Word: archbishop
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...assault on Ferraro seemed almost gratuitous. Before addressing a pro-life convention in Altoona, Pa., New York Archbishop John J. O'Connor told reporters that Ferraro had "said some things about abortion relative to Catholic teaching which are not true." He did not immediately explain just what Ferraro had said or when she had said it. Puzzled and privately seething, the candidate tried to reach O'Connor between campaign appearances. She finally did so from Indianapolis. In what she described as a "cordial, direct and helpful" 35-minute telephone conversation, she politely asked the Archbishop what "mischaracterization...
Timing aside, the disagreement between the two was over the meaning of the ambiguous language that the Ferraro letter, which had been drafted by an aide, had used. The Archbishop contended that Ferraro had "misrepresented" the position of the church. "The teaching of the Catholic Church is monolithic on the subject of abortion," he said. Indeed it is (see box). But Ferraro insisted that she was not referring in her letter to the official position of the church, which she agreed "is monolithic." Instead, she was referring to individual Catholics, contending that "there are a lot of Catholics...
Within an hour after her speech, Scranton Bishop James Timlin, who had taken over O'Connor's former diocese after O'Connor was installed as Archbishop of New York, held a press conference. He sharply attacked Ferraro's attempt to separate her public duties from her religious views as "absolutely ridiculous." He likened her abortion position to the slavery issue. "You can't say," Timlin argued, " 'I'm personally opposed to slavery, but I don't care if others down the street have them.' " The bishop insisted that...
Invited by Notre Dame's theology department to give the first in a series of lectures on the effect religious faith has on individual public officials, Cuomo attracted national TV coverage of his South Bend, Ind., speech. He, like Ferraro, had engaged in an earlier public argument with Archbishop O'Connor. Last June the Archbishop had said, "I don't see how a Catholic in good conscience can vote for a candidate who explicitly supports abortion." Cuomo had challenged this as a virtual declaration that Catholics should not vote for any candidate who supported abortion. After...
That transgression is not the only source of the current church-state battle. Archbishop John J. O'Connor of New York tested his side of the frontier when he declared, "I don't see how a Catholic in good conscience can vote for a candidate who explicitly supports abortion." At which point Governor Mario Cuomo of New York, a Catholic, took the unusual and politically courageous step of challenging the Archbishop. (Last week Cuomo followed up with a thoughtful meditation, delivered at Notre Dame, on the tension between religious and public morality...