Bush Looking for Catholic Parish Directories

Not content with getting Protestant church directories, the Bush reelection campaign is now trying to get their hands on Catholic parish directories as well. This seems to be sparking similar complaints and outrage as the Protestant effort.

The Guardian reports:

``Access to these directories is critical as it allows us to identify and contact those Catholics who are likely to be supportive of President Bush's compassionate conservative agenda,'' wrote Martin J. Gillespie, director of Catholic Outreach at the RNC. ``Please forward any directories you are able to collect to my attention.'' ... Parish directories often contain personal information about church members, including names of family members, home addresses and phone numbers. Iverson said she did not know if the GOP had sought similar directories from other religious organizations or how many Catholic directories it received in response to Gillespie's request.

Susan Gibbs, the spokeswoman for the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., which oversees 140 parishes in Washington and Maryland, said parish directories publish information only for use among church members and not for use by outside organizations no matter what their purpose. ``Parish directories are for helping parishioners get to know each other better and are strictly for that purpose. They are not intended to be used for any outside commercial purpose, solicitations or anything else,'' Gibbs said. ``Parish directories or priest directories are not given to outside groups even if it's for a good cause.''

According to Yahoo News:

While Catholic officials concede the tactic may be legal, they say it is improper — and interferes with the work of the church. The directories are meant to help priests organize their parishes and build support among members, and are not for use by any outside group, they say.

Some parishes distribute directories with pictures of families who belong to the church, but those are put together for the families' use only, officials say. "It is the 11th commandment in this archdiocese that parish lists will not be given out for any reason whatsoever," said Tod Tamberg, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. "And I can't imagine that the very same pastors who rely on the sacrosanct nature of those lists would ever allow them to be used for this purpose."

John Green, an expert on religion and politics at the University of Akron, said denominational leaders are partly upset because local clergy may not be familiar with the rules, increasing the chances they'll cross a legal line. ... "On the face of it, these are not necessarily bad things," Green said, of the requests for church directories. "But they can be done in a way to create enormous trouble." Republican strategists may be willing to take that risk because of the potential benefits of targeting regular churchgoers.

Yes, Republican strategists are willing to take this risk because they aren’t risking anything. What do they have to lose? Nothing, really — it’s unlikely that many people, if any at all, will not vote for the GOP because of this. If any legal lines are crossed, they will be crossed by priests and ministers — they will pay any legal price that results, not Republican Part employees.

Of course, that alone should cause religious leaders to get upset because it betrays a fundamental disrespect for them. They should inform their churches’ members that as far as the GOP is concerned, the churches have no importance beyond the votes that they can provide. If the GOP cared about anything else, they would be much more concerned about taking risks that could affect those churches legal and tax-exempt status.

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