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In recent weeks, Maureen Dowd of The New York Times’ has been taking pot shots at Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, who drew her ire by opposing the legalization of same-sex “marriage” in New York. Here’s just one example.
But the surprise passage of the bill last week appears to have softened Dowd’s predictably shrill tone. In her June 29 column, she joyfully embraced her kind of religious leader: Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the Catholic-college graduate who — like Dowd — firmly rejects key moral precepts of his cradle faith.
After last week’s big political victory, Dowd’s column looks like a victory lap for two true believers who witnessed the fulfillment of their vision of a better world.
For the rest of us, the column provides an opportunity to examine the undisciplined and incoherent cafeteria-Catholicism that gained traction during their youth.
Unintentionally, Dowd’s column serves up caricatures of sadly typical Catholic-school products who never learned to ponder and embrace the inconvenient truths of their faith.
Cuomo, no doubt, did learn something at the knee of his father: Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York, who famously challenged his Church’s opposition to surgical and chemical abortion during a speech at the University of Notre Dame. In this column, the son affirms his father’s ethos: Catholics demonstrate their integrity by keeping Church discipline and moral precepts at arm’s length.
Dowd opens her interview with a pitch-perfect question, “So, Governor,” I asked, “are you afraid you’re going to hell?”
“There are forms of hell, Maureen,” he answered. “The question is: which level?”
The newly crowned savior of same-sex “marriage,” Dowd reminds us, is an Italian-American who graduated from “Immaculate Conception School, Jamaica Estates in 1971 and Archbishop Molloy High School in 1975. He graduated from Fordham University in 1979.”
The column segues into a confessional mode, as the governor allows a glimpse of a conflicted conscience: “It’s troubling for me as a Catholic to be at odds with the Church.” Then he adds, “Having said that, it seems that my entire political life, the tension with the Church has come up again and again.”
There’s a solution to that “troubling” sense of unease, of course: Even a powerful New York governor can ‘render unto God what is God’s.’” But the one-way confession provides no openings for salutary truths. And when Cuomo reveals the reasoning behind his support for same-sex “marriage,” the tangled logic slips by these two smarty-pants:
“My father was against the death penalty, and that was hard in the Son of Sam summer when fear was driving the desire for the death penalty. You can see a line of continuity from the death penalty to choice to marriage equality. You could argue there’s a 30-year span of the pressing social, moral and legal issues of the day.”
Cuomo then reveals that he has a portrait of St. Thomas More in his office. It’s the same portrait Mario Cuomo once kept in his office while serving as governor of New York. Andrew “has kept it with him for 30 years as he moved from job to job and city to city.”
“It’s not the first time there is a tension between the teachings of the Church and the administration of the law, for my father and for myself,” he tells Dowd. “I haven’t lost my head yet.”
So why would Andrew Cuomo identify with St. Thomas More, the English martyr who wore hair shirts and choose the eternal King over the temporal king?
Most likely, his curious response reflects a savvy personal judgment that his open defiance of Church authority incurred no loss of political capital or moral credibility, i.e. he hasn’t “lost my head yet.”
Last week, this critical insight was passed on to the GOP legislators, who initially refused to approve the same-sex “marriage” bill, but were finally swayed by Cuomo’s promise of political cover. A denial of Communion might prompt a reassessment of this calculation, but the bishops of New York have signaled their discomfort with this approach.
For now, Cuomo sets his own course. He “still goes to church with his three teenage daughters. He received Communion at his inaugural day Mass, but he mostly abstains. He has managed to stay on good terms with New York’s pugnacious archbishop, Timothy Dolan, who waged a relatively muted battle against same-sex “marriage” that Cuomo calls “reasonable.”
Dowd asks Cuomo if Archbishop Dolan would go the extra mile and preside, one day, at his second marriage to “Food Network glamour girl Sandra Lee.” But Cuomo says it couldn’t happen “because I’m divorced.”
The acknowledgement of the limits of his political influence, however, is quickly set aside as the two take shots at Edward Peters, the prominent canon lawyer who recently asserted that Cuomo should not receive Communion “while living in ‘public concubinage’ with his girlfriend in their Westchester home.”
With a nod toward journalistic balance, Dowd then points out that the latest savior of same-sex “marriage” may harbor some ulterior motives: “Just as his father seized a social issue and established himself in opposition to the Church with his Notre Dame speech on abortion, now the son has seized a social issue and established himself in opposition to the Church with gay marriage.”
