A Rather Complete Mario Cuomo Primer for Robert Barron That You Will Not Find in Lifesite News

The pro-life movement in the United States of America began in the 1960s while I was still in high school and only dimly aware of its existence.

However, there were great champions of Catholic truth who rose to prominence during that decade, especially during the legislative battles in many states to prevent the passage of laws decriminalizing the surgical slaughter of the innocent preborn, especially in my own native State of New York in 1970, and it is a shame that many of today’s self-professed “pro-life leaders,” especially on Lifesite News, which certainly makes important contribution, to be sure, act as though they invented the pro-life moment and demonstrate little actual knowledge about the heroes of those early days, some of whom, such as Mrs. Randy Engel of the US Coalition for Life, and Judie Brown of the American Life League, are still making valuable contributions to the cause of defending the inviolability of innocent human life from conception through all subsequent stages of life.

Additionally, most of the younger commentators about pro-life issues simply do not know the details about American politics that those of us who are older and who followed the details of electoral politics and governance very closely. Yes, I will include myself here both as the holder of an earned doctorate in political science who taught the subject at the collegiate level for over thirty years and as candidate for public office on the Right to Life Party line of the State of New York, including running against one Mario Matthew Cuomo and his lieutenant gubernatorial running mate, then Representative Stanley Lundine, with then Nassau County, New York, District Attorney Denis Dillon, forty years ago this year, that is, back in 1986.

Thus, although this commentary is directed principally at Robert Barron, the conciliar “bishop” of Winona, Minnesota, who happens to be a direct protégé of the morally corrupt propagator of the “consistent ethic of life” that was designed to indemnify pro-abortion Catholics in public life named Joseph Bernardin (who was a true bishop), I want to take brief moment to vent about shallow piece of misinformation contained in the following Lifesite News report about Barron’s calling the late Mario Matthew Cuomo, a thin-skinned demagogue who held grudges against his critics and dared to attack the holy likes of “Bishop” Austin Vaughan when the latter warned him that he, Cuomo, risked eternal damnation in hell for his support of baby-killing under cover of the civil law, the Catholic who popularized the by-now infamous “I am personally opposed to abortion” canard.

Wrong.

All right.

First, here is the Lifesite News report about Robert Barron’s praising Mario Matthew Cuomo as a “devout Catholic”:

Bishop Robert Barron, who perhaps enjoys celebrity status more so than any other member of the U.S. hierarchy, claimed on social media that former New York Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo was “devoutly Catholic” despite his public support for abortion. 

During his time as governor, Cuomo established the template that many Catholic-identifying Democratic politicians – including former President Joe Biden – would later use to excuse their support for abortion: “I’m personally against abortion, but publicly cannot justify banning it.”  (Bishop Barron calls pro-abortion Gov. Mario Cuomo 'devoutly Catholic’.)

A brief memorandum to the “Lifesite News” staff about the highlighted paragraph just above:

You are wrong.

You are in error.

Mario Matthew Cuomo, who first came to my attention in 1966 and again in 1972 when he, then an attorney and adjunct professor of law at the Saint John’s University Law School, was chosen by New York City Mayor John Vliet Lindsay to mediate two different public housing controversies in Corona and then Forest Hills, Queens, New York (see (Understanding Mario Cuomo and the ‘Forest Hills Compromise’), only followed the lead established by United States Senators Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. (D-Delaware) and Edward Moore Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) in the immediate aftermath of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973, when both abandoned nominally “pro-life” positions to adopt the mantra that traces its proximate roots to the campaign waged by Francis Cardinal Spellman, the Archbishop of New York from May 23, 1939 to December 2, 1967, and Richard “Cardinal” Cushing, who was the Archbishop of Boston from September 25, 1944, to September 8, 1970, went to Puerto Rico to oppose the Puerto Rican bishops’ opposition to a referendum that proposed to legalize contraception.

1960: Demonstrating their desire to do everything possible to assure the election of United States Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), Richard “Cardinal” Cushing, the Archbishop of Boston, and Francis Cardinal Spellman, travelled to Puerto Rico to campaign against the efforts of the Puerto Rican bishops to work against a referendum in support of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico’s draconian birth control program:

In 1960, the Puerto Rico hierarchy decided to make one last concerted effort to drive the Sangerite forces from the island. The Catholic resistance was led by two American Bishops--James F. Davis of San Juan and James E. McManus of Ponce. The Catholic Church in Puerto Rico helped to organize a national political party--the Christian Action Party (CAP). The new political front was composed primarily of Catholic laymen and its platform included opposition to existing permissive legislation on birth control and sterilization.

When increasing numbers of CAP flags began to fly from the rooftops of Puerto Rico's Catholic homes, the leaders of the opposition parties, who favored turning Puerto Rico into an international Sangerite playground for massive U.S.-based contraceptive/abortifacient/sterilization experimental programs, became increasingly concerned for their own political futures. Then unexpected help arrived in the unlikely person of His Eminence Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York.

One month before the hotly contested national election, Spellman arrived in Puerto Rico ostensibly to preside over two formal Church functions. While on the island, Spellman agreed to meet with CAP's major political rival, Governor Luis Munoz Marin, leader of the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) and a supporter of federal population control programs for Puerto Rico.

In an interview that followed his meeting with Munoz, Spellman, known for years as FDR's errand boy with a miter, claimed that politics were outside his purview. The cardinal's statement was interpreted by the press as an indictment of the partisan politics of Bishops Davis and McManus. To underscore his message, as soon as Spellman returned to the States he made a public statement in opposition to the latest directives of the Puerto Rico bishops prohibiting Catholics from voting for Munoz and his anti-life PDP cohorts. Catholic voters in Puerto Rico should vote their conscience without the threat of Church penalties, Spellman said.

Boston's Cardinal Cushing, John F. Kennedy's "political godfather," joined Spellman in expressed "feigned horror" at the thought of ecclesiastical authority attempting to dictate political voting. "This has never been a part of our history, and I pray God that it will never be!" said Cushing. Cushing's main concern was not the Puerto Rican people. His main worry was that the flack caused by the Puerto Rican birth control affair might overflow into the upcoming presidential campaign and hurt John Kennedy's bid for the White House.

The national election turned out to be a political disaster for CAP. Munoz and the PDP won by a landslide. Bishop Davis was forced to end the tragic state of confusion among the Catholic laity by declaring just before the election that no penalties would be imposed on those who voted for PDP.  

Two years later, with the knowledge and approval of the American hierarchy and the Holy See, the Puerto Rican hierarchy was pressured into singing a secret concordat of "non-interference" in government-sponsored birth control programs--a sop being that the programs would now include instruction in the "rhythm method." While insisting on their right to hold and express legitimate opposition to such programs, the Puerto Rican bishops promised they would "never impose their own moral doctrines upon individuals who do not accept the Catholic teaching."

