NEW-TIME RELIGION.(The Talk of the Town)(John Kerry believes in separation of church and state, but it is difficult to say that the same is true of George W. Bush)

It isn't every day that the Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party is a junior senator from Massachusetts who was educated at an elite boarding school and an Ivy League college and whose political career was founded on his war heroism as a young Naval officer in command of a small boat and who has family money and a thick shock of hair and a slightly stiff manner and beautifully tailored suits and an aristocratic mien and whose initials are J.F.K. So rare is this phenomenon that the last time it happened was fortyfour years ago, way back in 1960. That was also the last time that the nominee of the Democratic Party--or of either major party, for that matter--was a Roman Catholic.

There are plenty of other similarities between now and then, each of which comes equipped with its own corresponding difference. Here's one: in 2004 as in 1960, a large number of evangelical Protestant ministers have been alerting their followers to the danger posed by the man from Massachusetts. The difference is that last time they were against him because they were afraid he might be subservient to the Vatican. This time they're against him because they're pretty sure he won't be.

Here's another: in 2004 as in 1960, there are prominent Catholics who find it worrying or alarming or otherwise upsetting that their co-religionist is on the ballot for the office of President of the United States. In 1960, though, these prominent Catholics were mostly politicians, some of them the hard-bitten but cautious bosses of big-city Democratic machines. They loved John F. Kennedy, but they loved winning even more, and they feared that the time was not yet ripe to defy the bigotry that had traumatized them thirty-two years earlier. The crushing 1928 defeat of Al Smith, the only other Catholic who had ever run at the top of a major-party ticket, was exactly as distant in time, and as fresh in memory, as the crushing 1972 defeat of George McGovern is today (and the pols who saw McGovern when they looked at Howard Dean are the direct descendants of the ones who saw Smith when they looked at Kennedy). In 2004, the most prominent Catholic worrywarts are conservative prelates. Their fear is not that the candidate who happens to be Catholic will be defeated but that he will be elected.

Theodore Sorensen, the Unitarian who was President Kennedy's closest aide, wrote that while his boss faithfully attended Mass on Sundays, "not once in eleven years--despite all our discussions of church-state affairs--did he ever disclose his personal views on man's relation to God." John Forbes Kerry, who also attends Sunday Mass, has been similarly reticent about the intimate details of his spiritual beliefs. Nevertheless, Kerry's biography contains hints that his Catholicism is somewhat more devout than was that of his political hero and role model. Kerry was an altar boy, and as a youth he considered the seminary and a career in the priesthood. There is no evidence that any such thoughts ever crossed the mind of the first J.F.K. Yet, because Kerry opposes the recriminalization of abortion and supports stem-cell research to find treatments for such diseases as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, a bevy of bishops have all but called for his defeat. The archbishop of St. Louis has said he would refuse to let Kerry take Communion, the central sacrament of Catholic inclusion, and lesser bishops in Boston, New Orleans, and Portland, Oregon, have chimed in with similar sentiments. The bishop of Colorado Springs has gone further, declaring that anyone who votes for a candidate who favors abortion rights or stem-cell research (or gay marriage or assisted suicide) will be denied Communion in his diocese. Of course, there are still lots of bishops, probably a majority, who think that using the Eucharist as a political bludgeon is a bad idea. Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, of Los Angeles, to name one, has said that Kerry is welcome to take Communion in his diocese. There is plenty of disagreement within the Catholic Church and plenty of debate in the Catholic press.