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Posted on 11/26/2011 1:15:00 PM PST by NYer
NEW YORK, NY, November 25, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In the aftermath of the legalization of gay “marriage” in New York state, some commentators had wondered why, despite their leadership role in the fight against the law, the state’s Catholic bishops’ efforts had ultimately seemed so strangely half-hearted, given the high stakes.
One of these was gay activist Terence Weldon. Writing after the vote at the blog “Queering the Church,” he said: “the really interesting thing about the Catholic bishops and NY gay marriage is not how vigorously they fought against it (as the headlines would have it), but how lukewarm this opposition was overall, and how calm they have been in response.”
Weldon pointed out that of 21 bishops in the state, he could only think of two who had taken any public steps to fight the gay “marriage” law - Archbishop Timothy Dolan and Bishop Nicholas DiMazio. Overall he described the response of the bishops to the passage of the law as “muted and moderate.”
It is a puzzling question, but in a mostly overlooked interview with EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo in August, Archbishop Dolan gave some insight into what happened behind the scenes, suggesting that the bishops had, in fact, deliberately avoided “pulling out the stops.”
Why? Because, Dolan says, he and his fellow bishops had been assured by “political allies” that the bill didn’t have any legs, and that there was no need to expend resources fighting it.
In retrospect, said Dolan, he and the other bishops are wondering if they weren’t being deceived.
“We fell for the assurances of people that we thought were political allies that this wasn’t going to go anywhere,” Dolan told Arroyo, pointing out that there was “some credibility” to this claim, since past efforts to legalize gay “marriage” in New York had failed.
“So we had political allies who said, ‘Bishops, keep your ammo dry, you don’t have to pull out all the stops, speak on principle, speak up against this bill, but don’t really worry because it’s not going to go anywhere.’
“We were told that Raymond, up to six days before the bill passed.”
In reference to the “allies” who misled the bishops, Dolan mused: “Were they caught by surprise? Did they believe the words they were telling us? Or were they being a little bit edgy in saying let’s keep the bishops quiet by assuring them that this isn’t going anywhere? That I don’t know.”
Dolan referred to the passage of the bill as, “Very sad. Very sobering,” and lambasted the manner in which the legislation was passed, describing it as “a very well-oiled, high financed program of manipulation.”
“Not only are we…upset with the bill, we’re upset with the way it was done,” he said. “This was hardly democracy in action.”
“If you were so convinced that this was the will of the people, why didn’t we have a referendum, and why did you literally have to lock the doors and not face any public, because you knew it really wasn’t going to go over, right?”
Dolan’s latter statement appeared to be a reference to the fact that the public had reportedly been barred from committee meetings on the bill.
Dolan also said that the bishops were deceived on the question of the protection of religious freedom in the final bill.
“We said the next thing will be we’ll be sued if we don’t do marriage, we’re going to be harassed if we don’t do receptions, we’re going to be penalized if we don’t allow adoption, we’re going to be booed if we don’t hire these people,” Dolan told Arroyo.
But he said, people responded saying, “You’re paranoid, you’re Chicken Littles. It’s never going to happen.
Well, Dolan said, “It’s already happening.”
“The guaranteed religious liberty wasn’t even given in the bill. We were told it would be, don’t worry, you don’t have to worry, your rights are going to be fine.”
So what did the bishops learn from the experience?
“It sort of taught us that it’s not all that good to trust politicians sometimes,” Dolan said. “And I think some of us bishops think we were being deceived. And I think that could be, shame on us for believing them.”
Related articles:
* The Same-Sex Marriage Bill Catholics and Republicans Passed - First Things
* Where Was the Church on Gay Marriage? - Creative Minority Report
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Duh.
Ditto on the “Duh.” The Archbishop should have named some names. It’s not fair to others to allow them to imagine that such people are their “allies,” either.
“We were told by So-and-So.” Easy, simple way to let the general public know that So-and-So is either incompetent, deceitful, or both.
Don’t rail against the evil, Archbishop, there’s not enough votesto pass it.
Don’t waste money fighting against evil.
How hard could it have been to set the tone in all their churches about this during this time period. They run the dicoeses. They could have done something for free, just sent statements out to be read, if the priests couldn’t be trusted to do a sermon.
