When you read the details of Ratzinger’s instructions about Catholics and pro-choice candidates, there is room for Catholics to vote Democratic.

There is not much room for politicians to be pro-choice and Catholic, but there is room to vote for a pro-choice candidate.

Bush was unafraid of a potential backlash from Catholics offended by Ratzingers instructions. Why would Bush be unafraid? I guess he had done enough polling (Rove and company of course) and knew the backlash would not be as strong as the vote among the faithful, or that liberal Catholics might just stay home rather than vote pro-choice.

Anyway, Bush and Rove called it right, and Ratzinger helped out a bit at Bush’s request, it appears.

Salon.com | Holy warriors: “President Bush treated his final visit with Pope John Paul II in Vatican City on June 4, 2004, as a campaign stop. After enduring a public rebuke from the pope about the Iraq war, Bush lobbied Vatican officials to help him win the election. ‘Not all the American bishops are with me,’ he complained, according to the National Catholic Reporter. He pleaded with the Vatican to pressure the bishops to step up their activism against abortion and gay marriage in the states during the campaign season.

About a week later, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a letter to the U.S. bishops, pronouncing that those Catholics who were pro-choice on abortion were committing a ‘grave sin’ and must be denied Communion.”