When the Sangerite storm hit the mainland in the late 1960s, AmChurch would echo this same theme song, opening the floodgates to a multi-billion dollar federal-life-prevention (and destruction) program. (Randy Engel, The Rite of Sodomy, pp. 647-649. By the way, the heroic work of Mrs. Randy Engel is almost never referenced at Lifesite News. It is as though she and her decades-long record of opposing contraception and baby-killing do not exist.)

One can see that the anti-liturgical Sillonist, Jansenist, Modernist and Rosicrucian named Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII, a lover of Latin, you understand, was already hard at work effecting his “aggiornamento” in Puerto Rico of the sort that that has made possible the late Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s own “aggiornamento” to pro-aborts, sodomites, lesbians, transvestites, mutants and all out-and-out Marxists.

1964: Relieved that they no longer had to work behind closed doors and that Roncalli’s “window” open to the world was in the process of being smashed by Montini/Paul VI and the “Second” Vatican Council, some fully uncloseted Modernists and unabashed moral relativists, including the notorious Father Charles Curran of the Diocese of Rochester and the uber-notorious “Father Death, Robert Drinan, S.J., advised the Kennedy family how to support the surgical execution of the innocent preborn in public life while maintaining their “good standing” as Catholics:

For faithful Roman Catholics, the thought of yet another pro-choice Kennedy positioned to campaign for the unlimited right to abortion is discouraging. Yet if Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of Catholics John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, is appointed to fill the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Clinton, abortion-rights advocates will have just such a champion.

Ms. Kennedy was so concerned to assure pro-abortion leaders in New York, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported on Dec. 18, that on the same day Ms. Kennedy telephoned New York Gov. David Patterson to declare interest in the Senate seat, "one of her first calls was to an abortion rights group, indicating she will be strongly pro-choice."

Within the first week of her candidacy, Ms. Kennedy promised to work for several causes, including same-sex marriage and abortion rights. In responding to a series of 15 questions posed by the New York Times on Dec. 21, Ms. Kennedy said that, while she believes "young women facing unwanted pregnancies should have the advice of caring adults," she would oppose legislation that would require minors to notify a parent before obtaining an abortion. On the crucial question of whether she supports any state or federal restrictions on late-term abortions, Ms. Kennedy chose to say only that she "supports Roe v. Wade, which prohibits third trimester abortions except when the life or health of the mother is at risk." Presumably Ms. Kennedy knows that this effectively means an unlimited right to abortion -- including late-stage abortion -- because the "health of the mother" can be so broadly defined that it includes the psychological distress that can accompany an unintended pregnancy.

Ms. Kennedy's commitment to abortion rights is shared by other prominent family members, including Kerry Kennedy Cuomo and Maryland's former Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. Some may recall the 2000 Democratic Convention when Caroline and her uncle, Sen. Ted Kennedy, addressed the convention to reassure all those gathered that the Democratic Party would continue to provide women with the right to choose abortion -- even into the ninth month. At that convention, the party's nominee, Al Gore, formerly a pro-life advocate, pledged his opposition to parental notification and embraced partial-birth abortion. Several of those in attendance, including former President Bill Clinton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, had been pro-life at one time. But by 2000 nearly every delegate in the convention hall was on the pro-choice side -- and those who weren't simply kept quiet about it.

Caroline Kennedy knows that any Kennedy desiring higher office in the Democratic Party must now carry the torch of abortion rights throughout any race. But this was not always the case. Despite Ms. Kennedy's description of Barack Obama, in a New York Times op-ed, as a "man like my father," there is no evidence that JFK was pro-choice like Mr. Obama. Abortion-rights issues were in the fledgling stage at the state level in New York and California in the early 1960s. They were not a national concern.

Even Ted Kennedy, who gets a 100% pro-choice rating from the abortion-rights group Naral, was at one time pro-life. In fact, in 1971, a full year after New York had legalized abortion, the Massachusetts senator was still championing the rights of the unborn. In a letter to a constituent dated Aug. 3, 1971, he wrote: "When history looks back to this era it should recognize this generation as one which cared about human beings enough to halt the practice of war, to provide a decent living for every family, and to fulfill its responsibility to its children from the very moment of conception."

But that all changed in the early '70s, when Democratic politicians first figured out that the powerful abortion lobby could fill their campaign coffers (and attract new liberal voters). Politicians also began to realize that, despite the Catholic Church's teachings to the contrary, its bishops and priests had ended their public role of responding negatively to those who promoted a pro-choice agenda.

In some cases, church leaders actually started providing "cover" for Catholic pro-choice politicians who wanted to vote in favor of abortion rights. At a meeting at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, Mass., on a hot summer day in 1964, the Kennedy family and its advisers and allies were coached by leading theologians and Catholic college professors on how to accept and promote abortion with a "clear conscience."

The former Jesuit priest Albert Jonsen, emeritus professor of ethics at the University of Washington, recalls the meeting in his book "The Birth of Bioethics" (Oxford, 2003). He writes about how he joined with the Rev. Joseph Fuchs, a Catholic moral theologian; the Rev. Robert Drinan, then dean of Boston College Law School; and three academic theologians, the Revs. Giles Milhaven, Richard McCormick and Charles Curran, to enable the Kennedy family to redefine support for abortion.

Mr. Jonsen writes that the Hyannisport colloquium was influenced by the position of another Jesuit, the Rev. John Courtney Murray, a position that "distinguished between the moral aspects of an issue and the feasibility of enacting legislation about that issue." It was the consensus at the Hyannisport conclave that Catholic politicians "might tolerate legislation that would permit abortion under certain circumstances if political efforts to repress this moral error led to greater perils to social peace and order."

Father Milhaven later recalled the Hyannisport meeting during a 1984 breakfast briefing of Catholics for a Free Choice: "The theologians worked for a day and a half among ourselves at a nearby hotel. In the evening we answered questions from the Kennedys and the Shrivers. Though the theologians disagreed on many a point, they all concurred on certain basics . . . and that was that a Catholic politician could in good conscience vote in favor of abortion."  ( See WSJ.com - Opinion: How Support for Abortion Became Kennedy Dogma. David Paterson, a pro-abortion Catholic, ultimately chose another pro-abortion Catholic, Kirsten Gillibrand, who has been the junior senator of the State of New York since January 26, 2009. For a review of David Paterson's moral corruption, see Little Caesars All (Pizza! Pizza!)

Thus began process of soothing the consciences of Catholic in public life who wanted to remain au courant and not pose as a sign of contradiction by their complete fidelity to the Sign of Contradiction, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His Catholic Church has deep roots in the heresy of Americanism, as the ground work for groundwork for moral relativism had been laid at Hyannisport the year before the Supreme Court’s decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, June 7, 1965, invalidating a long unenforced Connecticut statute banning the sale of contraceptives to married couples.

