Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
If you’re Catholic and believe in the sanctity of life, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York says you’re no longer welcome in his state.
National Review Online (NRO) is reporting that Cuomo made the comments on Jan. 17 during an interview with the Capitol Pressroom. While referring to the “schism” within the Republican party between the moderate and conservative wing,Cuomo asked: “Who are they? Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.”
If that’s the case, NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez says Cuomo’s own father, Mario, who believed support for human life was a morally sound position for a Catholic in politics, would be booted out of the state.
“This is an outrageous intolerance from a governor looking toward his political future in the Democratic party, securing his good graces with the abortion industry who his party – and all too many politicians – are content to serve,” she writes. “This is the same intolerance and culture-war-waging that Catholics who oppose abortion and assisted suicide, and who support traditional marriage, are accused of waging.”
She rightly points out that the “intolerant” and “culture-war-waging” people on the right aren’t the ones who are putting the Little Sisters of the Poor, and a variety of other organizations, in the position of having to insist the Supreme Court relieve them of an un-American conscience-violating mandate. Who is telling New Yorkers who believe we have to protect the most innocent . . . that they are not worthy of residence in the Empire State?
“It’s not Cardinal Dolan (who recently won a court victory on religious liberty). It’s not the Little Sisters of the Poor. It’s not pro-life Democrat Ruben Diaz. It’s not even National Review, a New York mainstay since 1955! The assault on religious liberty and conscience in America is coming from a radical secularist ideology on the Left. The narrowing of freedom is not coming from people who propose alternatives to the sexual revolutionary values, but from those, like Andrew Cuomo, who insist on doubling down on a culture of death, coercing submission and banishing dissent, all while using words like tolerance and choice.”
The only credit she gives to the so-called “Catholic” Cuomo is that he was honest about his secularist ideological thinking.
“This is the battle today,” she writes. “This is his worldview and he’s not alone. As you see, even people who profess religious belief buy in. Indifference and surrender is buy-in, too.”
If we profess to believe in something, “live it already!” she says, and do so in both the private and the public square. “What are we waiting for?”
Just like too many other politicians these days, Cuomo labels anyone who opposes his agenda as “extremist” while calling his own radical position “common sense.”
Don’t let him get away with it! Perhaps he’ll gain some real common sense when pro-life people – which constitute half of the country’s population – decide to boycott the state when it comes time for vacation this year.
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