N.M. priest endorses pro-life candidate from pulpit

By The Associated Press

10.31.02

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SAN JUAN PUEBLO, N.M. — A Roman Catholic priest used his homily last Sunday to endorse Republican John Sanchez for governor because of Sanchez's anti-abortion views.

"I would say yes, it's an endorsement," the Rev. Terry Brennan of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in this northern New Mexico pueblo said on Oct. 29 of his Oct. 27 homily.

Brennan, a 47-year-old former Santa Fe County attorney who became a priest three years ago, also distributed fliers outlining the abortion voting records of Sanchez and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Richardson.

The fliers, from the Right to Life Committee of New Mexico Political Action Committee, were sent by the Archdiocese of Santa Fe to its 92 parishes, along with a letter telling priests to distribute them as they saw fit. The fliers criticize Richardson's voting record on abortion while portraying Sanchez as supporting an anti-abortion position.

The archdiocese apologized to anyone who believed that the fliers, distributed at more than a dozen Catholic churches last week, were a political endorsement by the church.

"The Archdiocese of Santa Fe does not endorse political candidates," the Rev. Bennett J. Voorhies, chancellor of the archdiocese, said last week. "We urge voters to study the candidates' records and focus on how the issues affect the common good."

He said on Oct. 29 that he had not heard about Brennan's endorsement but would speak to him about it.

Early this month, the U.S. House of Representatives rejected a bill that would have let religious leaders talk freely about politics without endangering their organization's tax-exempt status.

Brennan said he did not believe his endorsement would jeopardize the Catholic Church's tax-exempt status. He does not speak out on purely political issues, he said, but has a right to free speech and a duty as a priest to address moral issues.

"(Politicians) are walking into my area; I'm not walking into theirs," he said. "How can they expect me to sit back and say nothing when they are attacking the very foundations of why I am a priest?"

Brennan said Voorhies, in the Sept. 27 letter sent to churches with the flier, warned pastors not to endorse candidates because of Internal Revenue Service guidelines prohibiting tax-exempt organizations from such endorsements.

But the church "may freely distribute the voting records of candidates on any particular issue," the letter said.

Brennan said none of his parishioners had complained to him about his Sunday homily or the fliers.

A Washington, D.C., group, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, sent a letter on Oct. 29 to Steven T. Miller, director of the IRS' exempt organizations division, asking him to investigate the archdiocese.

"Given the Catholic Church's well-known stance against legal abortion, the distribution of this flier clearly violates the Internal Revenue Code, which forbids nonpartisan groups, including houses of worship, from intervening in campaigns for public office," wrote Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United, in the letter to Miller.

The Santa Fe archdiocese is working on guidelines about distributing political materials after controversy arose over the flier. Voorhies would not reveal details of the rules, saying only that officials "are definitely working on that."

The flap arose after Holy Child Parish in Tijeras added a paragraph to the flier. The flier listed Sanchez's record "as 100 percent pro-life." The added paragraph said Richardson's record "shows a lack of respect for human life."

Voorhies said the archdiocese never gave permission for the paragraph. "That's why it's made it look so bad on us because people think that's the one we sent out, and it's not," Voorhies said.

Americans United specifically mentioned the added paragraph in its complaint.

The Rev. Scott Mansfield, Holy Family pastor, said on Oct. 28 that adding the paragraph was a mistake. A parish typist inserted the information from a fund-raising letter from the anti-abortion committee. Mansfield said he should have checked the flier before was copied and distributed.

Richardson's campaign manager, Billy Sparks, said Brennan's endorsement was "inconsistent with the letter of apology issued by the archdiocese" and that he hoped the archdiocese "will correct this transgression."

Richardson, as a Catholic, personally opposes abortion, but "feels equally strongly that decision should be left up to the woman, her priest or preacher and her God," Sparks said last week.

Sanchez's spokeswoman, Whitney Cheshire, said he had no control over what supporters say. She said, however, it was interesting that the archdiocese took "such an unprecedented stance" in sending out the fliers and that Brennan endorsed Sanchez.

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