1965: Emboldened by his success in Puerto Rico, Richard “Cardinal” Cushing, the Kennedy family’s principal ecclesiastical enabler, said that he had no business interfering in the legislative judgments of Catholics who served in the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (the state legislature), thus giving a fully developed apologia for the “I’m personally abortion to [name moral evil: contraception, abortion] but can’t ‘impose’ my morality on non-Catholics”:

Early in the summer of 1965, the Massachusetts legislature took up a proposal to repeal the state's Birth Control law, which barred the use of contraceptives. (As a matter of historical interest, the repeal effort was sponsored by a young state representative named Michael Dukakis, who would be the Democratic Party's candidate for the US presidency 23 years later.) In a state where Catholics constituted a voting majority, and dominated the legislature, the prospects for repeal appeared remote. Then on June 22, Cardinal Cushing appeared on a local radio program, "An Afternoon with Haywood Vincent,” and effectively scuttled the opposition.

Cardinal Cushing announced:

“My position in this matter is that birth control in accordance with artificial means is immoral, and not permissible. But this is Catholic teaching. I am also convinced that I should not impose my position—moral beliefs or religious beliefs—upon those of other faiths.”

Warming to the subject, the cardinal told his radio audience that "I could not in conscience approve the legislation" that had been proposed. However, he quickly added, "I will make no effort to impose my opinion upon others."

So there it was: the "personally opposed" argument, in fully developed form, enunciated by a Prince of the Church nearly 40 years ago! Notice how the unvarying teaching of the Catholic Church, which condemned artificial contraception as an offense against natural law, is reduced here to a matter of the cardinal's personal belief. And notice how he makes no effort to persuade legislators with the force of his arguments; any such effort is condemned in advance as a bid to "impose" his opinion.

Cardinal Cushing conceded that in the past, Catholic leaders had opposed any effort to alter the Birth Control law. "But my thinking has changed on that matter," he reported, "for the simple reason that I do not see where I have an obligation to impose my religious beliefs on people who just do not accept the same faith as I do."

(Notice that the Catholic position is reduced still further here, to a matter of purely sectarian belief—as if it would be impossible for a non-Catholic to support the purpose of the Birth Control law. The cardinal did not explain why that law was enacted in 1899 by the heirs of the Puritans in Massachusetts, long before Catholics came to power in the legislature.)

Before the end of his fateful radio broadcast, Cardinal Cushing gave his advice to the Catholic members of the Massachusetts legislature: "If your constituents want this legislation, vote for it. You represent them. You don't represent the Catholic Church."

Dozens of Catholic legislators did vote for the bill, and the Birth Control law was abolished. Perhaps more important in the long run, the "personally opposed" politician had his rationale. (Cushing's Use of The "Personally Opposed" Argument.)

1974: Realizing that they would never be sanctioned by anyone what they believed to be the Catholic hierarchy in the United States of America, one Catholic in public life after another, including those who had once been “pro-life,” began to mouth the “personally opposed” slogan that had been developed in Hyannisport, Massachusetts, a decade earlier and then endorsed by Richard Cushing himself a year after that.

Get your facts straight, Lifesite News: Richard Cushing first formulated the “personally opposed” mantra.

Yesterday’s Pontius Pilates, you see, had lots and lots of help from true bishops and true priests in the 1960s and the 1970s as their consciences were massaged to make it possible for them to support each of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance without any semblance of ecclesiastical sanction whatsoever. Quite instead, the “peace and justice” bishops and faux bishops gave their full support to their liked-minded adherents of their true shared religion: leftism.

Moreover, the staff at Lifesite News seems not to be aware of that fact that the man who had the most influence upon Mario Matthew Cuomo’s political posturing on the taking of innocent human life was then United States Representative Hugh Leo Carey, who was very close to the Kennedy family and learned from them how to equivocate on the life issue. 

As I have noted on this site in the past, the late Mario Matthew Cuomo said in a debate held in Albany, New York, on August 25, 1974. among the three individuals vying for the Democrat Party lieutenant governorship nomination (State Assemblyman Anthony Olivieri and State Senator Mary Anne Krupsak were Cuomo's opponents), that he would have voted against the 1970 bill that decriminalized surgical baby-killing in the first trimester of life in the State of New York if he had been a member of the New York State Legislature at that time. And it was the case that Cuomo, then an attorney had been called upon by the Diocese of Brooklyn to speak against abortion to various parish organizations and other groups as its official representative. (I learned this from both the late Father Benedict J. Groeschel, OFM., Cap., and the late John Swan, who served as something of a jack-of-all-trades Catholic political tactician who worked out of an office in the Archdiocese of New York along with his late colleague, Joseph Bierbauer on an “unofficial” basis.)

Defeated in his bid to be the Democrat Party lieutenant governor nominee in 1974, Cuomo learned to parrot the line that had been mastered by his political mentor, then United States Representative Hugh Leo Carey, who was elected as Governor of the State of New York in 1974 and served two terms, that he was "personally opposed to abortion, but would never impose" his "morality upon others." Cuomo, who was appointed by Carey to be the Secretary of State of the State of New York in January of 1975, used this line repeatedly when he ran unsuccessfully for the Democrat Party nomination for the Mayoralty of the City of New York in 1977 and when he ran in the general election that year as the nominee of the Liberal Party of the State of New York against the pro-abortion Democrat nominee, then United States Representative Edward Irving Koch, and the Republican Party nominee, the pro-abortion New York State Senator Roy Goodman, and the Conservative Party nominee, radio talk show host Barry Farber.

Defeated by Koch in the general election for Mayor of the City of New York in 1977, Cuomo won the Democrat Party nomination for lieutenant governor in 1978 (then Lieutenant Governor Krupsak, also a pro-abortion Catholic, challenged her pro-abortion Catholic Governor, Hugh Carey, unsuccessfully in a primary that year), and was Carey's heir apparent in 1982 when the latter chose not to seek a third term. Cuomo turned the tables on his old adversary Koch, defeating him in hard fought primary in 1982 for the Democrat Party's gubernatorial nomination, going on to defeat Rite Aid magnate Lew Lehrman, the nominee of the Republican and Conservative parties, and the Right to Life Party nominee, Robert Bohnar. Cuomo loudly defended "abortion rights" during that 1982 general election campaign and was known to telephone priests in various conciliar parishes if he got wind of any criticism uttered about him from pulpits during sermons.

Cuomo's support for "abortion rights" came to the national forefront in 1984 after the conciliar "bishop" of Scranton, John Joseph O'Connor, was appointed to be the conciliar "archbishop" of New York. Even before his "installation" at Saint Patrick's Cathedral on Monday, March 19, 1984, O'Connor told longtime WNBC-TV newsman Gabe Pressman that he, O'Connor, "was sick and tired" of politicians who say that they are "personally opposed" to abortion while supporting a nonexistent "right" of a woman to choose to kill her preborn baby. This inflamed Cuomo, who had quite a temper, who started a war of words with the new "archbishop." Things escalated rather rapidly, and O'Connor refused to recognize Cuomo's presence at his installation "Mass" on March 19, 1984, while recognizing Mayor Koch of the City of New York, the Mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and the United States Ambassador to the Holy See, William Wilson. Cuomo was livid. I know. I saw him process out of Saint Patrick's Cathedral as he walked right in front of where I was sitting in the right transcept. He was not a happy camper.

