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Loading ...New Archbishop to challenge gay marriage in NY
04.15.2009 3:34pm EDT
(New York City) New York Archbishop-designate Timothy Dolan said he will use the prominence of his new job to challenge gay marriage legislation in New York, an effort that has gained momentum thanks in part to Gov. David Paterson.
Hours before his installation Wednesday, Dolan said he will work with the state’s other Roman Catholic bishops to defeat legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage. Paterson, who is expected to attend Dolan’s installation Mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, is set to introduce a gay marriage bill Thursday.“You’ll find I don’t shy away from those things. I wouldn’t sidestep them,” said Dolan, in a news conference. “You could expect me to articulate that with all the clarity … I can muster.”
Dolan, 59, the former Milwaukee archbishop, is known for defending Catholic orthodoxy with a friendly face. His warmth and wit were on display in the cathedral Tuesday night at the first of his two installation services.
He threw his arms around cheering priests and friends, thanked his mother repeatedly for her support, blew kisses to well-wishers and joked that the throne-like archbishop’s chair on the altar was “quite comfortable” when he sat in it for the first time during the ceremony.
At the news conference Wednesday, Dolan said he wanted to show the great happiness that can be found in serving and belonging to the church. He lamented the popularity of do-it-yourself spirituality in the United States, saying people “want to believe without belonging.”
“We’ve got to get the impression across that to commit oneself totally, exclusively in an undistracted way … is one of the most freeing, liberating, joyful styles of life you can lead,” he said.
Dolan noted that studies have found that priests are overwhelmingly happy with their work, despite a widespread impression that they’re demoralized by the clergy sex abuse crisis and overwork. The number of U.S. priests has been shrinking steadily for decades.
“Joy is contagious – is it ever,” Dolan said. “When parents see priests who are happy, who are free, who are focused who have a life of meaning … that’s going to work. That’s going to click – I’m hoping.”
The Archdiocese of New York is the nation’s second-largest diocese after Los Angeles, yet it is the most prominent seat in American Catholicism.
Dolan’s predecessors include Cardinal Francis Spellman, who was so influential that his residence was dubbed “the powerhouse.” Cardinal John O’Connor was the most forceful Catholic voice in the national debates of his era, especially on abortion.
Dolan succeeds New York Cardinal Edward Egan, 77, who is retiring after nine years.
The archdiocese covers a region with 2.5 million parishioners in about 400 churches and an annual budget estimated to be at least half a billion dollars.
Its vast Catholic service network includes 10 colleges and universities, hundreds of schools and aid agencies, and nine hospitals that treat about a million people annually.
Dolan faces challenges identical to those for bishops nationwide: strengthening the finances of Catholic schools and parishes as Catholics move from urban areas to the suburbs, boosting the low rate of Mass attendance, and serving a growing number of Latinos and other immigrants.
Dolan said the American church has always been a shelter for newcomers. But he said Catholicism has become a “settled, accepted religion.”
He said he wanted to revive “a sense of energetic solicitude for the Catholic people.”
Dolan is a St. Louis native and the oldest of five children. He holds a doctorate from The Catholic University of America and is former rector of the North American College in Rome, considered the West Point for U.S. priests.
What a JOKE! The Catholic Church involved in Marriage Equality!! You would think that the church would shut their fat trap and deal with poverty, hunger, homelessness, war and the like… Just another reason to avoid ALL of the cults and believe in yourself. My borthers and sisters, I am ready and able to fight for our rights by ANY means necessary.
Someone needs to put a bullet in, or throw a pipe bomb at this godd*amned inquisitor piece of fecal matter. I am sick of domestic terrorists and hypochristian mullahs trying to tell me or my fellow gays who to marry, who to f*ck and how. Freedom of religion comes with the price of leaving others, namely gay people, the f*ck alone.
It’s time we escalate the struggle and stop playing nicey nicey with bigots!!!
I wouldn’t be surprised if some kid he molested comes out of the word work some day soon.
Death to all pedophile inquisitors!! Especially the ones who try to tell us, whom to marry.
The Catholic Church is not qualified to draw a breath, let alone express an opinion, about sexuality in light of the pedophile scandal.
The US government recognizes the Vatican as a foreign country. Even if the Vatican peddles a religion, they have no right to subvert our country or to blackmail our legislators, under threat of excommunication, into representing a foreign interest instead of their constituents.
This archbishop is a spy. And he has the gall to teach us about morality.
i challenge this holier than me person to stay out of our civil rights or starting paying personal and proerpty tax on the full wealth of hte Catholic Church
It’s civil marriage (not religious) so it’ none of his business. He can move on now to helping the poor. See how good I am at saving people time?
isn’t this enough to pull their tax-exempt status????