The notion that political calculation fueled Cuomo’s campaign for same-sex “marriage” brings the reader back to St. Thomas More and the matter of real political and moral courage. While the Democratic base, who will one day nominate an heir to President Barack Obama, care deeply about “marriage equality,” Cuomo has nothing to lose but his soul when he turns against the leaders of his Church and advocates legislation that will redefine marriage and threaten the religious freedom of his fellow Catholics.
Indeed, Democratic elites turn to self-described “Catholics” like Cuomo to shield their agenda from being labeled “anti-Catholic” or hostile to cherished moral and social values. Mario Cuomo was among the first to travel this well-worn path, publicly defying his Church. Since then, the spectacle of Catholics “courageously” defending legal abortion, embryonic stem-cell research and same-sex “marriage” has become commonplace.
It’s good to know that a portrait of St. Thomas More, who Blessed John Paul II declared patron of statesmen and politicians, is close at hand for the governor. But there’s no direct evidence that Andrew Cuomo has grappled with the nature of this saint.
As one contemporary of Thomas More remarked upon his execution: “His death was of a piece with his life. There was nothing in it new, forced or affected. He did not look upon the severing of his head from his body as a circumstance that ought to produce any change in the disposition of his mind.”
Andrew Cuomo is “still a master schemer,” Dowd concludes, even as she revels in the newfound political stardom of this Catholic boy from Queens.
“At Sunday’s’ ‘gay pride’ parade in Manhattan, the guy who was once the cold insider blossomed into a cherished hero” — a secular savior who can heal the wounds inflicted by a sinful, misguided world.
Cuomo recalls the elation he experienced during the parade: “A father, maybe 60 years old, came up to me and said, ‘You know, I have a gay son, and I never really accepted him. And I shouldn’t have needed you to tell me that it was okay to accept my own boy. But I did.’”
As for the payoff, Dowd notes that “Cuomo is now the civil-rights leader among elected officials, a role President Obama should have proudly held. Cuomo, who now has a huge and excited base of millions of volunteers, activists and donors across the country, can press a button and raise millions.”
Almost every media story on the same-sex “marriage” victory in New York was graced with a picture of a radiant Cuomo, leading the “gay pride” march.
Among the faithful, however, the bill’s passage — capping weeks of gloomy data on the sharp decline of sacramental marriage in the U.S. — serves as a wake-up call.
Everything is on the table if marriage is legally redefined and sacramental marriage doesn’t matter. Dowd didn’t intend it, but her column provides all the evidence we need to make critical changes in the transmission of faith and compelling teaching about true political and religious courage in today’s American landscape.
Joan Frawley Desmond is the Register’s senior editor.
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Cuomo’s spiritual misfortune is that he is cafeteria on clear inerrant sexual issues from scripture….divorce, adultery, ok to gay actions. Our last two Popes have been cafeteria on the death penalty which is less clear to most people (not to me) in Rom.13:4. The entire Church virtually has been cafeteria on wifely obedience (absent in the Catechism) which the NT enjoins clearly 6 times and Casti Connubii mandated in the strictest language…but even conservatives are cafeteria on Casti Connubii. Pass the ketshup.
Good article this one talks about it too.
http://www.patheos.com/community/theanchoress/2011/06/29/cuomos-no-thomas-more-dowds-no-darrow/
For a brief time, after the Second World War, there was a name for those who betrayed their country and their culture and, implicitly, Christianity. The betrayer was called a Quisling. Indeed, one wonders if Andrew Cuomo and those other ‘catholics’ who parade their ‘independence’ from the burden of Catholic Doctrine have any idea what justifications might have passed through the mind of Judas before he delivered the kiss. The list of candidates for the title of contemporary American Judas is lamentably long: Kennedy, Dodd, Cuomo, Pelosi, Biden just to start the roll-call. The divisions within American culture have been excavated by these people and their supporters. To think in terms of political compromise with these people is like contemplating compromise with the devil. The Bishops need to remember that
“Indeed, Democratic elites turn to self-described “Catholics” like Cuomo to shield their agenda from being labeled “anti-Catholic” or hostile to cherished moral and social values.”
You have skillfully pointed out why our bishops must speak out clearly against the errors of these CINO politicians who use the name Catholic to further their political careers. It saddens me greatly that the US bishops seem to be content to let the laity do their job.
What a great article!
