Not Archbishop Dolan's Finest Hour

June 29, 2011
By Rod Dreher

It is not terribly surprising that gay marriage advocates won a decisive legislative victory in New York state last week. After all, New York is one of the nation's most socially liberal states, and could be expected to be on the vanguard of the steadily rising trend toward legalizing same-sex marriage. What is startling, at least in theory, is that they triumphed without much of a fight from the Roman Catholic Church.

The New York Times called the church's passivity "befuddling to gay-rights advocates." New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan didn't travel to the state capitol to lobby against the bill, but rather made his strongest statement against it on a call-in radio program. In 2009, after assuming the office once held by the politically potent Cardinals Francis Spellman and John O'Connor, Dolan told reporters that he wouldn't "shy away" from the gay marriage battle. But in the end, Dolan, who is also president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, did little more than run the flag of Catholic teaching up the familiar flagpole. His heart clearly wasn't in the fight.

The archbishop was undoubtedly correct to describe the pro-gay forces as "very strong" and "well-financed" -- but what is the Archdiocese of New York, chopped liver? Though greatly diminished in power from the glory days of Cardinal Spellman, there is no bully pulpit like the one Dolan has. Given the razor-thin margin of victory for the pro-gay side, it's entirely possible, even likely, that a fully engaged Archbishop Dolan could have won this round for his side. the rest