On the weekends, after the older two children invade our bed, and I have gathered the courage to face the morning, I herd the little ones downstairs so they can watch something while I make breakfast. As we have no cable or satellite television, the television in the playroom is usually tuned to a PBS station.
While the "Thomas the Tank Engine" video was rewinding, I saw part of "Religion and Ethics Newsweekly" describing how Catholic politicians are feeling the heat for not acting like Catholics while in office.
I have expressed my displeasure with PBS religious programming in another post, but this segment was evenhanded. It did, however, give disproportionate attention to Mario Cuomo, the former New York governor and failed radio talk-show host. I couldn't immediately remember the part of my right-wing catechism that talked about hating Mario. All I remember was that he was prickly about his ethnic background (as if being Italian in New York City was unusual) and was, for a time, the #1 apologist for pro-abortion Catholics, including himself. As I was not Catholic in the 1980s or the early '90s, when Cuomo was governor, I didn't care too much about the Catholic angle, so I didn't remember the details.
The only other time I heard Cuomo speak was on his short-lived radio show, and that was probably by accident. He seemed affable but clueless about what makes good radio, as evidenced by the show's brief run. On this PBS show, he seemed thoughtful and possibly even prayerful, talking about why he was personally pro-life but politically pro-abortion.
"Maybe I can respect this guy," I thought, as Cuomo explained that Catholics had Protestant beliefs crammed down their throats a century ago, so Catholics shouldn't do the same to other people. That's a plausible point, though as I keep saying, abortion isn't a religious issue, it's a straight-up question of natural law. But at least Cuomo appeared to have thought the issue through, and if he was misguided, he was honestly misguided.
The show moved on to capital punishment. Cuomo complained (always in a genial way) that the Church didn't do enough to speak out about capital punishment. "For 12 years" he opposed capital punishment, and he claimed, "I even wrote the pope, saying 'come on guys, help me out here!'"
This tactic was a clever way of saying that he was, in point of fact, more Catholic than the Pope, more pro-life than the Roman curia. Then it all came flooding back: this was the same man who vetoed laws authorizing capital punishment, even though New York voters favored it by a huge margin and the bills always passed by comfortable majorities. Those bills were passed every year until Cuomo left office, and always shot down by the governor.
It takes courage to stand up for your beliefs when they are unpopular, especially for a politician who must stand for re-election, so points for Mario. But we have to subtract points for honesty. For although Mario loves giving his hand-wringing moral lectures about the inner conflict of a Catholic politician when his beliefs differ from what his constituents want, he "allowed his personal beliefs" to "interfere" with his "duty" to do whatever the opinion polls tell him to do.
Mario Cuomo might be sincere and misguided, or he might just be running interference for the Left in the cases of the death penalty and abortion. However, he wants everyone to know he is a serious, deliberate man, and therefore I agree with the latter possibility.
I can remember voting for Mario Cuomo when he first ran for Governor - on the Right To Life Party! (He also ran on the Democratic ticket.) I also remember his morally positive comments and lessons given while he was a Professor of Law at St. John's University in Queens, NY - he criticised the pro-abortion movement and it's court challenges (this was pre 1973 USSC legalization of abortion). When first elected, he was a courageous, morally principled man who reflected his Catholic education and upbringing. I felt comfortable electing him. Then, I guess, political survival and re-election priorities began to take hold and he lost his moral compass. I never did vote for him again. I never could.
I think the truth is much simpler, John. The epitaph for his pro-life views is the same as for many other prominent Democrats:
He wanted to be president.
You may well be correct Eric, though there may be an even simpler explanation. Mario may simply have wanted to belong - wanted to remain a Democrat. So, he had to change his stripes and become pro-abortion. Otherwise, he would have gone the way of Governor Casey of PA. Whatever the answer is, he is certainly NOT the man I remember from class or from his speeches while seeking the Governorship and during the early part of his first term.
I too remember Cuomo well, from his days as NY governor in the '80s. It's sad to see that he still can't tell the difference between "imposing one's views" regarding abortion and "following one's conscience" regarding the death penalty. May his confusion be sincere, because otherwise, if he doesn't clear it up before Judgment Day he'll be in trouble.
I also remember well liberal US Catholic leaders--diocesan officials, liberal university nuns, etc.--piously lecturing us on what a good "public Catholic" Cuomo was, and what a terrible "public Catholic" Republicans (like Reagan's Treasury Secretary Bill Simon) were.
The meassage was clear: only liberal Democrats were "good public Catholics," and it didn't especially matter whether they upheld the natural moral law (a matter of reason and not faith) even concerning the life or death of innocents who were not on the Democratic laundry list of who qualified as "the poor."
But as a teen at that time, I already had that then much-touted liberal virtue of thinking for myself. It became clear that I couldn't take seriously a lot of what Church people 'on the ground' told me. The Magisterium and not the US Catholic establishment was and is the lodestar of true faith and reason.