Departing chief legal counsel to bishops reflects on past 20 years

Published: 2007-05-09

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Ask Mark Chopko what occupied his past 20 years and he will talk about congressional testimony or cases before the U.S. Supreme Court involving abortion, euthanasia, religious freedom and church tax exemption. Chopko, 53, recently announced his resignation after two decades as general counsel to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. In July he will leave the USCCB and join the Washington office of the Philadelphia-based Stradley Ronon law firm as a partner and chairman of its nonprofit, religious and tax-exempt organizations practice unit. Veteran church commentator Russell Shaw recently described Chopko as cautious -- perhaps too cautious in his view -- on church-state relations. But this is the lawyer who in the 1990s deliberately defied a judge's order for thousands of church documents, leading to a contempt-of-court citation. Under the contempt order the nation's bishops faced possible fines of $100,000 a day, but he was ultimately successful in challenging the contempt order and obtaining dismissal of an Abortion Rights Mobilization lawsuit to require the Internal Revenue Service to revoke the Catholic Church's tax-exempt status.

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