Cardinal Donal of New Yprk on Family Separation
Mayor de Blasio and Cardinal Dolan: Beyond the Church-State Separation
It was to get the parable of the mayor and the cardinal'southward cookies.
In Jan, Mayor Nib de Blasio, less than two weeks into his term, went to the residence of Primal Timothy G. Dolan, the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, for his first visit.
Cardinal Dolan, who had been warned, he said, that Mr. de Blasio would be unresponsive to the concerns of Catholics, decided on an icebreaker: a plate of Italian cookies, befitting a mayor with roots in the Campania region.
The gesture worked, maybe also well. Mr. de Blasio devoured the cookies then quickly that Fundamental Dolan later playfully chided him in front of reporters.
In private, he delivered some other bulletin: "I gave him a penance," Cardinal Dolan recalled last month.
The mayor was to bring the cardinal a cannoli at a after date.
Less than a yr into Mr. de Blasio's tenure, he and the fundamental, ii of New York's nearly powerful figures, take institute much to proceeds from each other, forging an unexpectedly useful relationship that so far seems blest by fortuitous timing and ostensibly 18-carat affection.
The mayor relied in role on the participation of Catholic schools to achieve a signature goal — a prekindergarten program serving more than than 50,000 children this yr — paying the schools to operate prekindergarten for more than 3,000 students. For his assist, Central Dolan secured not merely an infusion of city money but also a powerful ally at a moment of enrollment struggles and financial strain. This month, the central announced dozens of parish closings and mergers.
When a death during a law confrontation on Staten Island inflamed tensions in July — and the administration drew criticism for giving the Rev. Al Sharpton a prominent position at a subsequent forum on police relations — Mr. de Blasio called on Fundamental Dolan to host a second, less fractious gathering.
Prototype
And for several months, the mayor and the cardinal have waged a public campaign to bring Pope Francis to New York City next year. In an email last calendar month from Rome, where Key Dolan was participating in an assembly, or synod, at the Vatican, he said he had spoken straight to the pope and predicted a "very high probability" that Francis would spend a mean solar day in the urban center next September.
The local alliance — elevating the civic role of i of Catholicism's most prominent voices of social conservatism, with an assistance from a rise liberal star who calls himself "spiritual" but not religious — has at times resembled a sort of municipal buddy movie.
The mayor and the cardinal have gabbed nigh baseball game and discussed Michelangelo with four-twelvemonth-olds. They have considered the merits of speaking Italian to befuddle the local press and riffed about who should field a question posed to "Your Eminence."
Both revel in the comic tradition known euphemistically to Urban center Hall aides as "dad jokes."
"He has a tremendous sense of humor, which I appreciate securely," Mr. de Blasio said in an interview at his office terminal calendar month.
While such surface camaraderie might be expected between any mayor and archbishop, the paths of Mr. de Blasio and Central Dolan have intersected at a particularly opportune moment. Though Cardinal Dolan's flock includes many of Mr. de Blasio's supporters, he remains a powerful figure among some other groups, similar white voters outside Manhattan, who have been cooler toward the mayor.
For Key Dolan, who is perhaps best known nationally for his opposition to nativity-control provisions in President Obama's health intendance police in 2012, the emergence of a new leader at City Hall has coincided with a sweeping tonal shift at the Vatican.
Some of the church building'due south elevated priorities nether Pope Francis, similar clearing and outreach to the less flush, have been echoed in Mr. de Blasio's New York, though church officials note that these have long been areas of focus for the archdiocese. Cardinal Dolan has become a prominent ally for the mayor's prekindergarten plan and a champion of the new municipal identification cards intended for undocumented immigrants.
Prototype
At a meeting in September with Primal Dolan and Central Pietro Parolin, the Vatican'due south secretary of state, Mr. de Blasio handed each human a customized identification card. Pope Francis was listed as their emergency contact.
"They're both skilled politicians," said Kenneth Sherrill, a longtime teacher of political science at Hunter College. "The power dynamic may be changing in certain ways that may be to the mayor'south advantage. Equally the church building's economic position gets worse, they're more and more in the position of having to take advantage of authorities programs."
Mr. de Blasio, who does not attend church, has charted a careful grade when describing his own attitudes on faith. Despite growing up in the "Catholic core of the Northeast," he said, he was never baptized, and his immediate family did non follow any faith.
As a swain, though, he was fatigued to Catholic liberation theology, which emphasizes helping the poor. He worked subsequently graduate schoolhouse for a social justice grouping that provided humanitarian aid to Nicaragua.
"This is non something that feels far away to me," he said in the interview. "This is a part of my heritage, and I think that'due south part of why information technology feels very easy to connect."
He recalled fondly two highlights from his vacation to Italia in July: greeting a adult female, roughly ninety years old, who had known his swell-uncle Alberto, a Catholic priest in Sant'Agata de' Goti, and traveling to a meeting at the Vatican, for which Cardinal Dolan had prepared him like "a large blood brother."
The Catholic community in New York has not e'er been as embracing. Before taking function, Mr. de Blasio faced criticism for neglecting to name a Catholic to his sixty-person transition team. (Msgr. Kevin Sullivan, the executive director of Catholic Charities for the archdiocese, was afterwards added.)
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"I have told him that people warned me at first that he would be callous or unresponsive to issues and values important to the Cosmic community," Cardinal Dolan said. "That has non been the example at all."
He said the mayor was "shrewd, timely and applied" in seeking the church's help for an interfaith round table later on the death of Eric Garner in a police confrontation on Staten Island.
While Central Dolan said he enjoyed "shut cooperation" with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — who seemed inclined to keep politics and religion separate — church officials best-selling a shift under Mr. de Blasio, who as a candidate criticized his predecessor for having a "blind spot" when it came to faith-based groups.
"At that place's a different tone, in that location'due south a different mode," Monsignor Sullivan said in an interview.
Yet, as Central Dolan noted, archbishops and mayors have coexisted in relative peace for more than two centuries.
Primal John Joseph O'Connor and Mayor Edward I. Koch were known to be specially shut. On the night that Mr. Koch'southward bid for a fourth term ended in 1989, the mayor received a company at Gracie Mansion around midnight.
"There was O'Connor in full regalia," recalled George Arzt, Mr. Koch'southward former press secretary. "And Ed and he hugged each other for what seemed like several minutes."
Information technology is unclear if Mr. de Blasio and Cardinal Dolan volition forge such a bond. Just after the cookie affair, Mr. de Blasio appeared taken with at least one of the cardinal'south qualities.
"He believes in redemption," the mayor said.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/21/nyregion/beyond-the-church-state-separation-dolan-and-de-blasio.html
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