I don’t know any homosexuals at present. In the past I met some homosexuals. I said no to sex but they continued. Homosexuals don’t take no for answer. I have forgiven these two homosexuals because I don’t hold a gruge. What is so imprtant about homosexual marriage? I don’t get it. My experience with homosexuals is they are not good folks. Rosicrucians of rosicrucian order amoerc are not good folks either and they cohabitate.I have not notice any discrimination aganst homosexuals so what are they talking about.
“A denial of Communion might prompt a reassessment of this calculation, but the bishops of New York have signaled their discomfort with this approach.” So the bishops of New York are “uncomfortable” with doing what is demanded by Church doctrine? Maybe they should all resign and let Rome appoint someone that is “comfortable” with doing the job entrusted to them by God and the Church. Let the chips fall where they may. Let the dogs of the media howl. But don’t compromise the Catholic Church. And if this results in a huge exodus from the Church. Then so be it. Then at least we will know where people stand.
One has to laugh at the Roman Catholic Church’s indignation at the governor for ignoring their recent “moral” rant. This is the church which allowed, supported and hide pedophiles for decades all around the world while hypocritically pretending to be the arbiter of Christianity. Why should the governor listen to them any more than any of us listen to them? Hundreds of years anti-Christian behavior has rather terminated the right of the Roman Church to anything resembling morals.
Cuomo right now feels great thinking he has defeated the Church. The church too feels sad because it speaks as an authority on an issue that is actually a biblical issue. It is high time the leaders of the Church hide their pride and stop saying or speaking as if it is ‘they’ who are the authority and start letting Christ take the glory and the fight. Gay marriage or union is biblically wrong and not wrong because Church says it is wrong but wrong and that is why the Bible says it is wrong—-male and female he created them. could he have created adam and adam? yes. Rom 1 answers it all why people yearn for their type and will continue to as the world continues to draft away from its creator.
It is unfortunate that the governor and Mauren Dowd are cafeteria Catholics. They have disgaced the Catholic Institutions that educated them. It is also disgraceful that the archbishop treated Cuomo and his supporters in the legislature as if they were privileged characters rather than heretics.Canon 915 was issued by the Vatican for a situation such as this where Catholics refuse to accept Church teachings. The bishopos never approved Canon 915 as a group, but Bishop Thomas J. Tobin of Providence is one bishop I know of who has successfully usd Canon 915 in handling cases of personal conscience. Archbishop Dolan would be well served by consulting with him on matters of conciliation.I believe the archbishop should admit his approach with Cuomo and friends was a failure, and should publicly identify Cuomo as a heretic for all to know. Not doing this in my opinion would be a failure of performance that will further encourage enemies of the Church to damage the Church in a most serious way.
The Church is effectively infested with AIDS. Its immune system has collapsed and It can no longer protect either Itself or Its members. Members can say and do whatever they wish without any penalty. The history of this nation is being written every day and it is “catholics” who are writing it. Small wonder that the White Anglo Saxon Protestants shrieked in agony when they saw this riff-raff streaming onto their shores in the 18th and 19th centuries. Conservative Protestants to this day lead more disciplined lives than “catholics”. Remember, it was “catholics” who gave much support to Obama in 2008. Ask a frank Protestant how he would describe a “catholic” and you will hear: “a blue collar, ethnic who votes Deomocratic”. And Cuomo the Catholic had sixteen years of “catholic” schooling.
Maybe Cuomo should have taken the position that he’s “personally opposed” to traditional marriage, but he couldn’t “impose his religious convictions” on the vast majority of New Yorkers who support it.
Cuomo and Dowd are both disgraces to the faith.
Hopefully, the JPII Catholics and the generation they raise will replace the psuedo-Catholics in office and make St. Thomas More proud instead spin in his grave.
Regarding Thomas More: He was a man of his times, not a man for all seasons. He caused at least four men to be burned at the stake for heresy. He did not respect the consciences of those men, and Henry VIII did not respect More’s conscience when More dissented. More got what he deserved for what he had done to others. That does not make him a saint. I can think of only one who approaches sainthood in those days: Catherine of Aragon and she has no cause that I have ever heard of.
Lets see Archbishop Dolan, goes to bat supporting Cuomo when a prominent canon lawyer Edward Peters asserted that Cuomo should not receive Communion while living with his girlfriend in their Westchester home.
I have an open question ... It is not supporting abortion. It is not supporting homosexual marriage. It is not living together outside of real marriage. So just what is it that Cuomo or any other prominent Democrat/Repub “Catholic” politician or anyone for that matter has to do before they you cross the line in New York? Just what is it that is outside the pale before you get publicly dressed down by a Bishop?
