Under federal tax law, churches cannot legally intervene in a political campaign. It’s a flat ban — churches that violate the law and seek to influence the outcome of a race run the risk of losing their tax-exempt status, which they’re given because they’re supposed to be non-partisan, charitable institutions.
With this in mind, the Roman Catholic Church, in a growing number of areas, is playing with legal fire.
[Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, the highest-ranking Roman Catholic prelate in Colorado], who has never explicitly endorsed a candidate, is part of a group of bishops intent on throwing the weight of the church into the elections.
Galvanized by battles against same-sex marriage and stem cell research and alarmed at the prospect of a President Kerry — who is Catholic but supports abortion rights — these bishops and like-minded Catholic groups are blanketing churches with guides identifying abortion, gay marriage and the stem cell debate as among a handful of “non-negotiable issues.”
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Archbishop Chaput has discussed Catholic priorities in the election in 14 of his 28 columns in the free diocesan newspaper this year. His archdiocese has organized voter registration drives in more than 40 of the largest parishes in the state and sent voter guides to churches around the state. Many have committees to help turn out voters and are distributing applications for absentee ballots.
There can be a legitimate legal argument over what constitutes “intervention” in a campaign, but by any reasonable definition, Chaput and Catholic leaders like him are coming dangerously close to that line. In fact, they may have already crossed it.
It’s reached the point that Chaput has chosen certain issues of importance to the church (abortion, stem cell research), while ignoring other issues that are supposed to be significant (death penalty, an unnecessary war), to conclude that a vote for Kerry is literally a “sin” that must be confessed before receiving Communion.
“If you vote this way, are you cooperating in evil?” he asked. “And if you know you are cooperating in evil, should you go to confession? The answer is yes.”
If a religious leader tells his or her congregation that a vote for a candidate is a sin, that’s obviously a step intended to intervene in the race. The same is true of published church materials that identify one candidate as a saint, the other a sinner. Indeed, if that’s not intervention, what is?
Look, if Chaput and his allies want to work to elect Bush and other Republicans, they are free to make a choice. They can leave their congregations and form a political action committee, which is not tax-exempt, and which can intervene in political campaigns to its leaders’ hearts content. Or they can stay with their houses of worship, continue to speak out on moral issues they find important, counsel their congregations, but let congregants decide on their own who to vote for.
The church, however, cannot do both.