{"id":523,"date":"2008-04-17T10:45:47","date_gmt":"2008-04-17T10:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2008\/04\/mccain-seizes-pope-visit.html"},"modified":"2008-04-17T10:45:47","modified_gmt":"2008-04-17T10:45:47","slug":"mccain-seizes-pope-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/mccain-seizes-pope-visit.html","title":{"rendered":"McCain Seizes Pope Visit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"pope5.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/211\/import\/pope5.jpg\" width=\"107\" \/>Compared to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cgi-bin\/mt\/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=65&amp;search=catholic+intensifies&amp;Go.x=27&amp;Go.y=11\">each have fulltime Catholic outreach coordinators<\/a> and who issued <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2008\/04\/mccain-finally-welcomes-the-po.html\">lavish statements of praise<\/a> for the Pope before his U.S. arrival, John McCain&#8217;s Catholic outreach has been decidedly less robust. But McCain is using the papal visit to do some personal outreach, attending <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/04\/16\/AR2008041600235.html\">last night&#8217;s White House dinner<\/a> to honor Pope Benedict XVI. And his campaign tells God-o-Meter that he&#8217;ll be attending tomorrow&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.catholicprayerbreakfast.com\/\">National Catholic Prayer Breakfast<\/a> in Washington, DC. Joseph Cella, a conservative activist who is one of the breakfast&#8217;s chief organizers, says over 2,000 people have signed up for the 5-year-old event, a record-setting number.<br \/>\n&#8220;Senator McCain is steadily building a very broad base of substantial support from Catholic leaders and Catholic grassroots,&#8221; said Cella, while noting he was not speaking in his official role as a breakfast organizer. &#8220;It&#8217;s more a natural constituency for him than it is for Senators Obama or Clinton because I think that significant majority [of Catholics] are moved by key social issues and in that capacity are closer to Senator McCain.<br \/>\nBut Deal Hudson, President Bush&#8217;s chief liaison to the Catholic world during his election campaigns, said recently that McCain&#8217;s support for the Iraq war <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2008\/04\/the-war-catholics-and-mccain.html\">could jeopardize his Catholic support<\/a>. The conservative legal scholar Doug Kmiec, a prominent Catholic, cited that as one of the reasons <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2008\/03\/kmiecs-obama-endorsement.html\">he endorsed Barack Obama<\/a>.<br \/>\n&#8220;I think it will effect some but for those mainstream and more socially conservative types, they&#8217;ll be more favorably disposed to McCain irrespective of his position on the war,&#8221; Cella says. &#8220;I know for Catholics that it&#8217;s important to ensure that all being done to win the war on terror at the moment and part of that front is what&#8217;s afoot in Iraq.&#8221;<br \/>\nWhat about the way McCain handled his <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2008\/04\/how-mccain-can-avoid-another-h.html\">endorsement from John Hagee<\/a>, the Texas evangelist with a history of making anti-Catholic comments?<br \/>\n&#8220;His sluggish response gave some pause,&#8221; Cella says, &#8220;but I think it was quickly forgotten.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n5<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Compared to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who each have fulltime Catholic outreach coordinators and who issued lavish statements of praise for the Pope before his U.S. arrival, John McCain&#8217;s Catholic outreach has been decidedly less robust. But McCain is using the papal visit to do some personal outreach, attending last night&#8217;s White House dinner&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-john-mccain"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>McCain Seizes Pope Visit - God-O-Meter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/mccain-seizes-pope-visit.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"McCain Seizes Pope Visit - God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Compared to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who each have fulltime Catholic outreach coordinators and who issued lavish statements of praise for the Pope before his U.S. arrival, John McCain&#8217;s Catholic outreach has been decidedly less robust. But McCain is using the papal visit to do some personal outreach, attending last night&#8217;s White House dinner&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/mccain-seizes-pope-visit.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-04-17T10:45:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/pope5.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"dgilgoff\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"McCain Seizes Pope Visit - God-O-Meter","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/mccain-seizes-pope-visit.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"McCain Seizes Pope Visit - God-O-Meter","og_description":"Compared to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who each have fulltime Catholic outreach coordinators and who issued lavish statements of praise for the Pope before his U.S. arrival, John McCain&#8217;s Catholic outreach has been decidedly less robust. But McCain is using the papal visit to do some personal outreach, attending last night&#8217;s White House dinner&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/mccain-seizes-pope-visit.html","og_site_name":"God-O-Meter","article_published_time":"2008-04-17T10:45:47+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/pope5.jpg"}],"author":"dgilgoff","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/mccain-seizes-pope-visit.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/mccain-seizes-pope-visit.html","name":"McCain Seizes Pope Visit - God-O-Meter","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/mccain-seizes-pope-visit.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/mccain-seizes-pope-visit.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/pope5.jpg","datePublished":"2008-04-17T10:45:47+00:00","dateModified":"2008-04-17T10:45:47+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/b7e97412c87d7a3b866e9972cc090db4"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/mccain-seizes-pope-visit.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/mccain-seizes-pope-visit.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/mccain-seizes-pope-visit.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/pope5.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/pope5.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/mccain-seizes-pope-visit.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"McCain Seizes Pope Visit"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/","name":"God-O-Meter","description":"A scientific measure of God-talk in the elections","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/b7e97412c87d7a3b866e9972cc090db4","name":"dgilgoff","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/858\/858da2927809a8352512cd24712c020cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/858\/858da2927809a8352512cd24712c020cx96.jpg","caption":"dgilgoff"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/author\/dgilgoff"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}