Cuomo sought to provide "intellectual muscle" to the "I'm personally opposed to abortion" position in the address that he gave at the behest of Hartford's Mark of Apostasy, Father Richard P. McBrien, then the Chairman of the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, on Thursday, September 13, 1984:

The Catholic public official lives the political truth most Catholics through most of American history have accepted and insisted on: the truth that to assure our freedom we must allow others the same freedom, even if occasionally it produces conduct by them which we would hold to be sinful.

I protect my right to be a Catholic by preserving your right to believe as a Jew, a Protestant, or nonbeliever, or as anything else you choose.

We know that the price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that they might someday force theirs on us.

This freedom is the fundamental strength of our unique experience in government. In the complex interplay of forces and considerations that go into the making of our laws and policies, its preservation must be a persuasive and dominant concern. . . .

As Catholics, my wife and I were enjoined never to use abortion to destroy the life we created. We thought church doctrine was clear on this. Life or fetal life in the womb should be protected, even if five of nine justices of the Supreme Court and my neighbor disagree with me. A fetus is different from an appendix or a set of tonsils. At the very least, even if the argument is made by some scientists or some theologians that in the early stages of fetal development we can’t discern human life, the full potential of human life is indisputably there. That—to my less subtle mind—by itself should demand respect, caution, indeed . . . reverence.

But not everyone in our society agrees.

And those who don’t—those who endorse legalized abortions—aren’t a ruthless, callous alliance of anti-Christians determined to overthrow our moral standards. In many cases, the proponents of legal abortion are the very people who have worked with Catholics to realize the goals of social justice set out in papal encyclicals: the American Lutheran Church, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Presbyterian Church in the United States, B’nai B’rith Women, the Women of the Episcopal Church. There are just a few of the religious organizations that don’t share the church’s position on abortion.

Certainly, we should not be forced to mold Catholic morality to conform to disagreement by non-Catholics, however sincere or severe their disagreement. Our bishops should be teachers, no pollsters. They should not change what we Catholics believe in order to ease our consciences or please our friends or protect the church from criticism.

But if the breadth, intensity, and sincerity of opposition to church teaching shouldn’t be allowed to shape our Catholic morality, it can’t help but determine our ability—our realistic, political ability—to translate our Catholic morality into civil law, a law not for the believers who don’t need it but for the believers who reject it.

And it is here, in our attempt to find a political answer to abortion—an answer beyond our private observance of Catholic morality— that we encounter controversy within and without the church over how and in what degree to press the case that our morality should be everybody else’s, and to what effect.

I repeat, there is no church teaching that mandates the best political course for making our belief everyone’s rule, for spreading this part of our Catholicism. There is neither an encyclical nor a catechism that spells out a political strategy for achieving legislative goals.

And so the Catholic trying to make moral and prudent judgments in the political realm must discern which, if any, of the actions one could take would be best.  (American Rhetoric: Mario Cuomo --"Religious Belief and Public Morality) 

Apart from the disregard of the facts of biology that young attorney Mario Matthew Cuomo used to provide to groups before which he spoke as a representative of the Diocese of Brooklyn in the 1960s, Governor Mario Matthew Cuomo--Mario Pilate/Pontius Cuomo, an admirer of the late Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., had the audacity to refer to "our" morality when referring to the immutable and eternally binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law that proscribe the direct, intentional killing of any innocent human being. God's laws apply to everyone without regard to whether anyone accepts them. Civil law must be conformed to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law in all that pertains to the good of souls, and Catholics have the positive moral obligation to work on behalf of such a conformity. Catholics are not permitted to privately hold one thing while publicly speaking and acting in a contradictory manner.

Pope Leo XIII made this abundantly clear in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885: 

Hence, lest concord be broken by rash charges, let this be understood by all, that the integrity of Catholic faith cannot be reconciled with opinions verging on naturalism or rationalism, the essence of which is utterly to do away with Christian institutions and to install in society the supremacy of man to the exclusion of God. Further, it is unlawful to follow one line of conduct in private life and another in public, respecting privately the authority of the Church, but publicly rejecting it; for this would amount to joining together good and evil, and to putting man in conflict with himself; whereas he ought always to be consistent, and never in the least point nor in any condition of life to swerve from Christian virtue. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

All right, having, I believe, sufficiently provided the background to Mario Matthew Cuomo’s change of position that was lacking in the Lifesite News report, I now turn my attention to the insipidly and erroneous remarks made by “Bishop” Robert Barron, who meant to contrast Commonwealth of Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey’s celebratory remarks when signing into law a bill that makes baby-killing legal up to the very moment of birth in the Bay State (see An Industry Committed to Killing Anyone Under Various Pretenses, part two):

“How far we have fallen from agonized and conflicted Cuomo to the present governor of Massachusetts and her entourage gleefully applauding the murder of children,” declared Barron. 

Mario Cuomo’s son, Andrew, was also the governor of New York and championed a pro-abortion law, which he signed in 2019, that established a “right” to abortion up to birth. 

The Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, bishop made his puzzling remark on X while addressing the horrifying legislation signed into law earlier this week by Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey that legalizes the abortion of infants up until the moment of birth.     

“The governor of Massachusetts just signed into law a statute that permits abortion up until the moment of birth, as long as mother and doctor give the go-ahead,” Barron noted. 

“Please understand what this means. A fully-formed child, moments before exiting the birth canal, can be eviscerated, chopped into pieces, have its head crushed or skin burned off—all under the full protection of Massachusetts law,” he lamented.

“What I found particularly gross was the reaction of the entirely female crowd around the female governor of Massachusetts as she signed this barbaric provision into law,” Barron continued. “They were clapping and cackling with delight because what can only be called infanticide can now be practiced with impunity in their state.”

The bishop then added this strange remark:

I’m old enough to remember when Mario Cuomo, the devoutly Catholic governor of New York, admitted that, though he found abortion personally repugnant, he was, after tortured wrestling with his conscience, willing to give it limited protection of law.

“How far we have fallen from agonized and conflicted Cuomo to the present governor of Massachusetts and her entourage gleefully applauding the murder of children,” declared Barron. (Bishop Barron calls pro-abortion Gov. Mario Cuomo 'devoutly Catholic’.)

Oh, come on, Robert Barron (see the appendix for a brief explanation provided by the late Father Louis J. Campbell about the invalidity of the conciliar rite of episcopal consecration), spare me the nostalgia for the late Hamlet on the Hudson’s “agonizing” about abortion.

There was no “agony.”

Mario Matthew Cuomo sold his soul for thirty pieces of silver and, unlike his mentor, Hugh Leo Carey, who publicly repented in 1990 of his support for baby-killing, something that he, Carey, told me personally at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral shortly thereafter was his long overdue duty as a Catholic and as a citizen, the man who was called Sfacim by the late pro-abortion, anti-clerical talk show host Robert Ciro Gigante (“Bob Grant”), Cuomo, never repented.

