Editorials
commonweal TO ADMIT DIVERSITY & ENDORSE DISCUSSION LKE THE DOG that didn't bark, two highly significant recent events didn't take place. One was the keynote address that Governor Mario Cuomo of...
...After all, he has been far less reluctant than other politicians to respond to them...
...One was a stinging editorial in the September 27 National Catholic Reporter titled "Don't Sign the Abortion Ad...
...It will have to be faced...
...But bishops, as they themselves insist, must find a way to bring moral principles to political life without becoming simply another lobby or, worse yet, attempting to mobilize the church as a lobby — an effort that is almost certainly doomed to failure...
...To have one's religious sincerity questioned...
...J. Jerome Boxleitner, president of the National Conference of Catholic Charities, expressed regret that Cuomo would not be speaking because, among other reasons, "we lose an opportunity to discern a major issue in the Catholic church today, namely, the right of a person to address us even though we may not entirely agree with the presenter's views in all areas...
...Certainly the tone of the letter from the Pennsylvania bishops indicated how little charity Mr...
...The original ad was a model of calculated ambiguity, mixing, as Governor Cuomo scrupulously does not, the moral and legal dimensions of the abortion issue...
...To be compared with a racist...
...To begin with, the bishops charged that "no other politician has so elaborately rationalized opposition to the bishops' efforts to correct our nation's abortion policies.'' What does that mean exactly...
...giving parallel play to the diversity of Catholic opinion on abortion revealed by public opinion polls and the differences among theological scholars...
...That is the first question raised by the Cuomo incident...
...bishops as a whole, whose feelings about abortion are no doubt as firm as those of their Pennsylvania contingent, be held hostage by any vocal group among them — or among the laity, for that matter — which raises the pro-life banner...
...Only Governor Cuomo's discreet withdrawal removed this question from the table...
...The Pennsylvania bishops compared the Catholic Charities invitation to Cuomo to an NAACP invitation to "a racist," a shockingly false analogy...
...bishops' effort to replace Roe v. Wade with a ban on abortion does not distinguish him from many other political figures, Catholics included...
...to do so in detail, and perhaps even convincingly, is to elaborately rationalize...
...Both of these non-occurring events raise serious questions about the ground rules for dissent, dialogue, and pluralism in the American Catholic world on the matter of abortion...
...That was his special sin...
...They wanted Cuomo proscribed...
...Perhaps some form of the ad will appear, nonetheless, these two independent negative judgments on it have had an effect...
...As the Pennsylvania bishops chosen phrase implicitly admits, Governor Cuomo's decision not to support the U.S...
...The other was an ad scheduled to run in an early October issue of the New York Times reproducing the ' 'Catholic Statement on Pluralism and Abortion'' which had appeared in the Times a year before and expressing, in addition,'' solidarity with all Catholics whose right to free speech is under attack" — most notably, the sisters threatened with dismissal from their religious orders by Rome if they did not retract their endorsement...
...Very different things, as well, because the two incidents raise different, although related, questions...
...But a further question lurks just behind it...
...November 1985: 599...
...There are legitimate questions that Pennsylvania's bishops, or any other group, could press on Mario Cuomo...
...But the bishops demanded more than such give-and-take...
...Or will the bishops stick to the principle they overwhelmingly approved in their pastoral on nuclear arms and many other statements, namely, respect for a diversity of opinions among Catholics and other people of good will in making specific prudential applications of moral principles...
...The invitation to New York's governor provoked a sharp protest from the Pennsylvania association of bishops...
...Will the U.S...
...One was the keynote address that Governor Mario Cuomo of New York was to deliver on justice and the tax system at the October 25-30 convention of the National Conference of Catholic Charities...
...Controversy over the NCR editorial is sure to continue, partly because it was so strong (calling the ad "deceitful, dishonest, and divisive...
...November 1985: 597 The best was yet to come, however...
...Cuomo's "right to free speech" violated by the Pennsylvania bishops' protest...
...We don't know, but there is little doubt that the official reason was a fig leaf...
...invitations Catholic bodies have often extended to a wide variety of political leaders despite their differences with episcopal positions on nuclear weaponry, aid to the impoverished, Central America, and other life-and-death issues...
...Was Mr...
...Was Jerry Falwell's when several colleges canceled speaking engagements after he called Bishop Tutu a "phony...
...The new ad tops this confusion with an even heavier dose of concern for Catholics' ' 'right to free speech,'' a phrase which covers everything from serious questions of academic freedom to much fuzzier issues of canceled lectures...
...The ad promoters should learn as much...
...For the Pennsylvania bishops, to explain one's prudential judgment openly is to rationalize...
...Answers will not come easily, especially given the intensity of convictions found on all sides of the abortion debate...
...and partly because the NCR has been a place where Catholic mavericks and critics of ecclesiastical authoritarianism have usually found sympathetic coverage...
...amalgamating debates over exceptional "hard cases" with the national debate over Roe v. Wade...
...Funny things happened on the way to the non-appearances of both Cuomo and the "solidarity" ad...
...That doesn't mean his position is sacrosanct, or devoid of political calculation, or should be immune to political pressure — from right-to-lifers as much as from NOW, from the Catholic community as much as from other religious or ethnic groups...
...If the objection from the Pennsylvania bishops was not exactly unexpected, that could not really be said of the funny things that happened on the way to the non-appearance of the New York Times ad...
...A still more accurate analogy — one not raising the substantial differences between a group like the NAACP and a church organization — would be the...
...Is any Catholic politician who disagrees with the bishops on abortion strategy to be publicly delegitimated...
...Ecumenical dialogue began when religious groups stopped resorting to such devices, when they learned to make elementary distinctions, and when they agreed not to use discussion as camouflage for proselytization...
...Was it that particular attack from an antiabortion source, or other ones which could easily be foreseen, that persuaded the governor to withdraw from his speaking engagement on grounds of possible conflicts with the schedule of the New York state legislature...
...In replying to the Pennsylvania protest, Msgr...
...Cuomo could expect at the Catholic Charities convention...
...But such respectful discussion won't be carried on in catchphrases and newspaper ads, which do nothing, furthermore, to relieve the situation of the sisters faced with the Vatican's blanket diktat...
...Without prejudging the NCR controversy, we can still second one of its editorial's key conclusions: that the new ad, like the old one, exemplifies "once again taking the abortion issue from the level of serious religious commitment and theological discussion to that of a mere political sign-up campaign...
...To use the original ad's phrase, "respectful discussion" on the diversity of Catholic opinions over abortion is a good idea...
...partly because it charged that news of the latest ad shot down a potential settlement between the Vatican and the nun-signers of the first ad (given the secrecy of those negotiations, this will certainly be hard to substantiate...
...On the issue of the politically most prudential anti-abortion Commonweal: 598 strategy, we believe Governor Cuomo is more right than wrong...
...What does distinguish him is that he has offered a reasoned defense of his chosen course — voluntarily, on a Catholic campus, and given unqualified assent to the church's teaching on human life at the same time as he questioned the wisdom and workability of the pro-life legislative strategy...
...A more accurate comparison would be with an NAACP invitation to a politician who shared its anti-racist philosophy but differed on how to put it into effect (and, incidentally, the NAACP does extend invitations to such politicians...
...The other was a memo issuing from the New Orleans meeting of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious suggesting, though not so bluntly, pretty much the same thing...
...But failure to reach some degree of clarity about these grounds will trap the American church — laity no less than bishops — in a spider's web of inconsistencies and recriminations harmful to the church, to its concern for justice, indeed, to its resistance to abortion...
Vol. 112 • November 1985 • No. 19
