The Rev. Bernard Healey is the lobbyist for the Diocese of Providence with the state legislature. He is also the pastor of Saint Ambrose Church in Lincoln.

The Providence Journal / Connie Grosch

The Rev. Bernard Healey sits in his office in Saint Ambrose Church, Lincoln, beneath a copy of a 1916 sign, “HELP WANTED. NO IRISH NEED APPLY.”

The 41-year-old pastor says the sign is from Boston but could just as well have been from Providence, where anti-Irish discrimination also raged.

As for why he displays the sign, he says, “It reminds me of my ancestral roots.”

He visits Ireland every year.

I went to see Father Healey — in fact, began by taking in the 7:30 a.m. daily Mass — to find out more about him and how he approaches his other job, as State House lobbyist for the Diocese of Providence.

“I’m first and foremost a parish priest,” he says. And although he goes to the capitol to lobby, he says he at times ministers to legislators. “Some of them confide in me… They’re involved in their church, they have a problem with their pastor, or, you know, something at the Catholic school their child might be in, or they have somebody in their family sick, or they’re sick themselves. I try to offer what I think is most important, my spiritual support.”

At the Mass at Saint Ambrose, the statues, in keeping with the approach of Easter, were covered in purple cloth. A crown of thorns was prominently displayed.

In his homily, Father Healey spoke of the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, “the chair from which our Holy Father the Pope reigns and has reigned since the time of Saint Peter, a chair in which the teachings of God are brought forth to the world.”

He declared, “It is a feast of unity, that we are one catholic, holy, and apostolic church, that we are founded on the rock of Saint Peter, that we are founded on the truths of the Gospel.”

Father Healey is a fierce foe of abortion and gay marriage, and don’t even get him started on embryonic stem-cell research.

On the other hand, you also can find him opposing budget cuts for people in need.

He once wrote in a diocesan newsletter, “I like to think that among the high-paid lobbyists for tobacco companies, casinos, nightclubs, and alcohol manufacturers who so vigorously lobby for the ‘vices’ of this life, I stand in contrast as I lobby for ‘virtues’ that lead to the next life.”

Bishop Thomas Tobin tells me, “I’ve been really impressed by Father Healey and his competence. He knows the State House extremely well and he represents the Church very well.”

You may remember Father Healey’s dad, retired Family Court Judge Edward V. Healey Jr., who is 84.

Perhaps you didn’t know that, before becoming a judge, Healey was the top aide to Republican Gov. Christopher Del Sesto.

Father Healey told me that after he became a priest in 1995, his first post was as associate pastor of St. Mary Star of The Sea in Narragansett, and right off the bat he was assigned to celebrate a memorial Mass for former Democratic Gov. Dennis J. Roberts, who defeated Del Sesto in 1956 but lost to him in 1958.

Hello, Rhode Island!

Father Healey, who grew up in Cranston, one of nine children, almost chose to become a lawyer-politician himself. He majored in politics at The Catholic University of America in Washington, where he worked part-time for the U.S. Senate, supervising a parking lot for staffers. It was “a great job” whose perks included low-cost haircuts and reduced-price meals. In fact, he says, “We could get school supplies cheaply at the Senate commissary.”

One way he plays out his interest in politics is through visiting presidential libraries around the country. As we spoke, he sipped coffee from a Harry Truman Library mug embossed with the president’s famous saying, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

Father Healey says, “I’d forgotten how connected he was with the Irish. His regiment that he was in charge of in the first World War was largely Irish immigrants. And then he got his start because of the Irish political boss [Tom] Pendergast.”

The priest also is a big New England Patriots fan and served my coffee in a Pats mug. Of course, Bishop Tobin is a huge Pittsburgh Steelers fan. “We’re praying for his conversion,” Father Healey said.

Bishop Tobin told me, “There aren’t any prayers that are that effective!”

Father Healey also loves movies with political themes, classics such as The Manchurian Candidate, All the King’s Men, The Best Man, and Seven Days in May. Some of the films have been remade, but he asserts, “The original is always better,” and he’s right.

Saint Ambrose is a small church with just over 600 families in the former mill village of Albion. Father Healey says he enjoys his duties there, but the work is only part-time. In the afternoons, you can often find him at the State House, and he likes that too.

