Campaign 2000: Catholic Bashing?

Bush's visit to Bob Jones University and a fight over the House chaplain put the G.O.P. in an awkward situation

Spring has come to Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C. The crape myrtles are in bloom, and the peach-toned brick buildings glow creamily in the afternoon sun. The cheery campus hardly recalls the school's old self-description as the "World's Most Unusual University." Not, at least, until one wanders by the bookstore and sees material on Catholicism under the heading "Cults." Or converses with an earnest young music major near an administrative building. "The Pope isn't necessarily the Antichrist," he explains, parsing a famous (and never retracted) statement by his school's founder. "He is an Antichrist."

That's not a distinction that will...

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