john-rudy.jpgRemember the huge mileage the Republicans got out of their pet bishops refusing to give John Kerry communion wafers because he’s pro-choice?  Googling “kerry communion bishop” garners about 138,000 hits.  It was nearly as big a deal as the “Swift Boat” slanders, in part because it wasn’t just a bunch of fringeoid right-wing racist dorks, but respected Princes of the Church, going after Kerry on this.

So let’s see if, now that we have as the GOP front-runner a Catholic guy who married his cousin, then bought an annulment so he could marry one of his mistresses, then wriggled out of THAT marriage to wed another, even younger mistress, we have anywhere near the same amount of media tsk-tsking about Rudy Giuliani’s being a “bad Catholic.”

I won’t hold my breath.  There’s been nothing on TV about it as far as I know.  In fact, so far, and only because I’ve been actively looking, I’ve seen this and this and this — and the last piece starts out by talking up what a good defender of the faith Mister Three Wives has been.  None of the anti-Kerry pieces ever did that.  (In fact, the article has this suggestive sentence: “Several of the bishops who declared in 2004 that they would deny communion to Mr. Kerry declined requests for interviews about Mr. Giuliani.”  The excuse given was that it’s allegedly harder since 2004 for churches to get involved in American politics — which is bogus; Joseph Ratzinger has no problem telling American Catholic politicians what to do — he did so less than two months ago.)