\nI would like to begin by drawing your attention to the title of this lecture: \u201cReligious Belief and Public Morality: A Catholic Governor\u2019s Perspective.\u201d I was not invited to speak on \u201cChurch and State\u201d generally. Certainly not \u201cMondale vs. Reagan.\u201d The subject assigned is difficult enough. I will try not to do more than I\u2019ve been asked.<\/span><\/p>\nIt\u2019s not easy to stay contained. Certainly, although everybody talks about a wall of separation between church and state, I\u2019ve seen religious leaders scale that wall with all the dexterity of olympic athletes. In fact, I\u2019ve seen so many candidates in churches and synagogues that I think we should change election day from Tuesdays to Saturdays and Sundays.<\/p>\n
I am honored by this invitation, but the record shows that I am not the first Governor of New York to appear at an event involving Notre Dame. One of my great predecessors, Al Smith, went to the Army \u2013 Notre Dame football game each time it was played in New York.<\/p>\n
His fellow Catholics expected Smith to sit with Notre Dame; protocol required him to sit with Army because it was the home team. Protocol prevailed. But not without Smith noting the dual demands on his affections. \u201cI\u2019ll take my seat with Army,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I commend my soul to Notre Dame!\u201d<\/p>\n
Today I\u2019m happy to have no such problem. Both my seat and my soul are with Notre Dame. And as long as Father McBrien doesn\u2019t invite me back to sit with him at the Notre Dame \u2013 St. John\u2019s basketball game, I\u2019m confident my loyalties will remain undivtded.<\/p>\n
In a sense, it\u2019s a question of loyalty that Father McBrien has asked me here today to discuss. Specifically, must politics and religion in America divide our loyalties? Does the \u201cseparation between church and state\u201d imply separation between religion and politics? Between morality and government? Are these different propositions? Even more specifically, what is the relationship of my Catholicism to my politics? Where does the one end and other begin? Or are the two divided at all? And if they\u2019re not, should they be?<\/p>\n
Hard questions.<\/p>\n
No wonder most of us in public life \u2014 at least until recently \u2014 preferred to stay away from them, heeding the biblical advice that if \u201chounded and pursued in one city,\u201d we should flee to another.<\/p>\n
Now, however, I think that it is too late to flee. The questions are all around us, and answers are coming from every quarter. Some of them have been simplistic, most of them fragmentary, and a few, spoken with a purely political intent, demagogic.<\/p>\n
There has been confusion and compounding of confusion, a blurring of the issue, entangling it in personalities and election strategies, instead of clarifying it for Catholics, as well as others.<\/p>\n
Today I would like to try to help correct that.<\/p>\n
I can offer you no final truths, complete and unchallengeable. But it\u2019s possible this one effort will provoke other efforts \u2014 both in support and contradiction of my position \u2014 that will help all of us understand our differences and perhaps even discover some basic agreement.<\/p>\n
In the end, I\u2019m convinced we will all benefit if suspicion is replaced by discussion, innuendo by dialogue; if the emphasis in our debate turns from a search for talismanic criteria and neat but simplistic answers to an honest \u2014 more intelligent \u2014 attempt at describing the role religion has in our public affairs, and the limits placed on that role.<\/p>\n
And if we do it right \u2014 if we\u2019re not afraid of the truth even when the truth is complex \u2014 this debate, by clarification, can bring relief to untold numbers of confused \u2014 even anguished \u2014 Catholics, as well as to many others who want only to make our already great democracy even stronger than it is.<\/p>\n
I believe the recent discussion in my own State has already produced some clearer definition. In early summer, newspaper accounts had created the impression in some quarters that official church spokespeople would ask Catholics to vote for or against specific candidates on the basis of their political position on the abortion issue. I was one of those given that impression. Thanks to the dialogue that ensued over the summer \u2014 only partially reported by the media \u2014 we learned that the impression was not accurate.<\/p>\n
Confusion had presented an opportunity for clarification, and we seized it. Now all of us are saying one thing \u2014 in chorus \u2014 reiterating the statement of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops that they will not \u201ctake positions for or against political candidates\u201d and that their stand on specific issues should not be perceived \u201cas an expression of political partisanship.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course the bishops will teach \u2014 they must \u2014 more and more vigorously and more and more extensively. But they have said they will not use the power of their position, and the great respect it receives from all Catholics, to give an imprimatur to individual politicians or parties.<\/p>\n
Not that they couldn\u2019t if they wished to \u2014 some religious leaders do; some are doing it at this very moment.<\/p>\n
Not that it would be a sin if they did \u2014 God doesn\u2019t insist on political neutrality. But because it is the judgment of the bishops, and most of us Catholic lay people, that it is not wise for prelates and politicians to be tied too closely together.<\/p>\n
I think that getting this consensus was an extraordinarily useful achievement.<\/p>\n
Now, with some trepidation and after much prayer, I take up your gracious invitation to continue the dialogue in the hope that it will lead to still further clarification.<\/p>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following is the text of an address by Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York on \u201cReligious Belief and Public Morality: A Catholic Governor\u2019s Perspective,\u201d delivered September 13, 1984, as a John A. O\u2019Brien Lecture in the University of Notre Dame\u2019s Department of Theology. I would like to begin by drawing your attention to the title […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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