The annual dinner in New York City in honor of Al Smith is closely watched by politicians who want to have some idea of how the Catholic vote is going. The dinner itself is advertised as an ecumenical event to raise money for health services – half the proceeds go to Jewish hospitals – but it is very much a Catholic event, organized by the Catholic archdiocese.

Special attention was given to it this year because the featured speakers were not the presidential candidates. The inside story – easily penetrated by rudimentary political analysis – was that an invitation to Senator Kerry would be embarrassing, Mr. Kerry being not only pro-choice, but committed, if elected president, not to nominate any justice to the Supreme Court who wasn’t in favor of Roe v. Wade, which is the constitutional right to an abortion discovered in 1973. Candidate Kerry has informed the voting public that, like Martin Luther, he was an altar boy. And, indeed, he is running as a Catholic, and the wonderment is: How should Catholics react to this Catholic candidate, given his permissive stand on abortion?

The way the Alfred E. Smith people handled that problem was nicely Jesuitical. They did invite a president – a former president, George H.W. Bush. And they did invite a Democratic counterpart, not quite an ex-president, but an ex-governor. And Hugh Carey is eloquently anti-abortion.

Whether the Al Smith Dinner will be able to keep this up for very long is a serious question. The current New York governor is Republican, but pro-choice. His predecessor was a Democratic Catholic – but also pro-choice. Hugh Carey is getting on, and there must have been silent prayers at the dinner that he would hold out for four more years if they can’t come up with another pro-life Democrat of national renown.

The issue – are Catholics supposed to vote against Mr. Kerry? – is heated because there are bishops who are saying that kind of thing. In Denver, Archbishop Charles Chaput has been pretty outspoken, though those who have studied his famous interview with the New York Times (www.archden.org) can’t reliably transcribe the bishop’s thinking on the matter. There is no question he believes in defending life, even if unborn, but there is some question as to whether a vote for someone on the other side is dalliance with sin serious enough to be disqualifying at the communion rail.

But most striking is the apparent irrelevance of the Catholic sanction. A poll done by Time magazine last June is extraordinarily illuminating: 76% of Catholics said that the church’s position on abortion made no difference in their decisions about voting. The New York Times did its own poll in the summer, which did not contradict the Time poll but did advise that 71% of Catholics favor some restrictions on abortion.

But who does not favor some restrictions on abortion, except for the Supreme Court? The Times poll reveals that among the general public, 64% favor some restrictions. The difference between 71% and 64%, after appropriate refractions involving other issues, doesn’t add up to a heady political number.

What the figures are saying is that the Catholic Church does not exercise effective moral discipline in the matter of abortion. This should not be entirely surprising, given the figures we have known for a long time, indicating that abortions are engaged in by Catholics at almost the same rate as by non-Catholics.

It is hard to say how the pensive Catholic squares off on the question of fidelity to religious commandments and civic independence. The Catholic vote has been traditionally Democratic. Ronald Reagan broke through in 1984, winning 54% of the Catholic vote. But the point here is that in American politics, the Catholic vote is not to be thought of as monolithic, like the Jewish vote or the black vote. Some will think that a triumph of assimilation. Others will wonder, along with the organizers of the Al Smith Dinner, whether the loosened boundaries are absolutely welcome.