Hanging front and center inside the classroom of the grade school I attended were pictures of two men: Pope Paul VI, and John F. Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic president. Each was revered almost without question, although we were taught that one could never tell the other what to do in their separate realms.

My experience was not unique. And so it was jarring to many Catholics to hear last month of a bishop in Providence, R.I., advising a Kennedy to refrain from receiving communion because of a public policy position the congressman had advocated in Washington.

History has always been a strong subject in Catholic education, but Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence seems to have forgotten much of his, or at least failed to learn the lessons as they applied to American democracy.
 
It was John Kennedy, of course, who was forced to defend his faith before a roomful of skeptical Protestant ministers in Texas, two months before he was elected in 1960. In high school, the Jesuits had us memorize that speech.

“I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish,” candidate Kennedy said, “where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches of any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general population or the public actions of its officials.”

It is no small irony, then, that Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island, now the only member of Congress from America’s most prominent Catholic family, had his faith questioned by Bishop Tobin for his pro-choice position on abortion.

In a terse exchange of letters, the bishop said it was “inappropriate” for Kennedy to receive communion. Kennedy responded: “The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy of the church on some issue does not make me any less Catholic.”

He said later he would have no further comment; that it was “an issue of faith,” between himself and God.

The Jesuits were also big on logical thinking, encouraging generations of mushy-headed knuckleheads like myself to bring a rigorous intellectual test to matters of the public domain. With this recent claim of his, Bishop Tobin would have trouble blustering his way past the priests who taught my freshman civics class.

There are 65 million Catholics in the United States — 22 percent of the population. And a slim majority of them, 51 percent, believe abortion should be legal in most circumstances, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. A full 60 percent support the death penalty, which the church has long opposed.

Those numbers mean that more than half of all American Catholics are in a position somewhat similar to Patrick Kennedy’s. To be consistent, the bishop should start checking them off at the altar rail as they line up to receive communion — sinner, saint, sinner, saint, and so on.

It’s absurd, dangerous and impossible for any cleric to think he can know the precise state of grace of a fellow Catholic who feels moved to worship publicly. But that is the logical conclusion of the bishop’s campaign.

American Catholic bishops wrestled with this question five years ago, regarding the faith of Senator John Kerry, a pro-choice practicing Catholic and the Democratic nominee for president.

They smartly refused to issue a blanket order; most bishops wanted no part in such a political inquisition.

Bishop Tobin says he acted only because Kennedy has been so public in his support of a woman’s right to choose. Of late, Kennedy has also been needling the bishops on their lukewarm support for helping fellow Americans get health care, via the largest undertaking in Congress in a generation’s time to elevate the sick and less prosperous. Abortion, as before, is the sticking point.

Again, for consistency’s sake, I take it the bishop will now turn his fire on Rudolph Giuliani, the thrice-married, pro-choice and pro-death-penalty Catholic. No secret about his positions. Or maybe he’ll have a word for Newt Gingrich, a recent Catholic convert now on his third marriage, who supports the death penalty, and rarely has a political thought that he does not share with the public.

He won’t, of course, no more than he will try to turn the altar into a litmus test.

This time of year, many cultural Catholics — call them seasonal, the less-than-perfect, less frequent church-goers — feel a need to worship. They may be drawn to the ritual, the community, the music, a bright, hopeful message in the season of darkness. Would the bishop turn them away?