Repr. Henry J. Hyde (R-IL)

The statement is of great significance since, though in his 80th year, Hyde is more acclaimed now for his courage than at any previous time including his historic service as chairman of House Judiciary which won an impeachment of President Bill Clinton. He has so energized the House's role in foreign relations as chairman of its International Relations committee that it rivals the era when Minnesota's Walter H. Judd (for whom this writer worked) helped make it a lightning rod of anti-Communism during the early Cold War period under Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. Although white-haired and stooped from back surgery, Hyde is the party's acknowledged congressional senior foreign policy statesman. Not long ago Chicago Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak reported that he may be tapped as the next House Majority Leader.

One of the most articulate orators of either party-one of the very few who by standing in the well of the House to address it can actively change votes--Hyde told me, "I am greatly disappointed with the failure of much of the Church hierarchy to take an unequivocal stand on abortion." A watered-down stand on pro-abort pols receiving the Eucharist coupled with "the treatment given prominent political figures who try to manipulate themselves between two stools-that of Catholicism and pro-abortion-is inexplicable, he said. "The other day Cardinal [Theodore] McCarrick indicated, when asked if he would refuse Communion to pro-abortion officials, that he did not want a confrontation at the altar. Where better to have a confrontation?" asked the 15-term Congressman. "If the Churchdoe3sn't come out strong and condemn those who want to receive Holy Communion while not in the state of sanctifying grace, then the Church has lost its moral authority and that is tragic."

Hyde termed as distinctly "unhelpful" the stance taken originally by the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin "as a seamless garment metaphor" which has "given people like Ted Kennedy, Dick Durbin [the senior Senator from Illinois] and John Kerry the cover they seek to maintain their Catholic affiliation and at the same time pander to Planned Parenthood."

He added, "It is unfortunate that abortion has become a litmus test for the Democratic party. They dismiss the charge that any criticism of their stand is politics. Their party has been taken over by abortion supporters." Hyde said that he attended a gathering of presidents of Jesuit colleges where Leon Panetta was given an award. "An award this big," he said extending his hands to encompass the table, "for the man who as Clinton's chief of staff defended the veto of the partial birth abortion ban. And again the Church honored him by putting him on the National Review Board." The recognition given Panetta is in contrast to those who, said Hyde, "knock themselves out defending unborn life." How can this be justified when Panetta has been an enemy of unborn life? he asked.

Referring to Illinois Appellate Justice Anne Burke, who resigned as interim head of the Review Board and who, in an earlier interview with me acknowledged that she was one who appointed Panetta to the Board, Hyde said, "How can she-how can he [Panetta]-become the arbiter of matters Catholic?" Justice Burke was never heard from on pro-life issues, he said. "The hierarchy overlooks those inconsistencies [abortion rights] if by their appointment they satisfy prominent Democrats." Asked why the hierarchy is so largely Democratic, he said that their members come from an era when the Democratic party represented the poor. But this is out of date, he emphasized. Today rather than representing the powerless, it represents those who victimize the truly powerless, the unborn. "It has been said that the Catholic hierarchy is the Democratic party at prayer, " he said. "The man who said this was on to something." He added that Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) was a pro-lifer whom he counted on for votes in the House. "The minute he became a presidential candidate, he couldn't wait to change his stand. Likewise Dick Durbin and Paul Simon, when they were in the House, were pro-lifers who could be counted on. When pro-life is a political rather than a moral issue, it can be changed quickly."

A large number of the Catholic hierarchy are "in awe of Teddy Kennedy because he has political power," said Hyde. He left it unsaid but powerfully intimated that if the McCarrick bishops committee waffles on the abortion issue-or if it shuffles the issue to the back of the deck before election--a great dislodging of influential support that has stayed with the bishops during times of great criticism on other issues may well evaporate.

Last month Robert Novak reported on a legal action by the Democratic Congressional Campaign committee that cites House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on violating election law for the flimsiest of reasons-purportedly breaking the RICO statute by soliciting funds for conservative advocacy groups and turning them over to so-called "527" committees which hadn't registered properly with the Federal Elections Commission. The act of bringing suit on RICO is fanciful, reports National Review Washington editor Kate O'Bierne, since the statute was written to fight racketeering. Yet a charge on RICO was earlier brought against Illinois pro-life activist Joseph Scheidler which carried all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court which exonerated him. Whether the Democrats' law suit could temporarily dislodge DeLay, a close friend of Rep. Hyde, is unlikely, but if so, Novak wrote, Hyde could well be tapped for the House's number two spot if DeLay had to temporarily vacate his post to fight the action.

