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  Sorry, Bishop: Gov Serves the Citizens

Chicago Sun-Times
December 4, 2010

http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/2944556,carol-CST-120510.article

It’s way past time for Catholic bishops to stop lecturing elected public officials about whom they serve.

As you know, the Illinois House and Senate made history this past week by legalizing civil unions. Senators and state representatives did so despite heavy lobbying by the Catholic Conference of Bishops and by Cardinal Francis George himself.

The president of the Illinois Senate, John Cullerton, is Catholic. The speaker of the Illinois House, Mike Madigan is Catholic.

Both supported the measure. As does Gov. Quinn, also Catholic, who promises to sign the bill and make it law.

That pledge provoked a stern lecture from Bishop Thomas John Paprocki, head of the Springfield Archdiocese. Paprocki wrote:

“If the governor wishes to pursue a secular agenda for political purposes, that is his prerogative for which he is accountable to the voters. But if he wishes to speak as a Catholic, then he is accountable to Catholic authority, and the Catholic Church does not support civil unions or other measures that are contrary to the natural moral law.”

The operative word in Paprocki’s dressing down is “authority.” A church that should be chastened by the failure of its authority to protect children from sexual abuse, a church misusing its authority to conduct the current inquisition of the faithfulness of Roman Catholic sisters, is instead evermore consumed with its authority.

The bishops have a responsibility and a right to teach Catholic doctrine. No one argues otherwise.

But to borrow from Paprocki’s own words, of course Gov. Quinn was pursuing a “secular agenda for political purposes for which he is accountable to voters.”

That’s his job description.

John Kennedy, before winning the presidency, tackled this issue speaking to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960.

“I am not the Catholic candidate for president,” Kennedy said. “I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me.”

New York Gov. Mario Cuomo addressed it in 1984 at Notre Dame, saying:

“Catholic public officials take an oath to preserve the Constitution that guarantees this freedom . . . Not because they love what others do with their freedom, but because they realize that in guaranteeing freedom for all, they guarantee our right to be Catholics . . .”

But leave it to the late Mayor Richard J. Daley to put it in plain, blunt language.

The Daley story, as told by DePaul University Professor Michael Mezey, goes like this:

“In 1962, Roman Pucinski, a member of Congress from Chicago, was withholding his vote on an education bill, demanding aid for parochial schools be included. Despite calls from President Kennedy and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, Pucinski wouldn’t budge.”

That’s when Mayor Daley, a devout Roman Catholic like Pucinski, reportedly fired off a telegram.

“Who put you there,” Daley was said to ask, “me or the Pope?”

Pucinski decided to vote for the bill, which sent a lot of federal money into Chicago public schools.

Daley was right.

Kennedy and Cuomo were right.

And so now are the Democratic leaders in Springfield and those Republicans who joined in this historic vote.

Nothing prevents prelates who believe homosexuality is a sin or that civil unions violate natural law from preaching or teaching it.

But the state doesn’t serve a church or a religious doctrine. It serves its citizens who deserve equal justice under the law.

And that’s what Illinois just did.

Properly.

Proudly.

 
 

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