William McGurn

William McGurn

Opinion

Cuomo’s cardinal sin: Did the governor lie to the bishops?

There’s no way around it. Someone’s fibbing. And it’s either our governor or our cardinal.

Back in April, after an education-tax-credit bill failed to make it into the state budget, Timothy Cardinal Dolan took to the pages of the New York Post to complain he and his brother bishops had been assured the credit was a done deal.

“Those assurances,” the cardinal wrote, “turned out to be empty.”

The cardinal didn’t name names. But let’s see if we can guess.

Of Albany’s three major players — the governor, the leader of the state Senate, the speaker of the state Assembly — it’s unlikely Sheldon Silver made such an assurance. The speaker was clear he opposed the tuition credit, even though most of his fellow Democrats in the Assembly support it.

Then there’s the Republican leader in the Senate, Dean Skelos. He’s unlikely too, because the Senate in fact passed the measure.

That leaves Andrew Cuomo. Hmmmmm.

Would the governor of New York give the bishops an assurance to their faces only to let them be thrown under the bus when the details were hashed out behind closed doors?

Here’s how Bishop Richard Malone, who was in the room with the governor in Albany, put it at a rally in downtown Buffalo Wednesday:

“I was in the room . . . with Cardinal Timothy Dolan and all of my brother bishops from the eight dioceses of New York state when Gov. Cuomo looked us in the eye — it was March 18 — and assured us that as part of the budget process this critical piece of legislation would in fact be enacted . . . The promise was made right there and right then [and] I heard it with my own ears.”

Clearly both sides can’t be right.

If Gov. Cuomo, who this week told The Post’s Michael Goodwin he supports the bill, didn’t assure the bishops it was a done deal, the bishops owe him an apology.

If, however, the governor did give them a promise he didn’t keep, he may have created a huge political problem for any plans for a run for the White House.

The big losers, of course, are the moms and dads — frequently non-Catholic — for whom the parochial school around the corner is the only real alternative to a failing public school.

Why does this matter to others? It matters because a child who attends a Catholic school is much likelier to finish high school and attend college than his or her public-school counterpart.

In Buffalo, for example, 99 percent of Catholic high school students graduate — more than twice the 47 percent rate for public-school students. Ninety-eight percent of the Catholic-school students go on to college.

Meanwhile, fewer than 10 percent of Buffalo public-school students leave high school ready for college.

Earlier this year, Justice Sonia Sotomayor stressed to The New York Times how especially vital these Catholic schools are to people of color or little means — and why she was so “heartbroken” to learn her own alma mater, Blessed Sacrament High School in The Bronx, is shutting down:

“It’s symbolic of what it means for all our families, like my mother, who were dirt-poor. She watched what happened to my cousins in public school and worried if we went there, we might not get out. So she scrimped and saved. It was a road of opportunity for kids with no other alternative.”

Translation: If access to a decent education is indeed the civil-rights issue of our day, Catholic schools play an irreplaceable role in New York.

That’s the education piece. On the political side, the bishops’ contention Cuomo misled them might hurt his hopes of running up big margins in his re-election to give him an edge going into the 2016 Democratic primary for president.

A look at the most recent Siena poll cross-tabs for Catholic voters is illuminating. From March to April, Gov. Cuomo’s unfavorability rating among Catholics jumped from 39 percent to 47 percent, while support for Cuomo over GOP challenger Rob Astorino dropped from 56 percent to 47 percent.

These are much larger jumps than for the general population, probably having something to do with the governor’s rhetoric about New York’s having no place for “extremists,” i.e., people like Cardinal Dolan and Bishop Malone who are pro-life and support traditional marriage.

Not that it’s likely to cost him re-election.

But in a state whose electorate is 40 percent Catholic, and in a Democratic national primary where Catholics are a key constituency, it’s hard to believe the governor wants to run for office amid the chants of schoolchildren and parents and teachers we heard in Buffalo this week and at the Democratic convention the week before:

“Andrew Cuomo, keep your word.”