A local politician was walking down Dot Ave in the recent Dorchester Day parade. As he passed by a Catholic church, he extended his hand to greet the pastor.

The Catholic priest withheld his handshake, saying he was "disappointed" in his recent public positions.

The politician hesitated, then said, "Well, Father, I am disappointed in you."

Last week, when President Bush visited Pope John Paul, he sought the Vatican's support in rallying American Catholic church-goers to support the Bush political and social agenda. The National Catholic Reporter (NCR) said, "Bush asked the Vatican to push the American Catholic bishops to be more aggressive politically on family and life issues, especially a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman."

Locally, the national political divide has become more pronounced, in this traditionally most Catholic of communities, almost to the point that it's now a chasm. Divisions on gay marriage, premarital sex and birth control, once inviolable topics of public policy for nominally Roman Catholic public officials, underscore the changes. There was a time when Catholic legislators quietly- but dutifully- took direction from church leaders. The Baltimore Catechism and Sunday's sermons were the touchstones for their political positions. But no more. Whether due to the maturing of young, educated Catholics, or the failings and flaws of the hierarchy as revealed in the recent scandals, more Catholic laypeople take public positions based on personal conscience, not religious screeds.

That is why there is such irony in the actions of George Bush, a Methodist, telling a Catholic Pope to take positions on American political issues. It is Bush's way of seeking more division, this time among Catholic believers.

In 1960, the last time a Roman Catholic sought the presidency, John Kennedy was required to defend his detachment from Vatican interference. JFK said, in part:

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute - where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be a Catholic) how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote - where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference. . . where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind - and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and the pastoral levels, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood."

That local pastor certainly has the right not to socialize with a politician he's in disagreement with. But the debate now rages over churchmen withholding sacraments from politicians who make political acts of their own conscience.

How far will this debate go? Indeed, just how far have we come as a people? Someday, perhaps we will know - and it is to be hoped, in this life, not the next.

- Ed Forry