Catholic canon lawyer and journalist Ed Condon calls on Cardinal Dolan to excommunicate Andrew Cuomo, the fanatically pro-abortion Catholic governor of New York. Excerpt:

Not only can Cuomo be excommunicated, he should be. Canon law traditionally drew a distinction between two kinds of excommunicated person: the tolerati and the vitandi. The tolerati, those to be tolerated, were people who had broken communion with the Church and could not, for example, receive the sacraments, but were still allowed in church and kept within the community as their situation was resolved.

On the other hand, there were the vitandi, those to be shunned, expelled from the Catholic community and barred from even attending Mass until they had atoned for their conduct. They were to be shunned not only for their own good, in the hopes that it would recall them to the faith, but because their public identification as Catholics would be a scandal and a dangerous example to others.

Cuomo, through his murderous support for abortion legislation, coupled with his consistent invocation of his own Catholic identity, has crossed over from private failing to public witness against the faith. His public example as a pro-abortion Catholic is a public witness against not just good morals but the faith of the Church.

Unlike his father, who offered at least a fig leaf of being “personally opposed” to abortion while acting to bring it into law, Cuomo the son has given no indication of any personal reservations about making New York the most abortion-friendly state in the nation. At the same time, he has frequently invoked his Catholicism to support his other legislative priorities; insisting, when it suits him, on the importance of his faith and that he “stands with Pope Francis” (who called abortion Nazism with “white gloves”). In doing so he co-opts and misrepresents the moral authority of the Church and the Holy Father, wearing his inconsistent-ethic-of-life as a badge of legitimate Catholic identity.

Cuomo recently signed into law a bill legalizing abortion up until the moment of birth. And to underscore his point, Cuomo ordered the World Trade Center to be lit pink that night to celebrate the victory over the unborn. Gov. Cuomo, a Catholic, believes that doctors should have the right to perform partial-birth abortions, and says this is a great public good.

A reader sends in this story about Gov. Cuomo laying into the Catholic Church over sex abuse. Excerpt:

Gov. Cuomo delivered a fiery sermon against Catholic bishops Monday after delivering two new laws that infuriated them — while church members prayed for his excommunication.

“Tell the truth. Jesus Christ teaches about truth and justice — social justice — and that’s not what the church did here,” Cuomo said at an Albany press conference, referring to the church’s resistance to the Child Victims Act, which extends the statute of limitations for reporting sex abuse and for filing lawsuits.

The same reader sent me this 2004 item from “Diogenes” in Catholic Culture — back when I was still a Catholic. Excerpt:

Having vainly urged Boston auxiliary Bishop John McCormack, throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, to notify parishes in which known abusers had worked, Sister Catherine Mulkerrin ruefully conceded, “I know I sound like a broken record.” It’s a distasteful task to keep sounding the same unwelcome note and earn the reputation of a crank. Most Off The Record bloggers will sympathize with Sr. Mulkerrin on the hardship of admonishing an unreceptive bishop. For all that, it needs repeating: until the episcopacy addresses the serious moral problems in its own ranks, it will continue to lose its moral authority, which is the only authority it has.

In a discussion at Amy Welborn‘s blog, Rod Dreher put the problem of the “team player” bishops in a nutshell: “For their rest of their careers they’ll be dogged by the Mote-Plank Factor every time they open their mouths.”

The reference, of course, is to Jesus’ hard saying: “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” It doesn’t matter what subject the bishops may choose to instruct us on — abortion or gay marriage or capital punishment or homelessness or even fidelity to liturgical norms — at the barest hint of a call to moral seriousness or self-discipline they will be laughed off the stage.

Andrew Cuomo is a barbaric betrayer of the unborn. If Cardinal Dolan fails to excommunicate him, the cardinal will look like a weakling. If Cardinal Dolan does excommunicate him, he will look like a hypocrite. The moral cost of the abuse scandal is made manifest.

UPDATE: Here’s an interview with Cardinal Dolan on Fox News about the controversy. He spends the first three minutes talking about how horrifying the law is. Then around the three-minute mark, a host asks him why he doesn’t excommunicate Cuomo. Dolan hems and haws and just turns to mushy corn flakes right before your eyes. Watch. Andrew Cuomo owns this man:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVi0FYPtRQg&w=525&h=300]