I’m sorry but Dolan is a smart guy. To somehow claim he was totally duped by secular politicians saying don’t worry, is passing the blame for not having a hard response to this.
Since when do you not fight something of this magnitude this horrible just to save a few bucks?
Skelos was determined to get this over and done with from the very beginning. They pressured newly elected senator (my senator) Mark Grisanti and promised him a safe district. Within 10 days he recieved 135,000 into his ampaign account. Skelos, Maziarz, Ranzenhofer were all pissed off at me because I was publicly going after Grisanti.
The silence coming from most of the Clergy was deafening. Only a small hand full joined with us to fight, that group was NYFCF with Duanne Motley and his small team.
I’m disgusted by the whole way this was handled by the Church. And Skelos, if he had dome the right thing and put it up for referendum we wouldn’t be in this mess.
All of these morons neeed to be challenged in a primary and we are focused on a few up here to include Skelos, Maziarz and Grisanti. They need to be slapped upside the head.
Everytime I hear a pastor complain about this I simply ask them, where were you? Where was your church? It is because of the inactivity of the Christian community that we are now suffering with a immoral and corrupt legislature.
Christians need to wake up and get involved. We cannot do it alone. I’m burnt out, 16 years as a lone voice in the wilderness in WNY.
Separation of Church and States means the Church does have to recognize gay marriage and the Church can still regard homosexual acts as sinful and say so. Caesar’s image in on this.
This is very hard to believe. I think Dolan is an honest guy, but come on. Everyone knew this was coming up for a vote, including people out of the state. And it was obvious that there was considerable danger that it would pass, with Cuomo pushing strongly for it.
Maybe if the Bishop of Albany hadn’t welcomed the newly inaugurated Cuomo to a celebratory Mass, with his girlfriend sitting next to him in the pew, and then given both of them Communion, it might have helped.
Why haven’t these guys been excommunicated?
Actually, the misinformation came from their lobbyists.
I suggest you take a few minutes to watch the video linked above for the full story. According to Dolan, they were reassured by their own lobbyists that this would not pass.
I think they need to fire the lobbyists, then, and find someone else more capable of doing the job.
Greg Ball may have voted against the bill, but I know he made a deal with Skelos to save face. He is a two-faced liar.
The bishops were fools. Lazy fools.
Agreed... He and I had many angry emails between each other. He and Grisanti both said, don’t threaten me Rus, I said, no threat, I promise....
Dolan was one of the two who did fight against it. He’s making excuses for the other bishops, who did nothing. What he is saying is that they were blindsided. But what he knows is that most of them really didn’t care.
However, he doesn’t want to give the impression that this is OK with the Church...because it’s not and they all know it. So he makes it sound like they were ambushed while skipping down the pathway.
Politically, he probably has to do this; if the Archbishop of New York attacked people such as th bishops of Rochester, Albany and a host of smaller dioceses, the NY Times and the entire liberal press, including the liberal Catholic press, would descend upon his head.
The fact is that many of these bishops are retiring within the next couple of years (a lot of them are the bad appointments of Marcel Jadot or Pio Laghi, bad by our standards but good by the standards of the raving left) and I think the next generation is going to be a lot better.
“Separation of Church and States means the Church does have to recognize gay marriage and the Church can still regard homosexual acts as sinful and say so.”
Look at what has happened in Illinois, the Catholic charities have stopped providing foster care, etc. to children because the state has said they can’t discriminate against gays.
So, I’m sure that will be great for the children.
Which proves it is never “about the children” they are just pawns or cannon fodder to the left.
In retrospect, said Dolan, he and the other bishops are wondering if they weren’t being deceived.
“We fell for the assurances of people that we thought were political allies that this wasn’t going to go anywhere,”
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
-Edmund Burke
-PJ
It never was voted on by the people. They would of voted it down. Thanks to Mario Coumo’s son. He filled him up with enough liberal ideas. So he forced without a citizen vote. He also got paid if you read some accounts. There are some billionaires who inherited their money and paid off.
In the state with one of the most permisssive abortion laws in the country, pre-Roe.
AmChurch has been at work there for decades. Not much Catholic about them.
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