For Archbishop Blair, joy but ‘no champagne’ after decision
BLOOMFIELD — Archbishop Leonard Blair was still in the former convent where he lives on the grounds of the Hartford Archdiocese Pastoral Center when he saw that the U.S. Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade Friday morning.
No, he told me a couple of hours later in his office at the pastoral center, he did not whoop and holler — even though he had hoped and preached for the restoration of protections for unborn human life for decades; he was a seminary student in Rome when the Roe decision came down in 1973.
“As somebody who’s been involved in pro-life for most of my adult life, I certainly welcome this reversal,” he said. “I welcome this and it’s a joyful thing.”
Still, it was not a highkey day for the leader of hundreds of thousands of Roman Catholics in 133 parishes in Hartford, Litchfield and New Haven counties. It was a more pensive moment of joy — and, he said, a challenge.
“No champagne bottles or anything like that, no,” Blair said. “It’s a sober day to be grateful that we have this new opening to life and we have to continue our efforts to persuade the American people, to educate people, about the dignity and rights of every human person from conception until natural death.”
The challenge is about persuading all people, not just lawmakers, governors and judges, that abortionon-demand is morally wrong. And by throwing the responsibility back to the states, the Supreme Court has made that work easier, he said.
“We have a new opportunity now in the public discussion about this to continue to promote and respect human life,” he said. “I view it as a new beginning.”
During the Roe v. Wade era, it was hard to make an argument against a right the highest court had deemed fundamental, he said — “You couldn’t touch abortion . ... young people in particular very often say, whatever is legal is moral.”
That’s the biggest change, for him — the opportunity to make a moral case on even footing.
I wanted to sit with the 73-year-old Archbishop Blair Friday in his quiet, spacious but unremarkable office as protests and celebrations unfolded loudly around Connecticut and the nation — not to debate the decision with him even though I hold the opposite opinion, and believe the moral basis of a woman’s right to choose holds deep power.
Rather, I wanted to listen to the one leader in Connecticut who most embodies the spiritual opposition to abortion at the moment when it mattered most.
“I know that some people talk about this being established law but I reflect on the fact that, you know, slavery was once accepted law in the United States too. But through the growth of people’s moral sensibility and consciences, that’s no longer the case. So I welcome the fact that now once again it is left to the people to decide, in the states.”
Like a lot of offices these days, the pastoral center, formerly the St. Thomas Seminary, doesn’t exactly buzz with activity on a Friday afternoon in summer. Archdiocese spokesman David Elliott and I passed a few people on the long corridor leading to the archbishop’s office suite — known informally as the the Hall of Bishops, with
painted portraits of Blair’s predecessors over hundreds of years.
The court decision had come up, of course, as Blair chatted with some of the same people on his way to the office. “We all said, ‘Oh yeah, this is news today. Welcome news,’” he recounted. But, he reiterated, “No, we’re not going to have a party.”
Blair, who arrived at the end of 2013 as the state’s archbishop, said he doesn’t fundamentally view himself as a political activist, though he did help lead the “March for Life” in Hartford on March 23. He’s more at home in the moral and religious realm, naturally, and he described how his “consciousness” on abortion had strengthened.
“Over a long time I have come to deepen my appreciation and belief that both faith and reason uphold the sanctity of human life from conception until natural death,” he said.
Some of his predecessors may have been more political. For example, I reported more than 30 years ago that then-Archbishop John Whealon had told then-U.S. Rep. Barbara Kennelly, a Hartford Democrat who grew up in the St. Joseph Cathedral parish, that he could reluctantly accept her voting her conscience on abortion issues — but not leading the floor debate, as she did.
Archbishop Blair wasn’t comfortable talking Friday about subtleties in the various states’ abortion laws, including Connecticut’s. Still, as head of a large organization with an affiliated lobbying group, the archbishop understands perfectly well the connection between the legal and moral worlds. I asked whether he was concerned that the same Supreme Court that overturned Roe would gut laws the Catholic Church supports.
Pope Francis and Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago both expressed support last month for new U.S. gun laws, for example, as NPR reported. And the Catholic Church supports broad health care access and all sorts of anti-poverty programs.
“It seems to me that the right to stay alive and not be killed is very different than the right to, I don’t know, some other kind of benefits from the government,” Blair said — echoing the court majority’s argument that other rights are not necessarily threatened.
Is Connecticut, with baked-in abortion rights, a hopeless place to make the argument? The Hall of Bishops offers the long view. I don’t wish Blair success in this but if he brings civil discourse, and he does, we must respect his voice.
“Saying to voters, you have a role in this now, and so you have to weigh this now, well obviously that opens the door to persuasion and to moral reasoning and to responsibility. That’s huge,” Blair said. “I think people in Connecticut would be open to protecting life more in certain circumstances.”