Robert Barron, Mario Cuomo turned himself into a grade one demagogue in support of surgical abortion and sodomy in public life, and I saw him personally march in the so-called “Pride” parade in Manhattan about three or four times when gathered with Catholics to pray Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary on Fifth Avenue for the conversion of those participation in their “proud” display of perversity and depravity.

Mario Matthew Cuomo was so thin-skinned that he personally called the late Monsignor Edward Donnelly, then the pastor (and I believe founding pastor) of Holy Family Church in Hicksville, New York, after he, Cuomo, found out from a parishioner that Donnelly had criticized his Notre Dame address from the pulpit on Sunday, September 16, 1984. Monsignor Donnelly hung up the phone on the furious Cuomo, who also had an adjunct professor at Saint John’s University in Jamaica, New York, call a graduate assistant who was active in Republican Party politics and is still, I believe, an elected officeholder on Long Island, to find out “dirt” about a man named “Ed Kelly,” whose letter to the editor published in Newsday criticizing what then New York auxiliary “bishop” Joseph O’Keefe dismissed as “Mario’s encyclical letter” (the Notre Dame address) had gotten under his epically thin skin.

Oh, yes, “Bishop” Barron, Mario Matthew Cuomo really “agonized”—about being criticized by Catholics for betraying his Holy Faith and the cause of the innocent preborn, not about supporting the destruction of innocent human life in the womb under the cover of the civil law nor about supporting the nonexistent “rights” of sodomites to be “recognized” and “protected by the civil law.

I can assure you, Robert Barron, that Mario Matthew Cuomo did not “agonize” about supporting the nonexistent “rights” of sodomites to demand that the public support their celebration of sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance that are opposed to nature and condemned by God Himself in the following words of Holy Writ:

[13] If any one lie with a man as with a woman, both have committed an abomination, let them be put to death: their blood be upon them. [14] If any man after marrying the daughter, marry her mother, he hath done a heinous crime: he shall be burnt alive with them: neither shall so great an abomination remain in the midst of you. [15] He that shall copulate with any beast or cattle, dying let him die, the beast also ye shall kill. (Leviticus 20: 13-15.)

For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature. And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error. And as they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, Detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy. Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things, are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them. (Romans 1: 18-32.)

[9] Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, [10] Nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of God. (1 Cor. 6: 9)

[1] Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James: to them that are beloved in God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called. [2] Mercy unto you, and peace, and charity be fulfilled. [3] Dearly beloved, taking all care to write unto you concerning your common salvation, I was under a necessity to write unto you: to beseech you to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. [4] For certain men are secretly entered in, (who were written of long ago unto this judgment,) ungodly men, turning the grace of our Lord God into riotousness, and denying the only sovereign Ruler, and our Lord Jesus Christ. [5] I will therefore admonish you, though ye once knew all things, that Jesus, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, did afterwards destroy them that believed not:

[6] And the angels who kept not their principality, but forsook their own habitation, he hath reserved under darkness in everlasting chains, unto the judgment of the great day. [7] As Sodom and Gomorrha, and the neighbouring cities, in like manner, having given themselves to fornication, and going after other flesh, were made an example, suffering the punishment of eternal fire. [8] In like manner these men also defile the flesh, and despise dominion, and blaspheme majesty. [9] When Michael the archangel, disputing with the devil, contended about the body of Moses, he durst not bring against him the judgment of railing speech, but said: The Lord command thee. [10] But these men blaspheme whatever things they know not: and what things soever they naturally know, like dumb beasts, in these they are corrupted.

[11] Woe unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain: and after the error of Balaam they have for reward poured out themselves, and have perished in the contradiction of Core. [12] These are spots in their banquets, feasting together without fear, feeding themselves, clouds without water, which are carried about by winds, trees of the autumn, unfruitful, twice dead, plucked up by the roots, [13] Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own confusion; wandering stars, to whom the storm of darkness is reserved for ever. [14] Now of these Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying: Behold, the Lord cometh with thousands of his saints, [15] To execute judgment upon all, and to reprove all the ungodly for all the works of their ungodliness, whereby they have done ungodly, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against God. 

[16] These are murmurers, full of complaints, walking according to their own desires, and their mouth speaketh proud things, admiring persons for gain' s sake. [17] But you, my dearly beloved, be mindful of the words which have been spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, [18] Who told you, that in the last time there should come mockers, walking according to their own desires in ungodlinesses. [19] These are they, who separate themselves, sensual men, having not the Spirit. [20] But you, my beloved, building yourselves upon your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, 

[21] Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, unto life everlasting. [22] And some indeed reprove, being judged:[23] But others save, pulling them out of the fire. And on others have mercy, in fear, hating also the spotted garment which is carnal. [24] Now to him who is able to preserve you without sin, and to present you spotless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,[25] To the only God our Saviour through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory and magnificence, empire and power, before all ages, and now, and for all ages of ages. Amen. (Jude 1-25.)

There are no “loopholes” in these passages.

This all reminds me of the March 22, 1931, editorial in The Washington Post that I have quoted many times on this site:

The Federal Council of Churches in America some time ago appointed a committee on "marriage and the home," which has now submitted a report favoring a "careful and restrained" use of contraceptive devices to regulate the size of families. The committee seems to have a serious struggle with itself in adhering to Christian doctrine while at the same time indulging in amateurish excursions in the field of economics, legislation, medicine, and sociology. The resulting report is a mixture of religious obscurantism and modernistic materialism which departs from the ancient standards of religion and yet fails to blaze a path toward something better.

The mischief that would result from an an attempt to place the stamp of church approval upon any scheme for "regulating the size of families" is evidently quite beyond the comprehension of this pseudo-scientific committee. It is impossible to reconcile the doctrine of the divine institution of marriage with any modernistic plan for the mechanical regulation of human birth. The church must either reject the plain teachings of the Bible or reject schemes for the “scientific” production of human souls. Carried to its logical conclusion, the committee’s report if carried into effect would lead to the death-knell of marriage as a holy institution, by establishing degrading practices which would encourage indiscriminate immorality. The suggestion that the use of legalized contraceptives would be “careful and restrained” is preposterous. If the churches are to become organizations for political and 'scientific' propaganda they should be honest and reject the Bible, scoff at Christ as an obsolete and unscientific teacher, and strike out boldly as champions of politics and science as substitutes for the old-time religion. ("Forgetting Religion," Editorial, The Washington Post, March 22, 1931.)

There was no degrading practice that was beyond the capacity of Mario Matthew Cuomo to support and seek to protect under the cover of the civil, and he even went so far during a weekly call-in radio show he had for a while during his twelve years as Governor of New York on WABC Radio 770 to tell a caller to “come out of the closet” and to “proud” of who “he loves.” Mario Matthew Cuomo did not sound like he was “agonizing” too much when he said this, Robert Barron, and it was in 1985 that Mario Matthew Cuomo started a public affairs campaign to urge fornicators, adulterers, and perverts to be "safe" when they sin, ignoring the simple fact. of course, that it is never possible to make sinful behavior "safe" from its temporal and eternal consequences. (Then New York Mets' pitcher Ron Darling appeared in a full page advertisement in the Mets' program and scorebook magazine in the 1985 season to urge fans to join in Governor Cuomo's "safe" campaign). 

