NEW YORK (CWNews.com) - Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush sent an open letter to Cardinal John O'Connor of New York on Friday, in which he denied any association with anti-Catholic bias by a South Carolina university where he spoke recently.

    Bush, the governor of Texas, has been criticized in the media and by opponent Arizona Sen. John McCain for speaking at Bob Jones University, whose leaders have called the Catholic Church a satanic cult. Bush told the cardinal, "Such opinions are personally offensive to me, and I want to erase any doubts about my views and values."

    Citing the long friendship between the cardinal and his family, Bush said he sees Catholics as brothers and sisters in Christ, and that his own brother and sister-in-law are Catholic. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush converted to Catholicism in recent years.

    "Criticism should be expected in any political campaign," Bush wrote. "What no American should expect -- and what I will not tolerate -- is guilt by association." Bush supporters have echoed this view, asking if anyone who appears on the Cable News Network should have to disavow himself from the views held by founder and Time-Warner vice-chairman Ted Turner, who has expressed strongly anti-Christian and especially anti-Catholic sentiments.

    Meanwhile, McCain has continued to criticize Bush as a tool of radical religious leaders, issuing strong rebukes of Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, and Jerry Falwell, president of Liberty University, as "agents of intolerance." Speaking before the Virginia GOP primary, McCain said neither the Republican nor Democratic parties should "be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton, on the left, or Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell on the right."