Catholics and religion in politics

August Pollak has an amusing and pointed post on the error that the GOP is making in trying to sweep Catholics the way they have pulled in fundamentalist Protestants.  It's true--BushCo does seem to think that they can guilt Catholics into voting for Bush.  They seem to be under the impression that the Catholic Church doesn't tolerate dissent and that they will just fall into line with whatever some bishop here or there says.
But what strikes me as odd is that alot of the people who have criticized BushCo for this strategy don't quite understand why it's not working.  The press doesn't seem to get it, either.  They seem to be under the impression that Catholics don't care that they are violating the Church's teachings, and that American Catholics have neatly divided their life into secular and religious spheres, and never the two shall meet.
To be fair, Catholic politicians who have been asked about this don't clarify anything.  But can you blame them?  They are politicians--it's not their job to explain the complexities of how Catholics incorporate their faith into their worldview.  Plus, they have to be mindful of their non-Catholic constituency, who they represent just as surely as they do their Catholic constituency.

I believe that what I do as a public servant is in accord with church teaching," said Virginia Lt. Gov Tim Kaine, the presumptive Democratic candidate for governor next year. He supports abortion rights with restrictions such as requiring parental consent for minors and banning late-term abortions. "It hasn't caused me discomfort as a Catholic personally," he said.
 
The problem as I see it is that people don't understand how Catholicism is very different than the American Protestant tradition.  To be blunt about it, with American Protestant churches, if you disagree with some of your church's teachings, you start your own damn church or join one more in line with your beliefs.  But the Catholic Church has a tradition of internal dissent that extends to individual lay members.  Basically, you can disagree with a teaching of the Catholic Church and still be a Catholic.  Look at the infighting in the Church over the Vatican II.  Some people like Mel Gibson left, but most conservative Catholics stayed and just carried on as before.  No one is going to force a nun to give up her habit.
Obviously, this is not a cut and dry topic--if there weren't issues that caused an irreparable rift between the Church and followers who disagree, there wouldn't be excommunication.  But--how often is someone excommunicated?  Yeah, it's pretty rare. 
Now, take everything I say with a grain of salt.  I'm not a Catholic--I just went to a Catholic school and grew up in a predominantly Catholic part of the country.  Believe me, your average Catholic can be surprisingly outspoken in disagreement with the Church and still think they have a place in heaven.  But even if I don't have the particulars right, I still think my basic point is right.  BushCo is ignorantly taking the Protestant model and trying to make the Catholics fit it like the proverbial square peg.  And most of the press is equally ignorant and is making the same mistake.
A quick example of the ignorance that is plaguing this story:

But Catholic opposition to abortion is based on the earliest church teachings and is unequivocal — extending to those cases.
 
Reading that sentence, one might think that the Church has always been against abortion in all cases.  In fact, for most of its history, the Church allowed abortion until "quickening", when the mother began to feel the fetus move.  I guess they figured that was how you knew it had a soul.  (Remember, they couldn't have believed that life began at "conception" in the sense of when sperm met egg.  They didn't know that sperm met egg.  They thought that semen had thousands of little babies in it, and that one just managed to plant itself in the womb and the rest just went away.  Therefore, it makes perfect sense that quickening would be when it first had a soul.)
I have never heard of a Catholic priest refusing communion to somebody as long as that person was a member of the Church.  I have heard plenty of instances of Protestant ministers who refuse people communion, though.  I've asked a couple of Catholics (granted, lapsed ones--but good example of my point, they still consider themselves members of the Church) about this and all I got was an eye roll.