"At the height of the 1984 presidential campaign, which was frequently charged with religious and moral affronts on both sides, vice-presidential candidate Representative Geraldine Ferraro, a practicing Roman Catholic, defended her pro-choice stance as not inconsistent with her Catholic faith: “Although I am personally opposed to abortion, I have no right to impose my belief on others.” Her remarks and sentiments, emphatically supported by New York Governor Mario Cuomo, also a practicing catholic, quickly came under attack from the Roman Catholic Church, stirring perhaps the most sensitive and emotionally charged debate of the 1984 campaign. Bishop James W. Malone, president of the United States Catholic Conference, promptly issued a statement in which he denounced the position of Catholic politicians such as Ferraro and Cuomo as “simply not logically tenable.” To the contrary, Malone urged, politicians have a civic duty “to take practical steps to translate these personal viewpoints into policies and practical programs.” In a more pointed move, New York’s Archbishop John J. O’Connor expressed his disapproval of Ferraro’s stance in a televised press conference, stating that, although he would not tell Catholics how to vote, he could not justify “how a Catholic in good conscience can vote for a candidate who supports abortion,” given the Church’s unequivocal teachings opposing abortion."