LI congressman takes a controversial stance

BY GLENN THRUSH | Newsday Washington Bureau

April 2, 2006

WASHINGTON - Fifty years ago, 11-year-old Peter King sat in a classroom at St. Teresa's Grammar School in Woodside watching a little girl, who was deeply depressed about the death of a close relative, struggle with a mountainous multiplication table on the blackboard.

"I realized she had made some kind of mistake," says the House Homeland Security chairman, speaking from behind his gleaming oak desk on Capitol Hill last week. "I saw the nun standing behind her grab her by the hair and smash her face into the blackboard. Her nose was bleeding and the nun started talking about the family's tragedy, belittling her, telling the kid, 'Is that the best you can do? Is that the best you can do?'"

King, who co-sponsored the hard-edged border protection bill that passed the House in December, uses such stories to express his long-simmering anger at the church - and to explain why he's so disgusted with Catholic clerics who have condemned his immigration plan as inhumane.

A 'silent majority' no more

The Seaford Republican raised eyebrows last week by calling the nation's Catholic establishment "liars" and "hypocrites," urging it to stop playing politics and "spend more time protecting little boys from pedophile priests."

Being in open conflict with his own church doesn't seem to faze King, who thinks discontent over priest sex scandals and political meddling just might resonate with his constituents, who are, for the most part, white ethnic Catholics like himself.

King, 62, said his comments were spur of the moment, but added: "I consider myself a blue-collar Catholic, and we're kind of a silent majority. It's quite possible this could end up helping me politically. Maybe it shows that God's on my side."

Without targeting King directly, Catholic leaders and pro-immigrant groups have attacked his proposals, which include a plan to build border fences and other enforcement measures that don't include a system to legalize undocumented workers.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has been particularly critical of a provision in his bill making it a felony for undocumented workers to remain in the United States and another clause that might make it a crime for church workers to assist or encourage illegal aliens.

"Denying aid to a fellow human being violates a law with a higher authority than Congress - the law of God," Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony wrote last month in The New York Times. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said "Jesus himself" might be arrested under King's legislation.

King's "pedophile" comment drew an indirect slap from Bishop William Murphy of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, who decried "public officials [who] respond to legitimate criticism by casting unworthy and demeaning remarks."

An ally betrayed?

The congressman, an observant Catholic who opposes abortion and attends Sunday Mass, is infuriated by such statements. He says his opponents know he's promised to omit the felony provision when the House bill is reconciled with a Senate version and will also rewrite the bill to better protect Good Samaritans.

"Pete doesn't mean the church any harm, but he's definitely fed up with them getting on their high horse and distorting his positions," said former city firefighters union chief Jimmy Boyle, who attended St. Teresa's with King and city Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. "Peter gets very sensitive about this stuff because he feels the church should be more understanding of him, given his opposition to abortion and his support of basic Catholic tenets."

Still, King is hardly an apostate. He attended Catholic schools for 19 years. Before his 1992 election to Congress, he was the best-known U.S. ally of the Catholic-dominated Irish Republican Army.

He also enjoyed a close relationship with the late Cardinal John O'Connor, who supported King's appointment as grand marshal of the city's 1985 St. Patrick's Day Parade, although protesters boycotted the parade because of King's ties to the IRA.

And despite his anger at Catholic leaders who attack his immigration bill, King doesn't mind every church foray into politics. He supports the right of priests to deny communion to elected officials favoring abortion rights.

Personal slap in the face

But he's had his share of dust-ups with church leaders. He's long faulted the hierarchy for failing to stop sexual abuse. In 2004, King dismissed the Vatican's criticism of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, saying they were "nothing compared to what nuns and priests did to Catholic kids for decades."

King says the "hundreds" of violent incidents he witnessed as a student are never far from his mind when discussing the church, even when he's talking about the seemingly disconnected topic of immigration reform.

There was the incident when King, then 12, said he watched a nun slam a yardstick across the face of a friend because the boy had a speech impediment that reduced most of his sentences to what King calls "baby talk." A few years later, King himself was slapped in the face by a nun for what he says was no apparent reason as he walked the hallway of St. Paschal High School in St. Albans.

He connects those bitter school experiences with the condemnation of his immigration stance, saying they are part of a continuum of church "arrogance ... an overbearing and oppressive sense that everything they do is right."

But not everyone buys that argument. Joseph Mercurio, a Manhattan-based political consultant who attended Catholic schools himself, says King is deflecting criticism for adopting a position that goes against the church's commitment to social justice.

"Just because some nuns beat up some kids in the 1950s and priests committed sexual abuse, we are supposed to ignore the church's policy positions on immigration?" asks Mercurio, who works for both Democrats and Republicans.

Former Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, a longtime ally of King, thinks his battle with the church is strictly personal. "He's a very unusual politician," D'Amato said. "He does and says things out of motivations that have nothing to do with politics."