the Roman Catholic Church, and to a large degree she's right. But the books are also an example of how even the conservative and dispensationalist wings of evangelicalism aren't as opposed to Rome as they used to be. The Pope, after all, is one of those who get raptured in the first book.

More troubling on this hallway, however, is Goodstein's misquoting of our recent Christianity Today editorial on the controversy over pro-abortion politicians and Communion. "In an about-face," she writes, "Christianity Today says in a June editorial that it is 'certainly appropriate' for bishops to expect a Catholic president to submit to Vatican authority."

No, that's not what we said. Here's the relevant text:

Some bishops don't want to use Communion as a threat when dealing with prochoice Catholic politicians. But it is certainly appropriate. Communion is the moment in church life at which we most deeply realize our connectedness, both to Jesus and to all his followers.

"Certainly appropriate," then, was in reference to using Communion as a tool of discipline, not whether politicians should vote in line with church teachings.

Goodstein is more correct in quoting Christianity Today's earlier editorial concern over the last major Catholic to run for president. "Opposition to political Romanism is not unreasoning, because a Catholic in the presidency would be torn between two loyalties as no Protestant has ever been," Christianity Today said in a February 1, 1960, editorial. "A candidate may announce, and even sincerely believe, that he is immune to Vatican pressure; but can we be sure that he will not succumb in the confessional booth to threats of purgatory and promises of merit from the organization which he believes to hold the keys of heaven?"

That editorial, by the way, stirred its own little controversy when Ed Sullivan called it "hateful bigotry" in the New York Daily News. (And, both before and after this, Christianity Today spent far more space justifying criticism of official Vatican dogma than it did actually criticizing it.)

And it's worth noting that the magazine's first take on Kennedy's candidacy was positive: "In light of his personal commitment to the principle of separation of Church and State and his profession of loyalty to the American way, it would be heartening if he would with high courage initiate a movement in his church looking toward the repudiation of those sections of its canon law which compel his American compatriots to look with uneasiness upon Roman Catholic candidates for political office," said an October 26, 1959, editorial.

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May (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48