BALTIMORE — Back in 2012, when the U.S. bishops first attacked the Health and Human Services’ contraceptive mandate as an “unprecedented” threat to religious freedom, then-Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland shrugged off that response as “a little bit too much hyperventilating” during a television interview.

When the anchor suggested that the Democratic governor — a self-identified Catholic, who often cites his faith — should take the bishops’ concerns to heart, O’Malley dismissed the critics in his Church as mostly “Republicans,” and said that Catholics in some European countries had learned to live with such laws.

“This is not about abortion; it’s about covering contraception as part of the health-care coverage — mandatory basic coverage,” he explained, two and half years before the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling that contradicted his judgment and found that the HHS mandate violated the religious beliefs of Hobby Lobby.

On May 30, O’Malley, 52, a two-term governor of Maryland, announced his plans to secure his party’s nomination for president of the United States.

His supporters welcomed the arrival of a party leader dubbed by some as a “social-justice Catholic” or even a “Pope Francis Democrat,” in the mold of the late Gov. Mario Cuomo; and the comparison is apt, at least up to a point.

Like all Democrats exploring a presidential run since the 1970s, O’Malley backs legal abortion, though he hasn’t traveled to the University of Notre Dame — as Cuomo famously did — to state the case for Catholic compliance with Roe v. Wade. Both men also stirred controversy when they took a public stand against the death penalty.

 

‘Progressive Catholic in the Maryland Tradition’

“O’Malley is a progressive Catholic in the Maryland tradition, embracing the elements of Church Tradition that fit his party’s platform,” noted Terry Mattingly in a post for GetReligion.org that considered whether the “Pope Francis Democrat” label would stick.

“The key … is how the mainstream press does or does not compare the actual content of his views … with what Pope Francis has actually said and the teachings he has affirmed.”

In an era where his party has become closely identified with the advancement of same-sex “marriage” and “LGBT rights,” O’Malley’s firm embrace of these issues, both during his last term as governor, and at the launch of his presidential campaign, will give him credibility with the grassroots.

Yet it is far from clear whether O’Malley’s Catholic profile will help him in a party that has already largely bid farewell to pro-life Catholics and is now attracting a surge of religiously unaffiliated voters as it moves left. Another presidential hopeful whom O’Malley will join in the primaries is Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described “democratic socialist.”

O’Malley also faces several other, possibly insurmountable hurdles.

 

Trailblazer for Same-Sex ‘Marriage’

For starters, the defeat last November of O’Malley’s hand-picked successor, Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, was widely viewed as a “repudiation” of the governor’s legacy. The GOP’s long-shot gubernatorial candidate, Larry Hogan, won over voters in the Democrat-controlled state as he attacked O’Malley’s tax increases and the botched rollout of Maryland’s health-care exchange, authorized under Obamacare.

Meanwhile, O’Malley must square off against a much better-known rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 67, who has a huge lead in the polls.

O’Malley still could attract Democrats who want fresh leaders with a record of support for liberal policies. While Clinton has been accused of adjusting her positions to keep pace with her party’s base, O’Malley is presenting himself as a trailblazer on immigration as well as same-sex “marriage” — defining issues for the party in the 2016 election year.

“I believe that we are best as a party when we lead with our principles and not according to the polls,” O’Malley said earlier this year, as he offered a muted critique of Clinton’s belated support for “marriage equality” and help for undocumented immigrants.

Martin O’Malley grew up in an Irish-Catholic home in Bethesda, Md., with five siblings who were raised to be Democrat Party loyalists.

He attended Catholic schools, including Jesuit-run Gonzaga College Prep, and completed his undergraduate education at The Catholic University of America. A father of four, he has sent his own children to Catholic schools, as well.

“My father taught me that the only thing that lasts in this world is being good to other people,” he told Esquire, when he was asked by the magazine to name the person who played the most important role in his life.

“And when I was in high school, I got to observe a Jesuit priest by the name of Father Horace McKenna, who ran a mission out of the basement of St. Aloysius Church. He gave his entire life to serving the poor, and he truly did see the face of God in every individual that he served,” O’Malley told the magazine.

After law school, O’Malley became a city councilman and later won two terms as mayor of Baltimore, from December 1999 through January 2007.

 

Anti-Crime Legacy as Mayor

As mayor, O’Malley was perhaps best known for leading a crackdown on crime in what was then the most violent city in the nation.

“Baltimore’s total incidents of crime — measured by the FBI as violent and property crimes — declined 43% from 2000 to 2010,” reported The Baltimore Sun, in its assessment of O’Malley’s time as mayor.

That legacy helped to get him elected governor, and earlier this year, as he explored a presidential bid, he continued to cite data that demonstrated his bona fides as a tough-minded political leader.

But in April, after the death of an unarmed black man in police custody ignited an explosion of violence in Baltimore, O’Malley’s “zero-tolerance” policy was blamed by some residents for stirring resentment against local police.

“In 2005, the Police Department made more than 100,000 arrests in a city of 640,000 people,” noted the Sun.

While his zero-tolerance policing initiative is now viewed with disfavor by some Democrat activists, O’Malley's generous policies for undocumented immigrants could pull key Latino activists into his camp, as he heads into the primary season.

 

Immigration Policies

As governor, he approved drivers’ licenses for undocumented immigrants, under specific conditions, and signed legislation that allowed those who had been brought to this country as children to pay in-state tuition at public institutions of higher education.