Along with other Catholic pro-aborts in public life, Cuomo supported the legal "right" of mothers to support the execution of their babies under cover of law, attempting to cover himself in a mantra of not seeking to "impose" "his" morality upon others, while doing precisely that when it came to the issue of capital punishment. Cuomo said that it was his moral duty as a Catholic to oppose capital punishment even though a majority of the citizens of the State of New York desired its restoration. What hubris. What incredible arrogance to consign the innocent preborn to cruel, merciless deaths under cover of law while criminals convicted of heinous crimes after the exhausting of the levers of due process of law are considered to be above the ultimate punishment for their crimes.

Cuomo was unbent in his support for abortion by the time that the pro-abortion Baptist, then Arkansas Governor William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, was nominated by the Democrat Party for President of the United States of America in 1992. Cuomo said the following in the principal nominating speech at Madison Square Garden in the City of New York in behalf of Clinton's nomination on July 15, 1992:

America needs Bill Clinton for still another reason. We need a leader who will stop the Republican attempt, through laws and through the courts, to tell us what god to believe in, and how to apply that god's judgment to our schoolrooms, our bedrooms and our bodies. (Nominating Speech by Mario M. Cuomo)

Do you see any “agonizing” there, “Bishop Barron?

You may be old enough to remember Mario Matthew Cuomo’s posturing about the surgical execution of the innocent preborn, “Bishop” Barron, but you utterly uninformed about the late demagogue’s actual work. I am both older than you, a native of the State of New York who followed this man’s words and deeds far more closely than you, and I wrote about him extensively during my eight-year association with The Wanderer.

Just as an aside, the then New York Governor said this about then Governor Clinton, in whose presidential administration Figlio di Sfachim, Andrew Mark Cuomo, served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development:

He was born and raised with all the personal attributes needed for leadership: God-given intelligence; vitality. And an extraordinary quality of character that allowed him to survive the buffeting and the trauma of a difficult youth.  Nominating Speech by Mario M. Cuomo

I know. Stop laughing.

Cuomo's use of hyperbole makes that of the late President Richard Milhous Nixon's seem tame by comparison. Yet Mario Matthew Cuomo remains a "Catholic" in good standing in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, although one conciliar monsignor, who was Cuomo's pastor at Saint John the Evangelist Church around 1997, said that Cuomo did not present himself for what purported to be the distribution of Holy Communion during the Novus Ordo service, indicating, the monsignor said, that "Cardinal" O'Connor might have told him to refrain from doing so. Cuomo has not been "excommunicated" by conciliar authorities. He is unrepentant in his support for baby-killing under cover of law, although he did say to the 1994 Right to Life Party nominee Bob Walsh, "Bob, I’m pro-life! I have to say I’m pro-choice in order to get elected," prior to one of their televised debates. (Mr. Walsh asserted this in a presentation he gave to a graduate course on political parties that I was teaching at the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University in the Fall of 1996.)

What is particularly interesting about Mario Cuomo's nominating speech in behalf of William Jefferson Blythe Clinton on July 15, 1992, is that it came about five months after Clinton himself verified the authenticity of the phone conversations that had been taped without his knowledge by his "friend," Gennifer Flowers, as he apologized to Cuomo for the following exchange he had with Flowers, which the late Bob Grant had played repeatedly in 1992 in an effort to oppose Slick Willie's election:

The male voice also describes Mario Cuomo as being a "mean son of [expletive deleted] " and when Flowers says, "I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have some Mafioso connections," the reply is: "Well, he acts like one," followed by a chuckle.

Speaking of the press, the voice tells Flowers: "If they ever hit you with it, just say no and go on. There's nothing they can do. I expected them to look into it and come interview you. But if everybody is on record denying it, no problem." Richard Nixon couldn't have said it better. (The Progressive Review, "Whitewater and Clinton Scandal Clips: Part 1: February 1992-March 1994. I am not linking to this article directly as it contains direct quotes from Bill and Hillary Clinton that are vile and vulgar, unfit for the eyes of my readers. It's the only place, however, where I could find a direct quote of the Flowers-Clinton reference to Cuomo and his thuggish ways.)

Yes, Mario Matthew Cuomo supported the moral aberration of “gay marriage, congratulating his son for pushing the members of the New State Legislature to recognize “marriage equality” as a supposed “civil right.”

Yet it is that Mario Matthew Cuomo died as a Catholic in “good standing” on January 1, 2015, the Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord and was accorded with a so-called “Mass of Christian Burial” at the Church of Saint Ignatius on Park Avenue in the Borough of Manhattan in the City of New York, New York, on Tuesday, January 6, 2015, the Feast of the Circumcision of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

“Yes, Mario Matthew Cuomo supported the moral aberration of “gay marriage, congratulating his son for pushing the members of the New State Legislature to recognize “marriage equality” as a supposed “civil right.”

Yet it is that Mario Matthew Cuomo died as a Catholic in “good standing” on January 1, 2015, the Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord and was accorded with a so-called “Mass of Christian Burial” at the Church of Saint Ignatius on Park Avenue in the Borough of Manhattan in the City of New York, New York, on Tuesday, January 6, 2015, the Feast of the Epiphany of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

“Bishop” Robert Barron, though, is far from alone within conciliar circles for his praise of the “devout Catholic,” Mario Matthew Cuomo, as Jorge Mario Bergoglio himself called him a “great man” when speaking to Cuomo’s equally demagogic pro-abortion, pro-sodomite son, Andrew Mark Cuomo, at the Cathedral of Saint Patrick on the evening of September 24, 2015, the Feast of Our Lady of Ransom. No “great man” supports sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance.

In addition, a “Father” Thomas Witt, S.J., the pastor of the Church of Saint Ignatius, praised the late Governor Cuomo effusively upon his death on January 1, 2015, the Feast of the Circumcision of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

“Mario Cuomo ever communicated a spirit of inclusivity and care, a spirit of decency and uprightness that inspired love and respect,” said the Rev. George M. Witt, the pastor of St. Ignatius, where some of Cuomo’s five children are parishioners and several of his grandchildren have gone to school. “In the end, it was not so much the eloquence of his words that spoke to us but the eloquence of his life.” (Mario Cuomo laid to rest.)

Mario Cuomo “ever communicated inclusivity and care, a spirit of decency and uprightness,” “Father” Witt?

Go tell that to the innocent preborn, “Father” Witt.

Where was Mario Matthew Cuomo’s “inclusivity and care,” “decency and uprightness” for the innocent victims of the great American genocide, “Father” Witt?

