gay marriage

Cardinal Dolan Says That Being Anti-Gay Marriage Doesn’t Mean That the Church Is ‘Anti-Anybody’

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, addresses fellow Catholics at St. Patrick's Cathedral on Ash Wednesday on February 13, 2013 in New York City. Cardinal Dolan celebrated Mass and marked a cross with black ashes on the foreheads of Catholics, which marks the beginning of Lent, a 40-day period of pray and fasting for many Christians. Dolan is expected to travel to Rome in the next month to participate in the College of Cardinals, which will choose a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, who announded that he will step down as Pontiff.
Photo: John Moore/Getty Images

New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan made an Easter Sunday visit to This Week to talk to host George Stephanopoulos about chocolate bunnies. Just kidding! Like almost every conversation this week, theirs was about gay marriage. While we already know which side of Supreme Court case the archbishop is on, he did reveal that he is none too pleased with how the Catholic church has been handling the issue. “I admit, we haven’t been too good at that,” he said. “We try our darndest to make sure we’re not anti-anybody. We’re in the defense of what God has taught us about – about marriage. And it’s one man, one woman, forever, to bring about new life. We’ve got to better … to try to take that away from being anti-anybody.” However, he was sure to add that gay people are only entitled to “friendship,” not “sexual love.”

Dolan acknowledged that making the Church more friendly might be sort of impossible, given the organization’s core purpose. “By nature, the church has got to be out of touch with concerns, because we’re always supposed to be thinking of the beyond, the eternal, the changeless,” he said. “Our major challenge is to continue in a credible way to present the eternal concerns to people in a timeless attractive way.” On the upside, that sure makes dealing with relatively short-term issues like settling sex abuse cases a lot easier.

Cardinal Dolan Scolds Church’s Marriage Defense