He says he is a political independent. He is persistent and articulate — on the side he also writes editorials for the diocesan newspaper, The Providence Visitor — and it’s hard to imagine my ever winning an argument with him.

Like Bishop Tobin, Father Healey, who did seminary studies at Belgium’s Catholic University of Louvain, knows exactly what he wants to say and how to present it.

For example, I was reviewing with him various bills on which he lobbies. I mentioned his pushing antiabortion legislation. He said, “We promote pro-life legislation that protects the unborn and women.”

When I noted that he opposes same-sex weddings, he said, “We support and fully promote the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman.”

Last year, I recalled, he successfully pushed a bill to give tax credits to corporations that donate to scholarship programs for students at Catholic and other private schools. He responded, “We promote educational choice for poor children.”

I disagree with him on each of these measures. But I do applaud his efforts, sometimes in concert with the Poverty Institute at Rhode Island College, to battle proposed cuts in state help for people in need.

He says poor people here and nationally lack the powerful voice and access that so many special interests have. “Poor people can’t buy tickets to fundraisers. Poor people can’t provide junkets for congressmen. Poor people usually are working and can’t afford to take time off from work to advocate on their own behalf. Poor people are usually not invested in the system.”

Indeed, often they don’t vote. “They live on the margins,” Father Healey said.

Whatever the issue, I wondered what he actually says to legislators, especially Catholics. Does he tell them that they have a duty to vote as the Church wants them to?

No. But he reports he does say, “This is what the Church teaches, and this is why, and I think you need to think about that and, as a Catholic, you need to consider that.”

Why should a legislator, as a legislator, care what the Church thinks?

“I would hope that any legislator, regardless of their faith, would take an interest in what the Church says, but also what their own faith says, what their own faith tradition teaches. I think to separate morality and faith from your decisions as a government official is a mistake.”

It drives him to distraction when, for example, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, a Catholic, agrees abortion is wrong but says his reading of the Constitution compels him to be “pro-choice.”

Father Healey says, “I don’t know how you can say, ‘I’m personally opposed to the murder of innocent children but I won’t do anything to stop it.’ ”

He says that would be like saying, “I’m personally opposed to slavery but it’s the law of the land, so I don’t want to change it.”

When he talks to legislators who are not Catholics, Father Healey says, he makes a point of stressing general principles. “I talk about what we support. We support life, we support marriage, we support the poor. The Pope has said that, you know, we’re not a church of noes, we’re a church of yeses.”

Father Healey dissents — even vehemently — from the way marriage-equality advocates plead their case at the State House. For example, there was that sign at a recent rally that said, “IF YOU DON’T LIKE GAY MARRIAGE, DON’T MARRY A GAY!”

The priest says, “It’s not that I don’t like gay marriage. It’s that I support marriage — authentic, traditional marriage.”

He adds, “Marriage is a social good. It has effects outside of individuals. It’s about the common good of our society. And to lessen and cheapen marriage, as it consistently has been — the rate of divorce is too high, the rate of cohabitation is too high — all of these things have adverse effects on the common good of our society.”

It infuriates him when advocates of legalizing gay marriage suggest that opponents are bigoted. “It’s blatantly false and a lie and it’s demagogic,” he thunders.

As you see, Father Healey can get quite worked up. But he also can be quite funny.

I asked if he had any good jokes about priests.

Why yes he did. Here’s one:

“Charlie goes to see his pastor, and he says, ‘Father, I’m very upset. My dog’s died. I’d like to have a funeral Mass.”’

Slipping into a brogue, Father Healey says the old Irish pastor replies, “Well, Charlie, we can’t be burying dogs now. We don’t do that. I’m sorry.”

The pastor adds, “Go down the street to that church down there, that nondenominational church. Maybe that fellow there will do it for you.”

Charlie comes back and reports, “They said they would do it.”

The pastor says, “Oh, that’s great.”

Charlie says, “Yeah, and I told them I’d give an offering of $1,000.”

The priest says, “Well, Charlie, why didn’t you tell me the dog was a Catholic!”

M. Charles Bakst is The Journal’s political columnist.

mbakst@projo.com