The first Hyde knew about the possibility was when he read it in Novak's column-but it serves notice that he is held in the highest estimation in the Republican caucus as well as beloved by members on both sides of the aisle. This is because the tireless Hyde is enormously influential. Just as Winston Churchill approached the summit of his leadership in old age, suffering even a heart attack at the apex of his influence as British prime minister, Henry Hyde is approaching the summit of his service which, even now, apparently has not been fully realized. As one who has known him for almost 40 years, this writer knows his story well. He was born in 1924 to middle-class Democrats in Chicago, his father collecting coins from pay phones for Illinois Bell, his mother, Monica Kelly Hyde, an Irish Catholic who worked at a downtown department store before quitting to raise a family. He retains the humor and story-telling proclivity that typified the best of the Democrats when it truly sought to represent the blue-collars. Without pretense, he is a Renaissance man, equipped to discuss a litany of thinkers from the sublime-- Edmund Burke-to the wisecracking W. C. Fields. An intellectual, Hyde hides it well. His strength in the House comes from his almost universal acclaim as an honest man of exemplary integrity, one about whom one House member said, "you can play dice with him over the telephone and know that he's telling the truth." He has a talent for defusing arguments by utilizing wholesome wit. Not long ago during a debate he diverted to cite Fields' remark "A woman drove me to drink and I now realize I've never thanked her satisfactorily." The House convulsed in laughter and Hyde went on to make his point.

Hyde was a basketball marvel, an all-city basketball center and played for Georgetown in the 1940s when he tangled with George Mikan of Loyola, once cited as the greatest baksetball player of his time, and did not come off at a disadvantage. His mother imbued him with a love of reading. By 7th grade he was reading Thomas Aquinas. He attended Catholic schools all the way through law school at Loyola. World War II interrupted his education. He was skipper of a landing craft in the South Pacific, once rescuing a Liberty Ship floundering in a typhoon off the Philippines. He singled out his future wife in the stands at a basketball game, married her and with her had four children. Hyde's last Democratic vote was for president Harry Truman, but after this he became concerned that his party was not sufficiently interested in combating communism, serving as a leader of "Democrats for Eisenhower" in 1952. . But it was as part-time night proof-reader at the Sun-Times where he had to edit Eleanor Roosevelt's newspaper column that he determined that, after reading her liberal views, he would become a Republican. He made the switch official in 1958. As a private attorney in the 1950s, Hyde dabbled in show business, serving as a stand-up comedian at civic and charity benefits with professional pianist Norman "Hots" Michaels, a life-long friend whom he met at a bar in Chicago's Sherman Hotel. It was during these sessions that he developed an uncanny sense of timing and the ability to tell a funny story flawlessly. Michaels still plays piano at the Chicago Chop House and on occasion, Hyde joins him.

Hyde's love of theatre led him to politics. He started as a GOP precinct captain in heavily Democratic Chicago, ran for Congress as a sacrificial lamb against Democrat Rep. Roman Pucinski on the heavily Democratic northwest side in 1962 but finally won election to the Illinois House in 1966. He became imbued with the pro-life cause by reading Dr. Charles Rice's essay "The Vanishing Right to Live" and was appalled when asked to support a liberalized abortion law in 1968. He became majority leader of the state House and in 1974 made his second bid for the U.S. House. It was the year of Watergate and he was one of the few Republicans elected (one of only 144) to their first term that year. Although easily the most eloquent of his class, he was unknown outside Illinois until he was asked in 1976 by Rep. Robert Bauman to sponsor an amendment to an appropriations bill eliminating spending on abortion. That year the amendment passed, providing the pro-life movement with its first victory since Roe v. Wade. It has been in force ever since (although states can spend their own money on abortions and some do), known nationally as the Hyde amendment. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops has estimated it saved 550,000 lives over the past quarter century. He won recognition that politically cut both ways: positive, endearing him as national hero of the pro-life forces, and negative, earning enmity from liberals. Others wilted under legislative heat but Hyde never wavered in his defense of unborn life.

While continuing his fight against abortion, he broadened his legislative interests and risked disfavor with some of his allies. As a Republican on the Democratic-controlled International Relations committee (while continuing on Judiciary) during the Reagan administration, he became a leading spokesman against nuclear freeze. He became President Ronald Reagan's chief defender in the House on foreign and social issues.

