Cardinal O'Connor leaves political legacy

By Bill Schneider/CNN

May 4, 2000
Web posted at: 6:05 p.m. EDT (2205 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Catholic vote, which trended Republican in the 1980s and Democratic in the '90s, is very much up for grabs this year. The figure who embodied the conflicting impulses of Catholic voters was not a politician at all. It was Cardinal John O'Connor of New York, the most politically influential member of the Church hierarchy in America.

Economically liberal and socially conservative -- that more or less sums up the Catholic vote. It's also a precise characterization of the late Cardinal O'Connor's views. The 80-year-old O'Connor, who died Wednesday after suffering from brain cancer, was an ardent defender of the rights of labor and the needs of the poor.

But the Cardinal was best known as a forceful advocate of Church teachings on abortion, homosexuality and women's rights.

"We try not to innovate where we believe innovation is in violation of the mind of Christ," O'Connor said in April 1998 during an Evans & Novak appearance.

That made O'Connor a hero to conservatives -- and a target of criticism from liberals. O'Connor did not shy away from controversy, perhaps most famously when he took on Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 for saying there was "a diversity of Catholic opinion'' about abortion.

O'Connor maintained that no Catholic could, in good conscience, vote for a candidate who favored abortion rights. That got him into a long-running feud with New York Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo.

Political figures from Ronald Reagan to Bob Dole to Al Gore paid homage to Cardinal O'Connor's spiritual authority. No candidate with national aspirations could afford to miss the annual Al Smith dinner in New York. O'Connor was blunt and outspoken.

Like a good New Yorker, the Cardinal had a taste for irony. Like when he found good news in the Lewinsky scandal.

"Thank God it is news that the President of the United States is being accused, correctly or incorrectly, of such things," he said during his Evans and Novak appearance. "When there is no longer news, then maybe we will have completely declined."

When George W. Bush was criticized for visiting Bob Jones University this year, he wrote a letter of apology to Cardinal O'Connor, saying he missed an opportunity to condemn bigotry.

Bush knew who wielded moral and political clout with Catholic voters.

It is widely believed that Pope John Paul II was chosen because he combined two philosophies Church leaders were looking for -- political liberalism and theological conservatism. When the Pope elevated O'Connor, he is reported to have said, "I want a man like me in New York.''

He got one.