The Boston Globe went searching for some reaction, anything, to Cardinal O’Malley’s slap the other day at pro-abortion Democrats. They didn’t find much. The silence, perhaps, was telling:

In 1935, Governor James Michael Curley was pushing hard for a bill to create a state lottery. The bill looked like it would sail through the Legislature. But on the eve of the vote, the afternoon papers carried stories of Cardinal William Henry O’Connell denouncing it.

“The next morning, it went down to crashing defeat,” said James O’Toole, a history professor at Boston College.

It is the “mirror image,” he observed, of the dynamic now. Last week, after Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley said the support of church members for Democrats “borders on scandal” because of the party’s support for keeping abortion legal, most of the state’s leading Catholic Democrats responded with silence.

John Walsh, chairman of the Democratic Party, declined to comment, as did Senators Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, and nearly all of the state’s Democratic Catholic congressmen, on both sides of the abortion issue. The few who did have something to say – House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi, who spoke to reporters on a separate issue Thursday, and US Representative Michael E. Capu ano, whose office provided a statement when asked for comment – respectfully disagreed with the church.

As they have for years, most Catholic Democrats in Massachusetts are likely to continue to disagree with the church on abortion without worrying much about the consequences for them or their party. If Catholic voters punished their politicians for opposing church views on abortion – or gay marriage, or any other subject – the response might be quite different, political experts said last week. But they haven’t.

“I think the Catholic church wishes there was more tension between them,” said Jeffrey M. Berry, a political science professor at Tufts University. “I think O’Malley’s outburst is a reflection he’s being ignored rather than engaged.”

That does not mean that some Democrats who favor abortion rights were not upset by it.

“I don’t recall in my lifetime any leader of the Catholic church making such a bold partisan statement,” said Philip Johnston, a former state Democratic Party chairman who is also Catholic. “I think it’s very regrettable.”

Terrence C. Donilon, O’Malley’s spokesman, said in a statement yesterday that the archbishop was trying to “emphasize the moral weight” of the abortion issue.

“While he addressed the position of one party, his primary concern was to call attention to the serious moral character of the issue and the attention it should receive from political leaders across the spectrum of our country,” he said.

O’Malley’s comments came in an interview with the Globe after the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, meeting in Baltimore last week, approved its quadrennial “faithful citizenship” statement providing advice for Catholic voters.

In the early part of the last century, the church became a powerful force in Massachusetts elections, helping Catholics overcome discrimination and gain political power. But over the years, Berry said, the church lost its political grip, as overall religiosity among Catholics has decreased and as Catholics moved into the suburbs, weakening the tie between precinct and parish. Many Catholic politicians agree to disagree with the church on abortion and gay marriage, and their overall willingness to criticize the church publicly may have grown because of the sex abuse scandal.

Several Catholic Democrats replied resolutely when asked last week for their reaction to O’Malley’s words. DiMasi said he makes decisions based on what he thinks would be best for the Commonwealth, not “just following what my religious leader tells me to do.”

City Councilor-at-large Michael Flaherty, in an interview, quoted the prophet Micah: “We are called to act with justice, to love tenderly and to walk humbly with God,” he said. “Instead of hearing about the church plans to exclude groups of people from God’s table, I would rather hear how the church could be a place where we are all truly welcome.”

John Tobin, another city councilor, said, “I don’t fault the cardinal. . . . I’m sure he feels a lot of frustration. But there are Catholics and Catholic politicians who feel frustrated with the church sometimes.”

There’s more about this at the link — which is both interesting and depressing.