Sadly you are historically correct. Yet there comes a time in every saga, when the tide turns. Dolan strikes me as a man who while giving an affable public personna, is ready to take definitive action, despite the cost, and reframe the argument since the times are as bad as they are and the carnage so great. However history suggests you are probably right.
Let’s just put the abortion issue aside for a moment. I know most people don’t want to avert their gaze from this, but hear me out:
The central issue here is “who can call themselves a Roman Catholic?”
It always comes about in these types of threads that the more devout and observant Catholics will say “Well, so-and-so can call himself a Catholic, but his actions prove he isn’t one.”
Well, that’s all very well and nice, but here’s the thing: So-and-so *is* calling himself a Catholic, and he’s using that to gain votes from low-information voters who are, perhaps, more devoutly Catholic. These types of politicians are trading on their Catholic-by-assertion-not-acts branding to gain votes.
The First Amendment recognizes five fundamental freedoms. One of those freedoms is the freedom of association. Most everyone sees this as a “positive right” - ie, that you’re allowed to associate and form associations with those of a like mind.
Ah, but the “freedom of association” is also a negative right. Just as a Jewish congregation is under no pressure or encouragement to admit an admitted and avowed nazi or anti-semite, neither is the Catholic church forced to admit and/or recognize those who claim to be Catholic, yet act in ways completely contrary to the Church’s teachings or canon law. In other words, the Church has the right (per the freedom of association) to throw out and disavow people who are heretics or acting in ways not in keeping with the creed and canon law of the Church.
It’s long past the time that the Church should have quit allowing politicians who claim to be Catholic make election hay off these claims unless they walk their talk.