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.
Excellent observations! Thank you for taking the time to offer that clarification. You are right on target with your commentary. Dolan suffers no fools and I am confident he is working behind the scenes to ensure the bishops of Albany and Rochester are replaced in 2013, with more solidly orthodox ones.