He was a prime defender of Lt. Col. Oliver North and those White House staffers implicated in arming anti Communist guerillas in central America. He sat in the courtroom when North was tried on criminal charges. At the same time, he risked displeasure from some conservatives by supporting a ban on assault weapons, urging higher spending of foreign aid. He co-sponsored the Family and Medical Leave act, guaranteeing employees unpaid time off to care for a newborn baby or sick relative. He reversed his opposition to the Voting Rights Act after touring Texas and Alabama, listening to the plight of blacks and Hispanics who had walked miles to the polls but denied the opportunity to vote. He won applause for negotiating legislation to restrict appeals by Death Row inmates. Hyde's position on the death penalty has moderated, with his view closely aligned to that of John Paul II. He told me, "I used to be unreservedly for capital punishment. Today I am less staunch. I do believe that the opportunity for spiritual rehabilitation of the offender should not be curtailed." Yet he would not abolish the death penalty since it recognizes the penalty that must accrue for the wanton taking of an innocent life. He believes the penalty should be reserved for those who perpetrate wholesale murder, such as the Oklahoma City bombing.

The Gingrich Revolution in 1994 gave Hyde the chairmanship of Judiciary, but he was not of the Gingrich school. He was one of the early ones who perceived Newt Gingrich as a decidedly mixed blessing, a brilliant theorist but through his communications excesses a magnet for criticism, which ultimately led to the Speaker's downfall. Notwithstanding, Hyde was point man for more than half of Gingrich's Contract with America. The Clinton impeachment ushered in Hyde as an enduring national figure. At first, he was cautious about impeachment. When I wrote critically of his committee's initial hesitation in the Chicago Sun-Times, he good-naturedly chided me as a friend. He resisted a rush to judgment, but increasingly as the evidence mounted, it was clear that he would, however unwillingly, rise to the challenge.

While conservatives cheered his efforts, the Clinton White House slugged back with assaults on his integrity. Hyde courageously did not allow their attacks to deter him and led the House to vote for impeachment. It failed to convict in the Senate, controlled by the GOP 55 to 45, lacking even a majority much less the required two-thirds. A key moment was, according to chief prosecutor David Schippers, when a leading Republican senator told Hyde, "Henry, I don't care if you have witnesses showing that he [Clinton] killed somebody with a gun, you're not going to get a conviction here." In the Senate and elsewhere the Republicans shrank from courage-as when in the 2000 GOP National Convention Hyde and his fellow impeachment managers were kept from the national television audience. "It was like being in the witness protection program, " he says ruefully. But in time the party came to recognize his valor.

Under Republican term limit rules, he had to give up his Judiciary chairmanship. Bafflingly he had to fight the establishment to become chairman of International Relations-but fight he did, and won. Now a widower, with health that is often problematic, Henry Hyde is nevertheless at the zenith of his effectiveness as a lawmaker. Where the Bush administration frequently finds itself under criticism from Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), the Senate Foreign Relations chairman, it turns for support to the very man the Bush people kept from speaking to the 2000 convention. They'd like to forget that now. Just as Churchill who took his second stint as prime minister just days short of his 77th birthday, found legislative work easier stemming from accolades he earned during his days of heroism as Britain's wartime prime minister, Hyde is getting things done easier due to his enormous influence and the respect he has won on both sides of the aisle. As International Relations chairman he has turned his committee into what the National Journal calls "a legislative machine." He has pushed the Bush $15 billion global HIV-AIDS bill, targeting help for 15 African and two Caribbean nations. He handled the Iraq war resolution, the Afghanistan Freedom Support Act, the use-of-force resolution for Afghanistan, the Micro-Enterprise for Self-Reliance Act increasing funding for small business in developing nations, the bill authorizing payment of U.S, dues to the UN (which prompted some criticism from the right), the Sudan Peace Act, the bill for Radio Free Afghanistan, expansion of the Peace Corps act.

Last week Hyde sent his International Relations committee's probers to Colombia to hunt down its heroin source which is being funneled into Chicago, this city ranking first in heroin deaths in the nation. The congressman is alarmed that drug sales in here are being pumped back to Colombia, with U.S. citizens as well as Colombians targets of the FARC and other terrorist groups. Thus his committee is taking a distinctively activist role transcending and in some ways exceeding its Cold War stance with Democrat Chairman Clement Zablocki (D-WI) and Republican Dr. Judd, an ex-medical missionary.

As the unbowed, undefeated champion of principled conservatism and authentic Catholicism's most hallowed public layman, Henry Hyde's blunt views on the waffling role of many of the hierarchy-views he gave The Wanderer last week-are bound to have lasting influence. And many think that will not be the last contribution this great American has given to his Church.

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