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But Kerry continues to receive Communion at Boston's Paulist Center, which is quasi-independent of the local hierarchy. It is Kerry's closest connection to a local worshiping community. Father John Ardis, the center's director, prayed at the opening and closing of the Democratic National Convention in Boston, signaling Kerry's shaky ties to the Catholic hierarchy.

Kerry's commitment to Catholicism dates to his childhood. At boarding school in Switzerland, Kerry fully embr /aced the rituals and teachings of Catholicism. Kerry told biographer Douglas br /inkley, "I was an altar boy and prayed all the time. I was very centered around the Mass and the church." br /inkley, author of Tour of Duty, said in a recent interview with CT that while at school, Kerry for about six months considered becoming a priest. br /inkley added that Kerry once said that if he didn't go into public life he'd be a Bible scholar because he's fascinated by ancient texts.

After returning from Vietnam in 1969, Kerry expressed doubts about God. "I was troubled about my relationship with the Almighty," he recounted during comments at a Baptist church in Boston in 1992. "I wondered about [how] he would put these tests in front of us and how there could be such killing and such anxiety in all of us." He returned to regular Mass later, and was seen regularly attending evening Mass at Our Lady of Good Voyage in south Boston in the mid-1990s. Today, on the campaign trail, Kerry carries a rosary, a prayer book, and a medal of St. Christopher, a patron saint of travelers.

Yet his political positions on some major issues seem to have little or no overlap with the authoritative teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. He opposes abortion personally but supports abortion as public policy. He is against gay marriage but rejects a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a monogamous, heterosexual union. He voted for the Iraq war despite the American bishops' sharp criticism of a pre-emptive attack on Iraq. Like the Catholic Church, Kerry is opposed to the death penalty. But Kerry makes an exception for terrorists.

Kerry's inconsistencies have led some evangelical Democrats to wonder about him. "Kerry is the imperial self dressed up in a politician's suit," said James R. Kurth, an evangelical Presbyterian, professor of political science at Swarthmore College, and a Democrat. "There's no evidence that he's read the bishops' statements on Catholic social teaching."

A leading evangelical in Massachusetts, Michael E. Haynes, an African American and pastor of Twelfth Baptist Church, where Kerry has attended worship services in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, has watched Kerry in office for years. Haynes sees Kerry as someone who belongs to the secularized elite and shares their allegiance to inclusive theology.

"That's Beacon Hill, the very neighborhood he comes from," Haynes said concerning Kerry's interfaith comments. "It sounds like what Thoreau's people and Emerson's people talk about."

On the other hand, left-wing Catholics interpret Kerry in a favorable light. Sister Joan Chittister, the progressive Catholic writer, wrote in the National Catholic Reporter that Kerry offers voters a "very good Catholic position" on many issues.

"Kerry has spoken out against racial profiling. He supports the restoration of affirmative action. He has pledged himself to restore civil liberties, lost during the Ashcroft era, to the United States itself. Those are very Catholic positions."

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October 2004, Vol. 48, No. 10