The Deacon's Bench
While they haven’t quite forged the friendship that defined Cardinal John O’Connor and Mayor Ed Koch, Cardinal Dolan and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio are finding their own way to a unique partnership.
From The New York Times:
Less than a year into Mr. de Blasio’s tenure, he and the cardinal, two of New York’s most powerful figures, have found much to gain from each other, forging an unexpectedly useful relationship that so far seems blessed by fortuitous timing and ostensibly genuine affection.
The mayor relied in part on the participation of Catholic schools to achieve a signature goal — a prekindergarten program serving more than 50,000 children this year — paying the schools to operate prekindergarten for more than 3,000 students. For his help, Cardinal Dolan secured not only an infusion of city money but also a powerful ally at a moment of enrollment struggles and financial strain. This month, the cardinal announced dozens of parish closings and mergers.
When a death during a police confrontation on Staten Island inflamed tensions in July — and the administration drew criticism for giving the Rev. Al Sharpton a prominent position at a subsequent forum on police relations — Mr. de Blasio called on Cardinal Dolan to host a second, less fractious gathering.
And for several months, the mayor and the cardinal have waged a public campaign to bring Pope Francis to New York City next year. In an email last month from Rome, where Cardinal Dolan was participating in an assembly, or synod, at the Vatican, he said he had spoken directly to the pope and predicted a “very high probability” that Francis would spend a day in the city next September.
The local alliance — elevating the civic role of one of Catholicism’s most prominent voices of social conservatism, with an assist from a rising liberal star who calls himself “spiritual” but not religious — has at times resembled a sort of municipal buddy movie.
…“They’re both skilled politicians,” said Kenneth Sherrill, a longtime teacher of political science at Hunter College. “The power dynamic may be changing in certain ways that may be to the mayor’s advantage. As the church’s economic position gets worse, they’re more and more in the position of having to take advantage of government programs.”
Mr. de Blasio, who does not attend church, has charted a careful course when describing his own attitudes on faith. Despite growing up in the “Catholic core of the Northeast,” he said, he was never baptized, and his immediate family did not follow any religion.
As a young man, though, he was drawn to Catholic liberation theology, which emphasizes helping the poor. He worked after graduate school for a social justice group that provided humanitarian aid to Nicaragua.
“This is not something that feels far away to me,” he said in the interview. “This is a part of my heritage, and I think that’s part of why it feels very easy to connect.”
He recalled fondly two highlights from his vacation to Italy in July: greeting a woman, roughly 90 years old, who had known his great-uncle Alberto, a Catholic priest in Sant’Agata de’ Goti, and traveling to a meeting at the Vatican, for which Cardinal Dolan had prepared him like “a big brother.”
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