He first noted that New York passed the legislation, “hauntingly, on the Feast of the Birth of John the Baptist, whom King Herod would behead because the saint dared to defend the God-given truth about marriage.”
Then he offered a variety of reflections, ranging from gratitude for “those courageous millions who valiantly fought this unfortunate project of social engineering” to worry over the future of religious freedom in New York.
“If the experience of those few other states and countries where this is already law is any indication, the churches, and believers, will soon be harassed, threatened, and hauled into court for their conviction that marriage is between one man, one woman, forever, bringing children into the world,” he said.
He is spot on.
[blockquote]”By the way, as Professor Robert George at Princeton University eloquently points out, in warning about promiscuity, divorce, cohabitation instead of marriage, adultery, and ‘same-sex’ marriage, the Church is hardly some shrill, bitter, reactionary, naysaying prude, but actually prophetically right-on-target,” the prelate continued. “Recent studies … show that the weakening of stable marriage and families is the cause of most social and cultural woes, especially burdensome on poor women and children.”[/blockquote]
What a contrast to most of those TEc bishops we have been hearing from.
The real thing…thank you, Your Grace.
This statement is very good and thorough, covering all the points that deserve to be made, from reminding the public that they are suffering now with the consequences of bad political choices previously made and which the Catholic Church opposed, to calling out without naming names the ‘CINOs’ such as Cuomo who play too dominant a role in NYS politics, to remarking that the pols apparently fear a referendum, which would likely turn down the SS’M’ proposal. Both Cuomos have been rotten apples in a barrel, undermining the Catholic faith and giving it a tainted public image in a state where about 40% are nominally Catholic. ++Dolan or someone else could at another time go into much more depth about how Fr. John Ford in the 1960s preached firmly about the consequences should the Church change its stance on contraception when the advisory committee to Pope Paul VI on the implications of the birth control pill was deliberating, and how decades ago other ‘Catholics’ such as Charles Curran conferred with Kennedys and collaborators coaching them on how to rationalize non-Catholic positions on such issues. 20/20 hindsight! Yet it is important for ++Dolan to be heard on this matter to keep contrasting actual Church teaching and standards with the degenerate practises of some CINOs, and to keep pointing at the consequences.
Give me a break…Thomas More???
#4 Well with a name like Dolan he is unlikely to be a fan of the British monarchy, but he just had to get that chippy RC barb in at the end didn’t he? It undermines the rest of what he had to say, Begorrah, so it did! You can take the Archbishop out of the bogs but you can’t take the bogs out of the Archbishop.
And surprise surprise, it turns out that once again Dolan’s RC church has not been practising what it preaches and still fails to get it.
Hard to see how the reference to St. Thomas More and his placing God before the King is a “chippy RC barb” since the Church of England has also added him to its calendar of Saints and Heroes of the Christian Church–
July 6- Thomas More, Scholar, and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, Reformation Martyrs, 1535
Glad to see you are back, Already Gone (but not for long?) Should we add Alexander VI and Julius II as reforming popes?
Is it truly fair to say that all Irish hate the British? Isn’t there also such things as plenty of Irish Anglicans?!!
It’s highly true that the RC Church needs to get a grip on its allowing abusers to serve. For that matter, so might TEC–just ask the Presiding Bishop(even though she may not answer). But, the second anyone finds a flawless Church, please let me know. I’d love to sign up.
And the “Caesar before God” speech is not unique to Thomas More–Luke and NT Wright are pretty clear on that score, too–and I don’ t think they’re Irish taking potshots at the British. Last I heard, +Wright IS British:
http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Shipwreck_Kingdom.htm
Oops, writing fast–I meant to say, “Aren’t there also such things”…
Pageantmaster. My mother, a good Yankee Methodist and my father a proud Catholic Irishman were both agreed that people who sneeringly threw the word “bog” around in reference to the Irish were putting in neon lights the fact they are bigots of the worst sort. And lately , although it hasn’t been given the headlines of the Catholic cases, it sadly appears the Episcopal Church has its own abuse and scandal problems even floating around the church’s presiding bishop–including some possible resume lies that apparently helped get her the job.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with Archbishop Dolan’s strong defense of traditional Christian morality.
#11 deaconjohn25
[blockquote] people who sneeringly threw the word “bog†around in reference to the Irish were putting in neon lights the fact they are bigots of the worst sort.[/blockquote]
Pretty much what I feel about Archbishop O’Dolan and his repetition of the rabid Catholic slur on the origins of the reformation in the Church of England and our monarchy.
[blockquote]it sadly appears the Episcopal Church has its own abuse and scandal problems even floating around the church’s presiding bishop—including some possible resume lies that apparently helped get her the job.[/blockquote]
Very probably – it appears that the PB has adopted the standards of child welfare she presumably learned at the liberal catholic Mount Angel she attended before CDSP.
[blockquote]Of course, none of this has anything to do with Archbishop Dolan’s strong defense of traditional Christian morality [/blockquote]
If I hear some respect from this Catholic Archbishop I may consider giving his other views some credence, but not before.