Oops the answer is right there in front of me ... you have to be a prominent canon lawyer and question the propriety of Cuomo receiving communion “while living in public concubinage with his girlfriend” ... then and only then will you will receive a public dressing down.
When non-catholics say to me, “what is your faith,” I tell them that it is NOT what you see in congress. I tell them that our faith has to be lived each and every day, not just practiced. It is mindbending to me how our “catholic” leaders have set such a backhanded example to the public, not to mention embarrassing to the pew catholic. You really start to understand the hate for the church from those who point to our immoral priests who like little boys, to our dysfunctional catholic congress who stands on the side of abortion and immoral marriages. No wonder why the uninformed public thinks this madness is the fault of Holy Mother Church. Go figure.
What pains me most about all of this is not what is done outside the confines of the Church by those who call themselves Catholics but what those inside the Church who are supposedly steering the ship are failing to do. We are witnessing the complete obliteration of Christian morality within every nuck and cranny of American society. One would think that the Church’s message to it’s followers would be one of bold but tempered resistance. If Christ did nothing else, he showed us all that love of all humanity and an uncompromising stance against evil is not a mutually exclusive proposition. But if you step into just about any Catholic Church on Sunday it is highly unlikely that you’ll hear a single word about the ethical battle raging outside the Church walls. And the reason for this? The Church has hogtied itself by trying to be all things to all people and by placing far too much concern on quantity over quality. It is my contention that we need to get back to the basics of good and evil and set our eyes back on the Cross. If that means a leaner and meaner Church, so be it.
A useful and a meaningful “cathartic” following the poisoning of the body politic by this latest homosexual marriage travesty would be for his Excellency Archbishop Dolan to publish and maintain a list of ALL of the politicians who opposed Church teachings on same sex marriage in this last vote where it would count at his blog:
http://blog.archny.org/
Holding these NY politicians responsible for their actions this list should be maintained in a prominent place on his blog; especially as the 2012 Election draws near with a reminder to the faithful that they all were appealed to by the Church and warned that this was a very serious moral matter and that they chose to ignore.
Moreover in his role as the head of the USCCB his Excellency should ask his fellow bishops to also get back to the fundamentals first and draw up similar lists for each diocese in the USA.
This will require courage but the sleeping giant has been awakened and those who are now mocking the Church will find out just how many troops a truly informed Church really has.
If they do not then just like Roe vs. Wade the homosexual lobby will go to court and say we now have homosexual marriage in California and NY and in the military etc., We have a POTUS who refuses to defend DOMA and you will see a MANDATE come down from the Supreme Court. They are playing Chess the Church must not and can not continue to play Checkers.
Verity, it is not accurate to say that St. Thomas More “caused” four men to be burned at the stake. The accounts are not black and white.
More’s daughter at one time was married to a Protestant. Why didn’t he have him burnt alive too?
Please do not be so quick to judge, as you say, More was a man of his times, and the times were much different than today.
Since ‘Catholic’ politicians like Pelosi, Biden, Kerry, Kennedy, Daschle, Dodd, Cuomo etc. are still permitted to receive the Eucharist despite the fact that they not only public ‘accept’ what is against the teachings of Christ and His Church, but they aggressively and publicly advocate for abortion and same sex marriage, then they must truly be Catholics in good standing. If they were not, then the Bishops would inform them that since they have publicly and aggressively advocated for abortion and same sex marriage,they must publicly disavow those agendas before receiving the Eucharist. So it is according to the teachings of the Church that abortion and same sex marriage are okay. Can’t have it both ways. If there are no consequences, then those ‘Catholic’ politicians believe they are indeed Catholics in good standing and will continue to aggressively push their anti-life, pro-gay marriage agendas. I guess we better accept that…if killing human babies is okay, then I guess sin is relative.
liseux, Burning people at the stake for their religious beliefs is judicial murder, pure and simple. A saint is not a person of their time, but a person ahead of his time who sets an example of Christian morality for others. From what I have read More and his henchmen acted like the gestapo, invading houses and arresting people. I will soon be reading the book on More and Wolsey by historian, Jasper Ridley. At the present the online New Advent Enclyclopedia says that More made four people pay the ultimate penalty for their erroneous beliefs. I am so glad that real Christians finally changed those horrible laws that caused people to be murdered for religious reasons. Until I think differently of More, I will not enter a church named for him.
