This past Tuesday New Yorkers said farewell to Governor Mario Cuomo. Thrice elected Governor of New York Mario Cuomo was a complicated man. To some, he was a hero and to others, a villain. According to his own testimony, his Roman Catholic faith left a profound mark on his thinking and the way he lived his life.

At the time many in his own party supported the death penalty including his old political foe, the late Mayor Edward Koch, Gov. Cuomo demonstrated great courage by holding steadfast to his opposition to the death penalty. In fact he was not simply an opponent of the death penalty, he crusaded against the death penalty. His opposition in part cost him a fourth term as Governor of New York.

Perhaps because he was a man of principle and not simply crude political calculation many of us were so crestfallen by his failure to be equally steadfast in his defense of the unborn. It was precisely on the matter of the dignity and sanctity of human life that would strain the relationship between the Governor and the Catholic Church. Governor Mario Cuomo attempted to carve out a space for Catholic politicians who supported abortion rights and even government funding of such procedures yet personally believed it to be evil. The real conflict between Cuomo and the bishops was his claim that as an elected official in his prudential judgment criminalization or defunding abortion was not “the best way to deal with abortion.”

Speaking at Notre Dame the governor said: “If we choose, we can give in to the temptation to become more and more assimilated into a larger, blander culture, abandoning the practice of the specific values that made us different, worship- ping whatever gods the marketplace has to sell while we seek to rationalize our own laxity by urging the political system to legislate on others a morality we no longer practice ourselves.”

Mario Cuomo’s defense of abortion rights will rightly obscure his other many accomplishments. The right to life is paramount and our faith requires us to oppose this gravest of evil. Yet there is no denying that the man was a thinker and that he wrestled with his faith even if we were unalterably opposed to his conclusions.

More on Cuomo

• Letter to the Editor: Cuomo’s Catholic Problem
• Father John Cush: Cuomo’s Conflict With Church Teaching
• Cuomo Had Complicated Relationship With Church