Mayor Giuliani, will you be at tonight’s Ball for Life at the Racquet and Tennis Club in Manhattan? When asked by reporters about your donations to Planned Parenthood, you said you support choices that pregnant women face when considering whether to give birth or abort. But William Donohue of the Catholic League wants to know if the only choice you believe in is abortion.

In a press release issued Wednesday, he writes: “If helping pregnant women make choices is the supreme issue for Rudy Giuliani, then he should be able to document all the checks he’s written to support Crisis Pregnancy Centers — not just Planned Parenthood. If he can’t, it is logical to conclude that the only real choice he thinks is worthy of his money is the one which results in the death of innocent human beings. And that would make him a fraud.”

When I spoke to Mr. Donohue, he told me that when he was on CNN’s Larry King show, he had spoken in favor of Mr. Giuliani in spite of the former mayor’s abortion stance because he believed that he would appoint conservative judges if elected. However, the recent reports that Mr. Giuliani had donated to Planned Parenthood several times and Mr. Giuliani’s statement that government should fund some abortions have caused him to reconsider how sincere Mr. Giuliani is on this issue.

Mr. Giuliani, like many Catholic politicians, is finding it very difficult to deal with the abortion issue while still claiming to be a member of a church that condemns it in all cases unless the health of the mother is at risk. But make no mistake, it’s going to become even more difficult since Pope Benedict has warned Catholic politicians they risked excommunication from the Church and should not receive Communion if they support abortion.

Pope Benedict was en route to Brazil when reporters inquired if the Mexican priests that had threatened to excommunicate the leftist parliamentarians who voted for abortion legislation were within their rights. “Yes, this excommunication was not an arbitrary one but is allowed by Canon law, which says that the killing of an innocent child is incompatible with receiving Communion, which is receiving the body of Christ,” he said.

But politicians aren’t the only ones finding this issue difficult; so are many priests who are reluctant to wage a battle that will inevitably alienate even more American Catholics. While left-wing pundits like Bill Maher feel free to call the religious right movement a move toward the creation of a theocracy, a crackdown on Catholic politicians would seem to confirm that opinion.

When John F. Kennedy was campaigning in 1960, critics charged that he would be under the Pope’s thumb if elected president, but moral issues such as abortion and gay rights were not as high-profile then, so it’s pointless to compare his responses to that of today’s politicians.

Frankly, I find many of today’s Catholic clergy as cowardly and faith-wavering as the Kerrys, Pelosis, Kennedys and Giulianis of politics. It is becoming hard to find a priest who will risk the loss of an endowment to uphold the teachings of the church.

I commend my own pastor, Father Peter Byrne, for doing exactly that. A woman who had long been on the parish council was a very generous benefactor to our financially strapped parish and to its school, which had been at risk of closure. This woman was also well known in the Staten Island community as a philanthropist, and the decision of Father Byrne to remove her from the council because of her outspoken pro-choice stance took a great deal of courage. She left the parish, as did other liberal parishioners who took their donations with them.

Father Byrne may be just a small parish pastor, but he has remained faithful to church dogma, unlike many past princes of the church who feared losing the support of high-profile nominal Catholics. These clergymen continued to administer the sacraments at their baptismals, weddings, and funerals regardless of their public flaunting of church laws.

What would happen if all these Catholic Democrats and Republicans who support abortion on demand were suddenly told by their bishops that they could no longer receive the sacraments as long as they continue to support abortion or gay marriage? Not much, I daresay, and even if they were all excommunicated, the only ones to be affected by that procedure would be the church officials who finally realized the reason for their vocation.

The Ball for Life tonight benefits two crisis pregnancy organizations, and I join Mr. Donohue in wondering whether Mayor Giuliani has ever supported the women who choose life not death for their child.