Boston Globe: Cardinal O'Malley's Criticism "Met With Silence"
In 1935, Governor James Michael Curley was pushing hard for a bill to create a state lottery. The bill looked like it would sail through the Legislature. But on the eve of the vote, the afternoon papers carried stories of Cardinal William Henry O'Connell denouncing it."The next morning, it went down to crashing defeat," said James O'Toole, a history professor at Boston College.
It is the "mirror image," he observed, of the dynamic now. Last week, after Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley said the support of church members for Democrats "borders on scandal" because of the party's support for keeping abortion legal, most of the state's leading Catholic Democrats responded with silence.
John Walsh, chairman of the Democratic Party, declined to comment, as did Senators Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, and nearly all of the state's Democratic Catholic congressmen, on both sides of the abortion issue. The few who did have something to say - House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi, who spoke to reporters on a separate issue Thursday, and US Representative Michael E. Capu ano, whose office provided a statement when asked for comment - respectfully disagreed with the church.
As they have for years, most Catholic Democrats in Massachusetts are likely to continue to disagree with the church on abortion without worrying much about the consequences for them or their party. If Catholic voters punished their politicians for opposing church views on abortion - or gay marriage, or any other subject - the response might be quite different, political experts said last week. But they haven't. . . .
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Following the 2004 Presidential election, we've expanded our discussion to cover the public policy decisions of Catholics in public service on both sides of the political divide.
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