Cardinal Dolan: We’re not in the business of being “in touch” with popular opinion

Esactly right.

This may be related: some great thinky person (was it maybe Jacques Ellul?) said that people usually pair together Religion=Magic and Science=Technology, when actually Religion and Science make a true pair, and Magic and Technology make another.

Why? Because Religion and Science are based on an obedient search for truth, i.e. an obedient conformity to the known facts. We respect the facts; we live in accordance, or in harmony with them. We make logical conclusions from them; we may even draw reasonable inferences from them. But the facts rule: the facts are "magisterial".

Magic and Technology, on the other hand, are based on the usefulness of something: "I'm doing this because I think it'll work. That is, it may work for me." It is not based on a desire to actually respect the bigger facts, the bigger laws: empirical technology, like magic, may not be based on a coherent and fully-fleshed -out understanding at all, or even a desire for understanding: only a desire for immediate-term profit, advantage, gain.

So if something is a religious/moral fact (e.g. "the directly intended killing of an innocent person is always prohibited as murder") it is something you have to obediently live by, whether it "works" for you or not.

Very interesting, and I think that makes definite sense, at least from one perspective. Of course, I may be biased. I happen to be a person of faith, and as far as my incredibly stunted mind is concerned, most technology is magic anyway. Even old technology. More than fifty years ago somebody figured out how to take a moving picture with sound and send it invisibly through the air to a box in people’s living rooms. Magic! Gotta be magic. :-)

"...But we also know that God has told us that the way to happiness, that - especially when it comes to sexual love – that is intended only for a man and woman in marriage, where children can come about naturally,”

He was clear on the doctrine, but it just saddened me that he was forced into a defensive position, saying to advocators of same-sex marriage: "I love you, too. And God loves you. And you are made in God’s image and likeness. And – and we – we want your happiness. ... defense of marriage is not reduced to an attack on gay people..." etc. All that is certainly true and we are forced to say it over and over.

Anyone who is against same-sex marriage is NOT on the attack, that person is in a DEFENSIVE position at the get-go. It is those who seek approval for the gay lifestyle who are on the attack.

Just my reflection on the state of affairs.

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