Pageantmaster, I’ll grant that perhaps you know some things about Archbishop Dolan that we don’t. But, I don’t believe that everyone who quotes More has in mind trashing the British or Anglicans.
Pageantmaster—In my opinion you have a real psychological problem revolving around hatred. And St. Thomas More was British so that makes it pretty hard to make a case for hatred of the British because someone considers his saintly example of firmness in the Faith heroic in the face of a government that executed him.
And if you are going to change Archbishop Dolan’s name to something more Irish, bigots usually add a Mc not an O so that it fits in with calling all Irish bog dwellers “Micks.”
And I guess you would call me “Anglo-Irish” since my mother’s family came from England with Anne Hutchinson in the 1600’s (providing a lot of Reformed ministers over the generations) while my father’s family came here from Ireland to escape the potato famine (which some reputable -no ax to grind- historians claim was a British caused first Holocaust –unless you also count what Cromwell did to the Irish).
It was listening to the Protestant side of my family throw around the kind of muck you apparently like to throw around (and embarrassed my saintly Protestant mother no end) that led me many years ago to opt for the Irish-Catholic side of my family (who just defended their Faith with rational arguments you could either accept or argue against.)
#25 deaconjohn25
It has not escaped my attention that it seems to be a standard ploy when dealing with those who do not fit with the view the Roman Catholic Church portrays of itself, whether it is the abuse victims who have the temerity to complain and hold that church to account, or newspapers who publish their accounts, or the Anglicans who defend their church against the aggresive prosyletising on their blogs, or indeed those who object to Archbishops who come up with slightly more circumspectly phrased variants of the chippy Catholic canard I regularly read that the CofE is a church which sprang from the loins of Henry VIII, to instead claim that those people are:
1. those with a real psychological problem revolving around hatred;
2. bigotted against the Roman Catholic Church;
3. possessed of ulterior motives;
4. irrational or mentally disturbed; or
5. just bigots.
What I notice does not happen is that there is engagement with the issues of:
– rightful criticism of a church which fails to get the seriousness of how it deals with problems;
– failure to fully deal with sorting out its child welfare issues, including reporting abuse to the police;
– questions of whether a church which conducts itself in the way it does, really is a church Anglicans should all flock to;
– questions of whether this church should be financing its Ordinariate with funds taken by joining priests of that church from Anglican charities;
– an Archbishop who, in an unrelated piece on sexual morality, nevertheless feels the need to chuck in a reference to Henry VIII’s marriage status and the reformation and Thomas More.
Standard fare from what I see, so water off a duck’s back I am afraid, but don’t worry.
For me personally you need not worry, some of my ancestors are old English Catholics, and about 400 years back, there is some Irish ancestry, and whichever branch of the church we worship in, we all get on very well indeed, so you really are well off in your ‘barbs’, though your defensiveness is rather telling.
You two(14/15) should hear all the barbed ribbing in Texas that goes on amongst UT, Aggies, and the occasional OSU-grad transplant.
For the sake of UK translation, even if not needed, UT is University of Texas, the Aggies are grands from Texas A & M University, and OSU is Oklahoma State University. As I’ve heard it, too, Texas Christian or Texas Tech University graduates “just don’t matter”. 🙂
“Permission” re: barbed ribbing has to be granted amongst those who do it, and individuals often have different standards for this. I’ll leave anyone else here to work that out.
But I will say that, IF it is true that ++Dolan is “biting” Anglicans or the British in quoting More, he may well be directing such at all the NY TECers that brought about the sad changes in NY, rather than the C of E.
More may have ended up a saint, but…Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall” is fictional but well-researched–upon its review I don’t know that I’d consider More a teddy bear.
Oops, “grands” should be “grads”.
P–as for defensiveness, I’m sorry that I just couldnt let you bring up the “bog” canard and let what every Irish person I know consider a bigotted dig -along with distorting Archbishop Dolan’s name– without some verbal push back.
As for your seeing references to St. Thomas More unfair or in some way anti-British–How considering a British leader a hero for EVERYONE in the Catholic world in a situation of a government-conscience dispute escapes me.
As for the abuse problem in the Church—There is no such thing as a perfect institution. At least the Church is tackling the problem–not making what have always been considered by Christians grossly sinful (i.e. homosexual sex and abortion) into virtual sacraments.
#18 deaconjohn25 – perhaps I have been unfair to you bearing in mind the divided family background you mention in #14 and against which you reacted. I have known of several cases where families and even worse a husband and wife are divided in their denominations in the most unpleasant and antagonistic way. There are few things worse within a Christian family, or indeed a nation.
Of course, Anglicans do not accept immorality or abortion as a sacrament, save in a few disobedient Provinces such as TEC under heretical leadership. Btw, I am afraid the Catholic Church may be making some efforts at tackling its problems, but there is no evidence it is really prepared to do what is required at the top!
References to More are not anti-British or unfair, they are curiously anti-Reform, anti-Bible in the vernacular, and more than a simplistic government-conscious issue. Shall we lift a few beheaded queens to martyr status as well? No one went for Alexander VI or Julius II. Consider the times and the Borgia Papacy. That is the context.