Word: cuomo
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Still, the most probing analysis last week of the dilemma facing public officials on religious issues came from Kennedy and Cuomo. Speaking at a New York City meeting of Coalition of Conscience, a Democratic political action group, the Senator argued that on issues such as abortion, school prayer and homosexuality "the proper role of religion is to appeal to the free conscience of each person, not the coercive rule of secular law." He warned that "we cannot be a tolerant country if churches bless some candidates as God's candidates-and brand others as ungodly or immoral." The logical...
Invited by Notre Dame's theology department to give the first in a series of lectures on the effect religious faith has on individual public officials, Cuomo attracted national TV coverage of his South Bend, Ind., speech. He, like Ferraro, had engaged in an earlier public argument with Archbishop O'Connor. Last June the Archbishop had said, "I don't see how a Catholic in good conscience can vote for a candidate who explicitly supports abortion." Cuomo had challenged this as a virtual declaration that Catholics should not vote for any candidate who supported abortion. After...
...Cuomo's speech at Notre Dame revealed a remarkable pragmatism coexisting with strong religious sensibilities. His central argument was that public policy in a democratic and religiously diverse society can be determined only by consensus. Describing himself as "an old-fashioned Catholic who sins, regrets, struggles, worries, gets confused and most of the time feels better after confession," Cuomo said that he was elected "to serve Jews and Muslims and atheists and Protestants, as well as Catholics." He and other Catholics in public office must "help create conditions under which all can live with a maximum of dignity...
...civil law as it now stands, thereby accepting-without making much of a point of it-that in our pluralistic society we are not required to insist that all our religious values be the law of the land." Whether and precisely how to turn church teachings into public policy, Cuomo argued, "is not a matter of doctrine; it is a matter of prudential political judgment...
...moral standards." Among them, he noted, are the American Lutheran Church, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and women of the Episcopal Church and of B'nai B'rith. In view of the widespread opposition to an all-out ban on abortion, Cuomo noted, even the bishops had decided in 1981 that it was futile to seek such a constitutional ban. Instead, they endorsed the Hatch amendment, which would give states the right to decide whether to make abortion illegal within their boundaries. Said Cuomo: "The church in this country has never retreated into...