Dear Editor: I have always looked forward to reading Father John Cush’s columns and he has my utmost respect but this week’s Up Front & Personal (Jan. 10) left me stunned.
Why did Father Cush quote Christopher Hale from the dissident group Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, a notorious pro-abortion Democrat Catholic front group that supports pro-abortion candidates, and rely on his opinion to base Gov. Mario Cuomo’s career on?
In my opinion, Gov. Cuomo was nothing more than a clone of Pontius Pilate, who washed my hands of the blood of the inno- cents and supported the crowd’s right to choose. Who were the victims if not the innocent little girls/boys in the womb and the mil- lions of exploited women and their families who received help from the good governor to abort their children? Is this what’s considered helping the downtrodden?
His “personally opposed to” was brilliant in that no one challenged him on whether this would apply to slavery or the death penalty also.
Gov. Cuomo’s legacy unfortunately will always be one in which he abandoned the least of God’s children and supported the crowd’s right to choose.
VERONICA SHEEHAN
Park Slope
Dear Editor: I have to respectfully disagree with the sentiment (Jan. 10) expressed by Amelia Petagna of Williamsburg, in which she states that the late Governor Cuomo “chose the Ultra- Liberal Democratic Party above his religious directives.”
I do praise her for also refusing to pass judgment on his behavior, leaving that to God as it should be. Thank you for that, but I had the honor and privilege of having served as a career civil service “middle manager” during the Cuomo administration, and I can vouch for his application of fundamental Roman Catholic social teachings to the problems he confronted.
As for his failure to be forcefully pro-life officially, I believe that such a stance in the context of his times, would have been unavailing. The New York legislature passed the first-in-the-nation full legalization of abortion law in 1970, and it was signed by a Republican Governor, Nelson Rockefeller, not by Mario Cuomo. Further, when the Legislature passed a law in 1972 to repeal the 1970 act and to reinstitute the abortion ban, that, too, was vetoed by Governor Rockefeller.
So, it was clear that it wasn’t just an “Ultra- Liberal” Democratic Party thing to be “pro- choice,” and Governor Cuomo was, by all accounts, a good enough practical politician to know that politics was, indeed, “the art of the possible,” and to spend his energies and political capital where he could get the best results for those whom he felt were the neediest, while still harboring a personal abhorrence for abortion itself.
In fact, in his public stance, Gov. Cuomo may have been mirroring that of the man who was majority leader of the State Senate at the time of the 1970 vote. That was Earl Brydges, whom Manfred Ohrenstein called “a very devout Catholic,” and Brydges could have – changed the pro-choice vote in his chamber,
but he said that, even though he felt that what the members were doing was wrong, he wouldn’t stand in the way of the majority’s wishes.
Mario Cuomo truly earned the right to be buried from St. Ignatius Church as a good Catholic man. Rest in peace, my former leader.
GARRETT DEMPSEY
Whitestone