What kind of “inclusive” and “caring,” “decent and upright” man supports the slaughter of an innocent human being by means of various chemical pills and potions, by means of a vacuum machine twenty-nine times more powerful than the household vacuum cleaner, by means of saline solution poisoning or by means of surgical dismemberment, whether inside the mother’s womb or in the birth canal (as happens in “dilation and extraction” baby-killing, aka crushed skull abortion), “Father” Witt?

You say that Mario Matthew Cuomo was “inclusive and caring,” “decent and upright,” “Father” Witt?

How “decent” and “upright” was it, “Father Wit” and, by extension,
“Bishop” Barron, for Mario Matthew Cuomo to display his thin-skinned arrogance when auxiliary “bishop” Austin Vaughan, a man whose kindness and true Catholic charity for souls prompted him to warn then Governor Cuomo in 1991 that he risked for the fires of Hell because of his support for abortion under cover of the civil law?

Well, this imaginary interrogation of “Father” Thomas Witt was, of course, merely rhetorical. “Father” Witt had no sense of the eternal jeopardy that faced the thin-skinned, arrogant and dismissive demagogue who was praised recently by Robert Barron.

 “Bishop” Austin Vaughan, a man whose kindness and humility made an impression upon anyone who had the privilege of meeting him (as I did on several occasions), understood that Mario Matthew Cuomo was wrong and that he faced the strong possibility of eternal damnation for his expedient separation of supposedly “personal beliefs” from his duties as an elected official.

Although the late Father Austin Vaughan was not a true bishop, he was a true priest, and it was this priestly concern for the immortal soul of Mario Matthew Cuomo that prompted him, a putative auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of New York, to warn Cuomo that he was risking the fires of Hell for his support of child-killing under cover of the civil law.

Ever the demagogue, Cuomo accused Father Vaughan of “damning him to Hell.” Father Vaughan had done no such thing, of course.

Here is a report, contained in a June 29, 2000, obituary on "Bishop" Vaughan, about the controversy that erupted after he had made his remarks about Cuomo’s possible eternal damnation while he, Vaughan, was imprisoned after being arrested for peacefully blocking an abortuary as part of Operation Rescue in 1990:

Regarded as a conservative church leader, Bishop Vaughan was named auxiliary bishop by Pope Paul VI in 1977. He was a professor of theology at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers from 1956 to 1973 and then its rector until 1979, when he was appointed vicar of Orange County. He was fluent in Spanish, Italian and French as well as Latin.

Bishop Vaughan took his firm stance against abortion well beyond the pulpit and went to jail for it more than once. In 1990, he spent 10 days in an Albany lockup for trespassing after he tried to block the entrance of a local women's clinic the year before.

While in jail, he caused a furor when he told an interviewer that Governor Cuomo was in ''serious risk of going to hell'' for upholding abortion rights and public financing of poor women's abortions. Mr. Cuomo responded that he would defend ''the right of this bishop to curse any politician he wants, and every woman to make her own judgment under the Constitution as to whether or not to have an abortion.''

Cardinal John J. O'Connor, writing in Catholic New York, the weekly newspaper of the archdiocese, noted that the bishop's views were consistent with church teaching. In his first sermon out of jail, at a Mass at St. Patrick's, his parish church in Newburgh, Bishop Vaughan said: ''All I was saying is what he learned, and I learned, and all of you learned in the first grade. If you commit a serious sin and die without repenting, you go to hell.'' (Bishop Austin B. Vaughan, 72; Criticized Cuomo on Abortion.)

This applied to the late Mario Matthew Cuomo, and it applies to his son, Andrew Mark Cuomo, now the disgraced former Governor New York, a public adulterer at the time and full-throated supporter of baby-killing and perversity who was permitted by “Father” Witt to give a forty-minute eulogy of his father two days ago. It applies also to former President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., current New York Governor Kathleen Hochul, former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro Pelosi and to every other pro-abortion public official, Catholic and non-Catholic alike. Support baby-killing only at the peril of eternal damnation.

Alas, such is not the “gushy-gooey” sentimental sap of conciliarism, which is why Timothy Michael “Cardinal” Dolan, the conciliar “archbishop” of New York, scandalously paid his respects at Mario Matthew Cuomo’s wake on Monday evening, January 5, 2015, the Vigil of the Epiphany of Our Lord and the Commemoration of Pope Saint Telesphorus. The fact that Dolan even permitted a “Mass of Christian Burial” to be staged for Mario Matthew Cuomo was scandalous, no less appearing physically at the wake for a man who was celebrated as follows by one of leading defenders of unrestricted child-killing on demand anywhere in the world, The New York Times, as follows:

He stoutly defended abortion rights in the face of opposition from the leaders of his Catholic faith. He repeatedly vetoed attempts to restore the death penalty in the face of legislators’ grandstanding. As a gifted mediator, he helped settle a riot at Sing Sing prison in which 19 hostage guards were freed, in contrast to the 1971 Attica prison riot in which 10 hostages and 33 inmates died. (Mario Cuomo's Life in Public Service.)

Veteran journalist Frederic U. Dicker, who had covered state politics in Albany for decades, wrote about Mario Matthew Cuomo's very public support of child-killing under cover of the civil law after noting Cuomo's penchant for arrogance:

I covered Mario Cuomo when he was New York’s secretary of state, lieutenant governor and governor for nearly 20 years, for three news organizations, and what a strange, infuriating and ultimately tragic experience it turned out to be.

To nearly all who knew Mario Cuomo well, he was an underachieving enigma — brilliant yet indecisive, accomplished as a lawyer yet riddled with self-doubt as a politician, an initially popular governor who was eventually booted from office for failing to use that popularity to lead New York in a direction that would have made this a better state.

Early in Cuomo’s service as lieutenant governor, Robert Morgado, Gov. Hugh Carey’s longtime chief of staff, startled me with the observation that Carey was convinced there was “something odd with Mario” — that he was arrogant, angry and often resentful toward those he worked with in public life.

As the years passed, I heard dozens of others close to Cuomo, including some who worked with him every day, echo Morgado’s words.

Mario Cuomo was one of the nation’s greatest orators, but his sometimes-dazzling speeches — like his keynote to the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco in 1984 — almost always lacked answers to the problems they addressed.

Cuomo insisted he was a believing Roman Catholic, but then he went to war with his church on the theologically crucial issue of abortion.

He was someone who claimed to have foresworn political labels but was actually a quintessential political liberal and, usually, proud of it.

People who knew him well often joked that Mario Cuomo was someone who was ready with a question for every answer.

He was called New York’s “Hamlet on the Hudson’’ because of a painful penchant for delaying — usually in the grips of agonizing indecision — virtually every important decision he had to make, most famously on whether he would run for president in 1988 and in 1992, years when the Democratic nomination could have been his for the seeking.

Cuomo, a brilliant and accomplished lawyer in his pre-political life, reinforced that “Hamlet’’ image when he repeatedly told friends he was comfortable serving as a defense lawyer even in cases involving accused murderers but could never be comfortable as a prosecutor because, he said, he never would feel sure enough that someone was guilty and therefore deserving of punishment.

