Senator Kerry will be talking about his faith in Florida next week. Let me rephrase that, . . . his faith in God somewhere in Florida (we do believe in FL too). Recently there has been quite a bit of commentary on George Bush's faith, or lack thereof. Most notably, someone noted that Bush's faith lacks content and his strategists have used that to their advantage. He simply states his faith in God, and Bush's worshippers fill in the rest, or should we say, project in the rest.

Senator Kerry's faith on the other hand is a wise and well thought out faith, much like most other things in his life. Kerry's religion has been very important to him for decades. He was an altar boy. He once considered the priesthood. After Vietnam, he had a crises of faith (something I wish he would talk about more, he has no idea how much that would resonate with Catholics), but then returned to the Catholic faith.

Christianity has always advanced by and because of men like Senator Kerry, who understand that the voice of God speaks as authentically to humans in history, nature and culture, as it does through the traditional religious symbols.

One of the great ideas of Gaudium et Spes, Vatican II document, was that the Church had finally learned its lesson that it was not the sole or complete voice of God in the world. The Bishops finally acknowledged that the secular world had much to teach the Catholic Church as the Church had to share with the world. But, alas, along with Dei Verbum, another Vatican II document, the Bishops have retreated from that stance and that document (way too progressive).

Now, in our day, the Church sees itself as the sole bulwark of truth and deigns to lecture everyone and anyone who does not subscribe the narrow ortthodoxy of the Catholic Right.

Senator Kerry, if he wins, will enbolden the liberal and centrist wing of the U.S. Catholic Church and restore sanity to Catholic discourse. If the Bishops refuse to listen to the voice of God in nature, science, history and the like, Catholics are just as equipped to hear God speaking unmediated through the Bishops. It appears that U.S. Catholics are expressing frustration with an Episcopacy that has lost its way and if Catholics vote for Kerry in larger numbers, it would send a definite message to the Bishops and to the Vatican.

But as they say, if lay Catholics send out a call in the forest, do any Bishops actually hear them?

The trend for Kerry among Catholics is positive. If nothing else, someone on a throne somewhere, needs to take note of that.