The Catholic Church’s NYC Arch-Bishop designate is a hypocrite is claiming to support “gay rights” without supporting all rights. The Catholic Church in my eyes is one of the biggest cults on the earth. Poverty, homelessness,orphans are ignored. MILLION$ were $pent to fight against our rights in Ca. by the Catholic Bishops Of America and Knights Of Columbus. The religious community fails to recognize the STATE controls marriage not the other way around. Without a state issued marriage, you are NOT married in the US. Without STATE sanction no shaman, llama, reverend , Grand rabbi, rabbi, pope, cardinal, arch-bishop, bishop, monsignor, nor priest, etc. can marry someone and be recognized by secular society. If you wish favorable tax treatment, the STATE and only the STATE has the power to issue a marriage LICENSE. Whether a court or legislature legalizes same sex marriage is immaterial. You cannot denegrate the courts or legislature because your religious beliefs. They control the marriage licenses. Remember that little sticking point of “separation of church and state”. Keep it in the pulpit. Start spending church money (TAX DEDUCTIBLE) to influence secular matter and that violates the First Amendment. I will do everything to strip your tax exempt status if you don’t stay out of the secular legal system.
Marriage/Holy Matrimony is one of the seven sacraments in the Roman Catholic Church.
Marriage is *not* a sacrament for Protestants. For them there are only two: Baptism and Holy Communion.
Is this new Cardinal trying to make Roman Catholicism the official religion of the State of New York?
Ken, I like your stance about the Church — they are also a foreign nation engaged in actively undermining our democracy. They should NOT be receiving tax-exempt status. How would we feel the English coming here complaining about our lack of a monarchy, and how immoral the revolution was, and getting tax-exempt status to disseminate this rubbish?
That wouldn’t last long, yet we’ve these people who follow a foreign government taking away our rights and those of others. And we are paying their way. Catholics and others must decide whether they are traitors to the American Constitution, or good Catholics (or others). After a lifetime suffering their attacks upon me and my friends, I proudly declare my hatred for them.
The thing that I find so funny these days is that Mel Gibson (producer of “The Passion of the Christ”) is getting a divorce from his wife of 28 years. Robyn Gibson filed for a divorce after finding out that Mel is seeing a 24 year old Russian singer named Oksana Popcheca. Mel has his own church on his private property. He doesn’t seem to take his marriage vows to seriously when it comes to getting a young piece of a**. This is what all these anti marriage equality humanoids want to protect. At least he did procreate 7 children. If these humanoids want to protect marriage so much then make divorce illegal or say that if you don’t have any children within “X” amount of years then the marriage is annulled.
’nuff said
Once again, as expected, the Catholic Church, in it’s almighty hate filled agenda, has made an appearance to foil our fight in seeking out our equality and civil rights. Would we as a community not feel abandoned if they did not show up to stomp all over our parade? If it is not the Catholic Church in the West spreading hate towards Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual and Transgendered people, then it is the radical sectors of the Muslim and Islam faith in the East, who not only are spreading hate and murdering the same group but also demeaning their women as if they were dirt under their feet! What is the answer, how are we suppose to deal with these religious extremists that are so thick sculled and blind to human rights? It appears to me that religion has certainly lost it’s way, it is a tragedy of humongous proportions that it is taking so many lost souls down with it!
The governor should ignore the Archbishop, just as he should ignore anyone who would suggest passing a law forcing the Roman Catholic church to abolish its requirements for priestly celibacy. I agree the Catholic church must not be forced to marry same sex couples, but they also must not interfere with the religious rights of other churches who do want to marry same-sex couples.
Defend religious freedom by defending marriage equality.
Defend marriage equality by defending religious freedom.
The Roman Church position on homosexuality is so bizarre. It ignores certain inconvenient truths one should endeavor to bring to their attention (and to the attention of their cherry-picking parishioners):
1. The founder of the Catholic Church, Saul-Paul of Tarsus was a misogynistic, homophobic repressed homosexual, as anyone can glean from reading his silly epistles.
2. Priestly vows of chastity — actually any repressed sexuality — is as much “against nature” as any of the so-called “sexual perversions” and results in a priesthood rife with pedophilia. All of the priests who molested (and probably continue to molest) male children are by definition homosexual. This is a fact neither non-pedophilic gays nor the Church likes to acknowledge, but a fact nevertheless. (I am NOT saying homosexual pedophilia is all right; only that it is a fact of life, nor am I saying that all homosexuals — or, for that matter, many of them — have pedophilic inclinations, so please hold off the flaming.)
3. The main reason the Catholic Church is against homosexuality is not that the Bible tells us it is wrong, but because, as a pro-life advocate once told me, the Church has a vested (you should pardon the pun) interest in the production of offspring: the fodder for new Catholics, after all. Gays tend not to be procreative. The Church leaders are keen enough to know that the proscriptions of Leviticus were designed to keep desert warlord tribes well stocked with defensive troops and that the only homosexuals in Saul-Paul’s contemplation were temple prostitutes, almost always trans people of pagan faiths.
4. The Catholic Church would like us to believe that Jesus himself was against homosexuality, but anyone who befriended common whores and traveled about in the company of a dozen men (including “John, the one He loved best” — duh!) hadn’t a homophobic bone in his body.
To put it country simple: the Church is full of bull. (Or should we say, Papal bull?)
Maybe I should send him a copy of “Rum, Sodomy and the Lash.” Chances are he knows all three.