While Cuomo could be charming in one-on-one conversations, could show a remarkable degree of caring when dealing with individual human tragedies, and could put aside ideological differences to help political adversaries — including the New York Post in the early 1990s, when it faced severe financial difficulties — he could also be arrogant and even cruel, browbeating opponents, abandoning longtime allies, and even turning on his own son and one-time key political adviser, New York’s current governor, Andrew.

Cuomo presided over the state’s highest office during the Reagan/Bush era, and because he was such a strong proponent of traditional liberal values — higher taxes to fund state spending on social programs, opposition to the death penalty, an unrelenting defense of abortion rights — he became a darling of the political left and of many in the national media.

But his legacy as governor was anything but positive.

Gov. Mario Cuomo raised literally hundreds of state taxes to fund ever-expanding social programs and developed fiscal gimmicks, including the notorious scheme to “sell’’ the Attica Correctional Facility back to the state to pad public revenues so he could spend even more.

Cuomo rejected a chance to end the hugely expensive tolls on the New York State Thruway and he literally destroyed, under pressure from environmental activists, the Long Island Lighting Co. and its $5 billion Shoreham nuclear power plant, saddling Long Island residents to this day with some of the highest utility costs in the nation.

Mario Cuomo presided over the widening loss of upstate jobs, industry and population, of which he was well aware. Either because he didn’t know how to address the problem or because, more likely, a deep streak of fatalism left him believing there was nothing he could do about it, the problem has continued to this day.

Although he didn’t initially realize he was doing so, David Garth — Cuomo’s longtime friend and political guru, who, coincidentally, died just a few weeks ago — encapsulated Mario Cuomo’s failures as governor a few months before he was turned out of office in 1994.

Garth was overseeing Cuomo’s bid for a fourth term and he was pressed at the Democratic nominating convention by several reporters to name some of the governor’s accomplishments during his term in office.

After several seconds of cold silence, a clearly uncomfortable Garth responded, “Haven’t you seen the new rest stops on the Thruway? They’re really something.’’

Such a singularly meager legacy from 12 years in office explained why a few months later, Cuomo — the great liberal champion who might very well have become president — was defeated by a little-known freshman state senator and former mayor of Peekskill, one George Elmer Pataki. (Frederic U. Dicker, Cuomo inspired but did little for New York.)

Few in number are the conciliar "bishops" such as the late Father Austin Vaughan who dare to speak truth to power, who dare to remind those who support chemical and surgical baby-killing and special rights, including "marriage," for those engaged in unrepentant perverse sins in violation of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments of these terrible words of Our Divine Redeemer, Christ the King, as contained in the Gospel according to Saint Mark:

For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul? [37] Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? [38] For he that shall be ashamed of me, and of my words, in this adulterous and sinful generation: the Son of man also will be ashamed of him, when he shall come in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. (Mark 8: 36-38.)

It does not matter how much Mario Matthew Cuomo was loved by his family and friends or in what great esteem he was held by friend and foe in the naturalistic farce and sideshow that is American electoral politics. What matters is that Mario Matthew Cuomo died without publicly abjuring his support for two of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance, and that makes his death very tragic, a cause of genuine sadness when we consider the great price that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ paid to redeem just one soul by suffering all that He did during His Passion and Death, including shedding every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross. 

Mario Matthew Cuomo consistently made public statements on behalf of the nonexistent "right" of women to sin mortally by killing their preborn babies. Sin is what caused Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to suffer fearfully in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death and caused His Most Blessed Mother to suffer in perfect union with Him as those Seven Swords of Sorrow pierced her Immaculate Heart through and through. One must put aside all empty sentimentality and maudlin emotionalism in order to remember that Mario Matthew Cuomo lived and died reaffirming women in their "civil right" to sin in violation of the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment. That is no way to prepare for eternity.

Sadly, the false church that has given us such an “opening to the world” under the leadership of Modernists and blaspheming stage artists of sacrilege and apostasy celebrates the lives of those who support each of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance because of their supposed “care and concern” for the poor by means of unjust statist programs of income redistribution that make the poor indentured to the “largesse” of social engineers. As will be noted in part two of this commentary on Saturday, January 10, 2015, travesties such as the one that took place in the Church of Saint Ignatius on Park Avenue in New York City are simply par for the conciliar course.

Lest we become haughty in the manner of the Cuomos, however, we must always recognize that it is indeed a terrible thing for any of us to fall into the hands of the living God:

[26] For if we sin wilfully after having the knowledge of the truth, there is now left no sacrifice for sins, [27] But a certain dreadful expectation of judgment, and the rage of a fire which shall consume the adversaries. [28] A man making void the law of Moses, dieth without any mercy under two or three witnesses: [29] How much more, do you think he deserveth worse punishments, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath esteemed the blood of the testament unclean, by which he was sanctified, and hath offered an affront to the Spirit of grace? [30] For we know him that hath said: Vengeance belongeth to me, and I will repay. And again: The Lord shall judge his people.

[31] It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrews 10: 26-31.)

It is indeed a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Each of us must remember this truth, contained in Saint Paul the Apostle's Epistle to the Hebrews. We are, after all, in the penitential season of Lent, a time during which we must call to mind the horror of our sins as we seek to live more penitentially so as to make reparation for them to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. Our Lord us that we do not know the day or the hour of the time He will visit us at the moment of our deaths:

Be you then also ready: for at what hour you think not, the Son of man will come. (Luke 12: 40.)

Many of us have much for which to answer. I know that I do!

The hour of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's visitation is something for which we must ask His Most Blessed Mother to prepare us each and every day as we examine our consciences nightly and make a perfect Act of Contrition in the morning and before we go to sleep, availing ourselves of the Mercy of the Divine Redeemer on a weekly basis, if at all possible, in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance. We must never seek to minimize our sins or the debt that we owe to God for them.

It is, however, one thing to sin and to be sorry for one's sins as one seeks to live penitentially in reparation for them. It is quite another to persist in sin and/or the support for grave sins unrepentantly until the moment of one's death, which is what so many pro-abortion Catholics who have served in public office have been able to do while maintaining their "good standing" in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

May Our Lady help us to manifest the Sacred Rights of Christ the King at all times, keeping ever close to the mysteries of salvation contained in the fifteen decades of her Most Holy Rosary.

The Caligulas and the Neros and the Trajans and the Valerians and the Diocletians and the Cromwells and the Bismarcks and the French Revolutionaries and the Bolsheviks and the Maoists all come and go. They have met the moment of their Particular Judgment. In the end, you see, these figures, much like the petty caesars and caesarettes of today, are forgettable figures, especially when you consider these words that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour, Christ the King, Himself spoke to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque:

"I will reign in spite of all who oppose Me." (quoted in: The Right Reverend Emile Bougaud. The Life of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, reprinted by TAN Books and Publishers in 1990, p. 361.)

Yes, Viva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Roch, pray for us.

Appendix

Father Louis J. Campbell's "A Kingdom Laid to Desolation"