“His state of Maryland has cared for more unaccompanied children per capita than any other state in the United States of America,” Rep. Luis Gutiérrez, D-Ill., a House leader on immigration issues, told Politico, in a reference to O’Malley’s efforts to welcome more than 2,000 children from Central America to the state, after tens of thousands crossed the border over the past year and a half.

In 2013, O’Malley fulfilled his long-standing pledge to sign legislation that would abolish the death penalty in Maryland.

That stand, as well as O’Malley’s ongoing advocacy for immigration reform, has prompted some of his supporters to celebrate him as a principled leader with a strong moral core.

“He’s a social-justice Catholic — or, as some have called him, a Pope Francis Democrat — in the tradition of Mario Cuomo and Robert Kennedy,” said Maryland Sen. Jim Rosapepe, D-College Park, in a 2014 column for The Hill.

The U.S. bishops have also pressed the federal government to relax deportation policies that divide immigrant families. But O’Malley has parted ways with Catholic leaders on abortion and “marriage equality,” though there are striking differences in how he has approached these two hot-button issues.

In contrast to Hillary Clinton, O’Malley has never made abortion rights a signature issue. Back in 2002, when he was still mayor of Baltimore, he had to be prodded by Planned Parenthood before he affirmed his “pro-choice” position. Further, a call by the Register to the Maryland Right to Life yielded no additional information regarding his public record or views on abortion.

On the other hand, he led the effort to legalize same-sex “marriage” in Maryland, overcoming strong resistance from the state's historic black churches.

In an interview with the Des Moines Register earlier this year, O’Malley was asked to explain why he departed from official Catholic teaching on marriage.

“I believe in the dignity of every person, and I believe that while we are all free to practice our religion and to hold whatever religious beliefs we choose ... we can all agree that every child’s home deserves to be protected equally under the law, and there is dignity in every child’s home,” he said.

“I found the passage of marriage equality actually squares with the most important social teachings of my faith, which is to believe in the dignity of the human person and our own responsibility to advance the common good, and part of that advancement means changing laws that are unjust when not applied equally to all people,” he continued.

 

Deviations From Catholic Thought

However, O’Malley’s justification for his support of same-sex “marriage” severs two fundamental natural-law principles — respect for the dignity of the human person and respect for the common good — from Catholic teachings on sexual ethics and marriage. 

The Church teaches that every person, no matter their sexual orientation, is created in the image of God and thus possesses inalienable dignity. But that truth cannot transform an immoral act into a moral act.

Likewise, a desire to advance the common good cannot make a same-sex union morally equivalent to a marriage between one man and one woman — a union blessed in the old covenant and sanctified through the sacrament of matrimony by the Church.

As the Catechism of the Catholic Church clearly states: “‘[H]omosexual acts are … contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved” (2357).

Indeed, while advocates of same-sex “marriage” — including O’Malley — also argue that the families headed by same-sex couples suffer from the “unequal” treatment of their unions under the law, the Church also teaches that every child has a right to be brought into the world through the loving conjugal act of his or her mother and father and to be raised by them when possible. As the Church sees it, a redefinition of “marriage” that justifies the creation of children who will never know their mother or their father cannot advance the common good.

 

Voter Anger

When O’Malley made his aggressive push to secure legal marriage for same-sex couples, commentators framed his headline-making effort as a sign he planned to launch a presidential bid. But his bona fides on this issue couldn’t shield him from voter anger over his string of tax increases. The victory last November of Larry Hogan, the GOP gubernatorial candidate, reverberated across the country.

Required by the state constitution to balance the budget, and under pressure from recent federal budget cuts, which hit Maryland’s economy especially hard, O’Malley reduced spending, but also boosted taxes across the board, hitting wealthy residents as well as the poor.

The defeat of his chosen successor cast into doubt O’Malley’s legacy in the statehouse. Months later, the Baltimore riots spotlighted his tough policing initiative and left him facing even rougher headwinds.

If Hillary Clinton loses ground, O’Malley’s fortunes could change. Thus far, he has been cautious about attacking Clinton, but on the day he announced his presidential campaign, he took a swipe at both Clinton and Jeb Bush, the brother and the son of two American presidents.

“The presidency is not a crown to be passed back and forth, by you, between two royal families,” he said on Saturday. “It is a sacred trust to be earned from the American people.”

Perhaps voters will think twice about the trend of nepotism in American politics.

However, O’Malley just may be the wrong candidate to represent his party in 2016.

Early reports from Iowa suggest that Sen. Sanders has already tapped into the yearning of party activists for passionate rhetoric and liberal ideals.

 

‘A Technocrat, Not an Orator’

O’Malley is a “technocrat, not an orator,” said a Slate commentary that tried to explain the gap between the governor’s strong liberal credentials and his weak showing in the polls.

But there’s another explanation for O’Malley’s predicament: “Social-justice Catholics” may not have the cachet they once had in the heyday of Cuomo, when Americans seemed more comfortable and respectful of religious trappings, and Catholic “swing” voters had just begun to cross party lines to vote Republican.

Meanwhile, the number of religiously unaffiliated voters has risen sharply over the past decade, and most are voting Democrat.

Since he took office, Obama has led the party away from support for legislation and policies that celebrate the work of faith-based nonprofits and tolerate exemptions for believers that oppose legal abortion and other policies that violate their faith.

If the party is turning its back on such voters and views the practice of religion as a private affair, why would it send a “Pope Francis Democrat” to the White House?

Joan Frawley Desmond is the Register’s senior editor.