Verity -
Your ignorance on Saint Thomas More is incredible…how exactly do you glibly believe that More - the Chancellor - simply executed four people in his years as Chancellor for simple heresy? Do you understand what a heretic was at that time? Do you know what a revolutionary is? Do you know that More did everything possible to give those four an out in regard to the ultimate penalty? More executed his office more honorably than any before or after him.
This was centuries before Democracy and for you to judge Thomas More by the present is absurd and ignorant. The very fact that only four people under More’s time as Chancellor suffered death is a testament to his mercy and judgment.
Read the Old Testament, Verity. What did Moses do regarding heresy? And by the way, a saint is a saint for his own time not the future.
Rich, I have read the Old Testament and am quite familiar with it. However, the New Testament does trump the Old wherein Jesus teaches us that sinners are not to be stoned to death.
Please tell me what a heretic was at that time and how is that different from this time? We just had a holiday to celebrate revolutionaries, so how is every revolutionary a bad person? It is true that some revolutions become worse than the Old Regimes that they replaced as in France and Russia, but the Old Regimes did need to be changed. I am sure that you are happy to be enjoying the benefits of the American Revolution.
It remains that More could have been merciful to those who disagreed with his set of values. He was not; and, in the end, mercy was not shown to him. His death by beheading may or may not have expiated his sin of judicial murder, but I do not think that the way a person dies makes that person a saint.
Verity and Rich
You both have points. Sincere erroneous conscience is actually what you are touching on and the catechism did not touch on it in it’s rather simplistic description of conscience. E.G…..if torture is an intrinsic evil as “Splendor of the Truth” says it is in section 80, then how explain it’s Church use or Church implied affirmation via deputizing it from 1253 til 1816.
Thank you, Bill, for your apt comment, “erroneous conscience.” How is it that people who formed an erroneous conscience can be canonized? Let me point out that recently Franz Jaegerstatter was beautified. That I can support. Franz J. rejected the advice of his bishop that he could fight for the Third Reich and not be guilty of murdering people because God would not hold him responsible, but God would hold the man responsible who issued to order to kill people. Franz J. was more Christian than his bishop and bravely paid with his life for those convictions. It is easy to see the sainthood here. On the other hand, Clemens von Galen was beatified. He stood up to the Nazis when they were mercy killing mentally challenged people. But, he gave the heil Hitler salute and told the German soldiers to fight for the Fatherland. He supported the invasion of the Soviet Union where an estimated 20 million people died as a result. I do not know what he said about the invasion of Poland. I am looking to find out. In any case it is not Catholic social teaching to invade another country and kill off its intelligentsia in order to enslaved the remaining peasants for the comfort of the master race. So how did he get beatified? Can anyone help me here?
Back to Thomas More. I have put a hold at the library on the book about More and Wolsey by Jasper Ridley. This book was recommended to me by a priest, and I think it may answer my remaining questions about these two personages. I will post what I find.
It looks like there is a second chance for Archbishop Dolan to show his leadership in opposition to homosexual marriage and the indoctrination of the school children of New York; his Excellency can add his name to the list of plaintiffs and join with those seeking to overturn this new law:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jul/25/new-york-gay-marriage-law-first-legal-challenge/
at the very least Archbishop Dolan can instruct his lawyers to file a friend of the court brief. As noted by St.Thomas Moore; acquiescence, the do nothing alternative, means agreement. If the Institutional Church sits passively by and will not lift a finger then it means it is in agreement with the new pagan norms. So be it. Just stop glad-handing Governor Cuomo in Church for the benefit of 60 Minutes as if nothing is wrong and stop saying you are apposed when your actions or lack thereof say something quite different about you. Take a cue from your Cardinal predecessor who banned Bill Clinton from stepping foot inside St. Patrick’s and ban the Cuomos as well. If real marriage means more to you than the Catholic Church’s ongoing illicit co-habitation with the Democratic Party you could and should also ban all clergy from participation in the Al Smith dinner. Face it there has not been a real Catholic Democrat since Hubert Humphrey and he was a Protestant - and God willing is enjoying Heaven with the saints.
Take a cue from Father Groeschel who said: “I am a traditional Catholic. Politically right now we have been driven out of the Democrat party. You know, we did not leave the party, the party left us and I won’t vote for anyone who is not Pro-Life; or is pro-abortion, ANYONE, under no circumstance; and I think that it is awful when you grew up and belonged to a Party that was concerned, at least officially, about the poor and civil rights; but that party has been co-opted into a lot of causes which I think are destructive to the country and to the fabric of Society.” How about it? Lead, Follow or Get out of the way.
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