...coming from someone who routinely pillories the Catholic Church because of child sexual abuse scandals. Are you Defender Of The Faith now?

The Boston Globe published one op-ed piece from a guest editorialist, and this makes it anti-Catholic? I don't think so.

I notice your source avoided another paragraph of this same editorial:

In any case, a Senate investigation of this subject is overdue not simply because of the threats made against Kerry. Christian activists have won a series of court victories that allow use of taxpayer money to help finance their schools, fund their charities, and place their religious symbols in public spaces. If US taxpayers are going to subsidize activities by tax-exempt Christian organizations, they have the right to be told what constraints their followers are under while they sit in judgment of Americans who may not share their religion. When constraints amount to sanctions, impartial decisions are impossible; judges then owe Americans the duty of disqualifying themselves.

Christopher D. Morris. "Stopping a Judicial Conflict of Interest." Boston Globe, 9 August 2005. Online. Internet. Available http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/08/09/stopping_a_judicial_conflict_of_interest/

The Catholic bishops used their religious authority like a club against Kerry. We have laws against religious organizations interfering in politics: tax laws. I don't think that Catholics should be barred from Federal judgeships, but I begin to wonder about the tax-exempt status of the Catholic Church, and any other religious organization that attempts to influence politics by publicly threatening people with denial of sacraments, excommunication or shunning in any of its forms.

The Catholic bishops should reread the speech Mario Cuomo gave at Notre Dame in 1984. Your source quoted Cuomo's speech, but only the part that said people had a right to advocate for their own beliefs in public life. They stopped here:

And surely I can, if so inclined, demand some kind of law against abortion not because my bishops say it is wrong, but because I think that the whole community, regardless of its religious beliefs, should agree on the importance of protecting life—including life in the womb, which is at the very least potentially human and should not be extinguished casually.

No law prevents us from advocating any of these things. I am free to do so.

So are the bishops. And so is Reverend Falwell.

In fact, the Constitution guarantees my right to try. And theirs. And his.

Mario Cuomo. "Religious Belief and Public Morality: A Catholic Governor's Perspective." Speech. Delivered 13 September 1984, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN. Online. Internet. Top 100 American Speeches Online Speech Bank. American Rhetoric. Available http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/cuomoreligiousbelief.htm

I will take up and quote a little more, exactly where they left off:

But should I? Is it helpful? Is it essential to human dignity? Does it promote harmony and understanding? Or does it divide us so fundamentally that it threatens our ability to function as a pluralistic community?

When should I argue to make my religious value your morality? My rule of conduct your limitation?

What are the rules and policies that should influence the exercise of this right to argue and promote?

I believe I have a salvific mission as a Catholic. Does that mean I am in conscience required to do everything I can as governor to translate all my religious values into the laws and regulations of the state of New York or the United States? Or be branded a hypocrite if I don’t?

As a Catholic, I respect the teaching authority of the bishops.

But must I agree with everything in the bishops’ pastoral letter on peace and fight to include it in party platforms?

And will I have to do the same for the forthcoming pastoral on economics even if I am an unrepentant supply-sider?

Must I, having heard the pope renew the church’s ban on birth control devices, veto the funding of contraceptive programs for non-Catholics or dissenting Catholics in my state?

I accept the church’s teaching on abortion. Must I insist you do? By law? By denying you Medicaid funding? By a constitutional amendment? If so, which one? Would that be the best way to avoid abortions or to prevent them?

Ibid.

They also conveniently omitted this part of Gov. Cuomo's remarks, which preceded, and put into context, the part of the speech they quoted:

In addition to all the weaknesses, dilemmas, and temptations that impede every pilgrim’s progress, the Catholic who holds political office in a pluralistic democracy—who is elected to serve Jews and Muslims, atheists and Protestants, as well as Catholics—bears special responsibility. He or she undertakes to help create conditions under which all can live with a maximum of dignity and with a reasonable degree of freedom; where everyone who chooses may hold beliefs different from specifically Catholic ones, sometimes contradictory to them; where the laws protect people’s right to divorce, to use birth control, and even to choose abortion.

In fact, Catholic public officials take an oath to preserve the Constitution that guarantees [t]his freedom. And they do so gladly. Not because they love what others do with their freedom, but because they realize that in guaranteeing freedom for all, they guarantee our right to be Catholics: our right to pray, to use the sacraments, to refuse birth control devices, to reject abortion, not to divorce and remarry if we believe it to be wrong.

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.

Ibid.

Catholics, as one can see from this particularly high-profile example, know how to stand up to their bishops. There need not be a return to the old days of acting as if the Pope was about to send the Swiss Guards over to conquer America, and as if every Catholic church had an arsenal in its basement to support them when they came. Catholic bishops need to remember that the days are long gone when the Pope could threaten an Emperor with excommunication and reduce him to a penitent out in the streets in rags.

Church and state are separate in the US, for good reason.