Once the theological ball is dropped, other balls -- marriage, sanctity of life and so on -- also hit the floor. The noise of all those balls dropping is mixed with the sound of most Catholics fleeing the Kerry campaign -- and also backing Bush because of a common social vision. As Catholic scholar George Weigel writes, Catholics now teach that "the free and virtuous society is a complex set of interactions among a democratic political community, a free economy and a public moral culture. ... The culture is the key to the entire edifice. A culture that teaches freedom-as-license is going to wreck democracy and the free economy, sooner or later."

 A decade ago, I wrote a book about 18th century America, "Fighting for Liberty and Virtue," that pointed out how evangelicals like Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams noted freedom's dependence on morality. They argued, as does Weigel, that liberty sets loose enormous human energy, and that a free society can survive only if people have "bottom," to use the 18th century expression: A society, like a ship, needs some weight or it is blown around by the winds.

 Most Catholics evidently see Bush as having bottom on Iraq and domestic policy, and Kerry lacking it. The root cause of bottomlessness is usually theological confusion, and Kerry exhibits that, big time.