Pressing the Abortion Issue

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public policy, he contended, "is the line between the rule of government and the role of individual rights."

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 a celebrated exchange, O'Connor said he was not telling anyone how to vote, and the Governor conceded that he may have "misunderstood" the Archbishop.

Cuomo's speech at Notre Dame revealed a remarkable pragmatism coexisting with strong religious sensibilities. His central argument was that public policy in a democratic and religiously diverse society can be determined only by consensus. Describing himself as "an old-fashioned Catholic who sins, regrets, struggles, worries, gets confused and most of the time feels better after confession," Cuomo said that he was elected "to serve Jews and Muslims and atheists and Protestants, as well as Catholics." He and other Catholics in public office must "help create conditions under which all can live with a maximum of dignity and with a reasonable degree of freedom; where everyone who chooses may hold beliefs different from specifically Catholic ones." In this freedom, he said, "I protect my right to be a Catholic by preserving your right to be a Jew, or a Protestant or a nonbeliever, or anything else you choose." Otherwise, "the price of seeking to force our belief on others is that they might some day force their belief on us."

The Governor said that he respected "the teaching authority of the bishops," including their stand on abortion. But he noted that "on divorce and birth control, without changing its moral teaching, the church abides the civil law as it now stands, thereby accepting—without making much of a point of it—that in our pluralistic society we are not required to insist that all our religious values be the law of the land." Whether and precisely how to turn church teachings into public policy, Cuomo argued, "is not a matter of doctrine; it is a matter of prudential political judgment."

Turning more specifically to abortion, the Governor contended that people who favor legalized abortion "aren't a ruthless, callous alliance of anti-Christians determined to overthrow our moral standards." Among them, he noted, are the American Lutheran Church, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and women of the Episcopal Church and of B'nai B'rith. In view of the widespread opposition to an all-out ban on abortion, Cuomo noted, even the bishops had decided in 1981 that it was futile to seek such a constitutional ban. Instead, they endorsed the Hatch amendment, which would give states the right to decide whether to make abortion illegal within their boundaries. Said Cuomo: "The church in this country has never retreated into a moral