Jim,,,,,
What ever happened to your story about Bush investing in Nazi's? Did you
finally realize how silly your cut and paste was?


"Jim," wrote in message
...
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blument.../tk/print.html

extract

April 21, 2005 | 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. He pointedly
mentioned "the case of a Catholic politician consistently campaigning and
voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws" --
an obvious reference to John Kerry, the Democratic candidate and a Roman
Catholic. If such a Catholic politician sought Communion, Ratzinger wrote,
priests must be ordered to "refuse to distribute it." Any Catholic who
voted for this "Catholic politician," he continued, "would be guilty of
formal cooperation in evil and so unworthy to present himself for Holy
Communion." During the closing weeks of the campaign, a pastoral letter
was read from pulpits in Catholic churches repeating the ominous
suggestion of excommunication. Voting for the Democrat was nothing less
than consorting with the forces of Satan, collaboration with "evil."

In 2004 Bush increased his margin of Catholic support by 6 points from the
2000 election, rising from 46 to 52 percent. Without this shift, Kerry
would have had a popular majority of a million votes. Three states --
Ohio, Iowa and New Mexico -- moved into Bush's column on the votes of the
Catholic "faithful." Even with his atmospherics of terrorism and Sept. 11,
Bush required the benediction of the Holy See as his saving grace. The key
to his kingdom was turned by Cardinal Ratzinger.