Kerry’s Dirty Deeds

John F. Kerry is a more checkered Catholic than the first JFK. Unlike Kennedy who had some residual sense of respect for the Church, Kerry uses his Catholicism as a campaign prop while sabotaging its teachings. The irony of Kerry's Sunday sermon on George Bush's faith -- visiting a Baptist Church Kerry used scripture to suggest Bush has "faith but has no deeds" -- is that the verse describes the spin Kerry usually places on his own religion. He claims the Catholic faith but insists it should not influence his public deeds.

"What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?" said Kerry, citing James 2:14. It is a question Kerry has yet to answer: What good is a politician who makes a show of his Catholic faith while casting votes in favor of the abortion of unborn children?

Kerry is an advocate of empty faith. He justifies the blatant contradiction between his Catholicism and his voting record on the grounds that his faith should not drive his deeds.

Kerry rebuked Pope John Paul II last year for urging Catholic politicians to produce public deeds worthy of the moral teachings of their Church. Kerry said he would disregard the Pope's statement. "I believe in the Church and care about it enormously," he said. "But I think that it's important to not have the Church instructing politicians. That is an inappropriate crossing of the line in America. President Kennedy drew that line very clearly in 1960 and I believe we need to stand up for that line today."

Kerry stands up for the "line" between religion and public life, then crosses it himself when he sees a chance to use Catholicism for political purposes. The third line of the biography on his campaign website reads, "John Kerry was raised in the Catholic faith and continues to be an active member of the Catholic Church." On Ash Wednesday Kerry made sure to emerge from a Catholic Church with ash on his head while photographers snapped their cameras. Last week The American Spectator's Washington Prowler reported that Kerry, outfitted outrageously in ski gear, barged into a Catholic Church to receive communion for another photo-op.

Kerry also uses Catholicism -- that is, a twisted semblance of Catholicism -- to advance his liberal agenda. On abortion, Kerry says that his faith is irrelevant. On left-wing economic issues, however, his liberal understanding of his faith suddenly becomes very public. Kerry says the Pope shouldn't instruct politicians, yet in the 1980s he inserted into the Congressional Record the American Catholic bishops' ill-advised pastoral letter against Reaganomics. Kerry called the quasi-socialist U.S. bishops' pastoral letter on the economy "an important document which should be read by Catholics and non-Catholics alike."

When Kerry sponsored the federal Gay & Lesbian Civil Rights Bill in the 1980s, he noted that the "National Federation of Priests' Councils" supported the "inclusion of the term 'sexual orientation' in existing civil rights laws."

Kerry doesn't mind if heretical prelates influence politics. Kerry even urges them to get into politics. Early in his political career Kerry passed up a congressional seat out of deference to Robert Drinan, the Jesuit congressman who supported Roe v. Wade. And then there was Kerry's campaigning for "Father Aristide." In 1994 he helped the defrocked priest return to power in Haiti, calling him "Father Aristide" in an attempt to gin up U.S. sympathy for the Marxist thug. Aristide was no priest -- the Vatican took his collar away after he descended into violent activism -- but that didn't stop Kerry from casting him as a benign "Father."

A product of Jesuit Boston College law school, Kerry absorbed the modern Jesuit enthusiasm for "liberation theology." This is evident in his apologetics work for "Father Aristide." Kerry bitterly accuses Republicans of persecuting Aristide for his "liberation theology." For this reason he rushed to Aristide's defense -- "Father Aristide may not be perfect (what elected leader is?)," he has written -- despite knowing that the cashiered priest is an inciter of "necklacing," the practice of throwing flaming tires around his opponents' heads.

There has been much talk about the dereliction of the Boston archdiocese. But it goes beyond abuse cases. It also shows itself in the relative silence from the chancery about the Kennedys and Kerrys who use their Catholic faith in elections then traduce it after winning them. Boston's Archbishop Sean O'Malley, the highly regarded successor to Cardinal Law, could stop Kerry's charade, and the candidate himself has just given him an opening. The bishop could turn Kerry's questioning of Bush's hollow faith on Kerry.

From an Ann Coulter column Just a Gigolo:

In 1970, Kerry married into the family of Julia Thorne -- a family estimated to be worth about $300 million. She got depressed, so he promptly left her and was soon seen catting around with Hollywood starlets, mostly while the cad was still married. (Apparently, JFK really was his mentor.) Thorne is well-bred enough to say nothing ill of her Lothario ex-husband. He is, after all, the father of her children -- a fact that never seemed to constrain him.

When Kerry was about to become the latest Heinz family charity, he sought to have his marriage to Thorne annulled, despite the fact that it had produced two children. It seems his second meal ticket, Teresa Heinz, wanted the first marriage annulled -- and Heinz is worth more than $700 million. Kerry claims he will stand up to powerful interests, but he can't even stand up to his wife.

Heinz made Kerry sign a prenuptial agreement, presumably aware of how careless he is with other people's property, such as other people's Vietnam War medals, which Kerry threw on the ground during a 1971 anti-war demonstration.

And from NewsMax (Carl Limbacher):

During the period the Kerrys were separated, for instance, the senator apparently felt little constrained by his marital vows. Gossip columns at the time linked him to Morgan Fairchild, Cornelia Guest and even President Reagan's liberal daughter, Patti Davis. An upcoming Boston Globe expose will reportedly feature details of the Massachusetts Democrat's 1980s affair with a 25-year-old British reporter.

According to a previous account offered by the paper, the fact that Kerry was still technically married till 1988 "reportedly came as a surprise to some of his frequent companions."

Just weeks before his May 26, 1995, remarriage to Ketchup heiress Theresa Heinz, Thorne took Kerry to court in a bid for an increase in child support payments, arguing that "his income was up substantially," according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Both Kerry and Thorne denied that the lawsuit had anything to do with Heinz or her fortune.

But friction arose again two years later when Kerry, a Catholic, applied to the Washington, D.C., archdiocese to have his marriage to Thorne annulled, even though the couple had two grown daughters.

Thorne "has written a letter of opposition to the archdiocese because she feels the process demeans their relationship and their children," reported the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1997.

The paper blamed Kerry's new wife on the annulment bid. His office issued a terse statement: "Sen. Kerry very much understands Julia's feelings and appreciates her support. Sen. Kerry believes that this is a private family matter."

The Washington Times noted in a Kerry profile several years ago that his critics consider him "a ruthless political opportunist." Given some of the more obscure details of Kerry's first marriage, that assessment may not be too far off the mark.

This Kerry Encyclopedia (with links to Kerry for President Website) says the Roman Catholic Church granted an annulment in 1997.

"What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?"

. . . in the 1980s [Kerry] inserted into the Congressional Record the American Catholic bishops' ill-advised pastoral letter against Reaganomics.

If you are sincerely concerned about economic deeds, Senator Kerry, you should quietly donate about a half a billion dollars to the poor. That would be a deed. Of course doing it quietly would not get you any politcal credit. But then, that wouldn't be the point, would it?
Some of us get the impression that Warren Buffet "raise my taxes" liberalism is conspicuous consumption. And some of us get the impression that liberals want the government to be as G-d to the poor as a source of hope and to the middle class as a burden to bow down to. Leaving "benevolent" rich liberals to take the credit while lesser mortals look up in awe at them.

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