Sacramento — Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez announced in February that he was "ready to buck my church" and push legislation allowing terminally ill people to speed up their deaths with lethal drugs. But he wasn't ready for this -- not from holy leaders.
The church is bucking back and looking like an ugly old political attack dog.
We're seeing a collision of church and state, both of which serve society best -- with all our religious diversity -- when they operate separately. As the nation's founders planned.
You may have read Cardinal Roger M. Mahony's comments about the L.A. Democrat while speaking to 250 worshippers Monday at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels:
"We should be troubled that Fabian Nunez, who has worshipped here in this cathedral as a Catholic, somehow has not understood and grasped the culture of life, but has allowed himself to get into this other direction, the culture of death."
\o7Culture of death? \f7That's political bean ball. Not even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tosses such words at President Bush.
Doesn't grasp the \o7culture of life? \f7Nunez has a solid record of trying to improve the quality of life for poor people: the elderly and disabled, the medically uninsured, minimum wage earners and the same illegal immigrants Mahony long has championed.
"I have a lot of respect for the cardinal, but I'm deeply disappointed in his comments," Nunez said in a telephone interview from Paris, where he and other legislators are spending the Easter recess, having been invited there by the French government to study high-speed rail.
"Those comments hit me pretty hard. They weren't just harsh. They were extreme and dogmatic.
"I support the 'culture of death?' I don't even support the death penalty."
Nunez said that he couldn't tell whether the cardinal "believes I should be kicked out of the church. I'm not going to say I'm leaving the church today or tomorrow, but I've got to reflect on all of this."
The speaker observed, "I'm not a regular Sunday churchgoer, but I am Catholic."
He's a Catholic who also bucks his church -- at least its leadership -- on abortion rights and same-sex marriage, both of which he supports.
Nunez had another run-in with the church recently while having breakfast with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in a Boyle Heights restaurant. One woman came up and said she'd learned at worship from Msgr. John Moretta that Nunez was "a killer," the speaker reported, adding that fliers depicting him as favoring suicide have been handed out at churches all over his legislative district.
