Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York is perhaps the most prominent Catholic cleric in the US, a favorite of the media, even buddies with Stephen Colbert. In a recent interview, he tries to explain why the Catholic church is not anti-gay and suggests that this is largely a problem of marketing, that advocates of same-sex marriage have managed to pull the public relations wool over the eyes of the public to make them seem like they are the ones on the side of history and painting the church in a bad light.
How has this happened? “Well, I think maybe we’ve been outmarketed sometimes,” Dolan told Gregory. “We’ve been caricatured as being anti-gay.”
Being against marriage equality does not mean the church is “anti-anybody,” Dolan insisted, and added:
“When you have forces like Hollywood, when you have forces like politicians, when you have forces like some opinion molders that are behind it, it is a tough battle.”
What is extraordinary is the ability of people like Dolan to suggest that their stances are actually the humane ones and that the church has even been accused of being too accepting of gays.
“We get backlash from those who think we are too gracious, and compassionate, and loving, and accepting of gays,” Dolan said after celebrating Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Mind you, he says this even though the church teaches that homosexual behavior is sinful and after he himself says that the church strongly opposes same-sex marriage and vows to vigorously fight it with the same vigor with which the church has fought abortion.
The cognitive dissonance is weak in this one.
“Well, I think maybe we’ve been outmarketed sometimes,” Dolan told Gregory.
Well, he has a point. When the homophobe’s position is based on exactly zero facts, marketing (or “spin” as I like to call it) is really the only thing they got.
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“We’ve been caricatured as being anti-gay.”
As I pointed out on Ed’s blog, he doesn’t seem to understand what caricature means.
Fearless moral leaders, those cardinals are. Uggh.
The problem is deeper. We understand the Catholic church too well. It’s an endless source of wonder and amusement for most people, including a lot of Catholics.
The RCC has been on the wrong side of history for about forever.
They supported the Divine Right of Kings. They were one of the last groups to oppose slavery. At various times in history, the RCC owned slaves. Same with serfdom. Antisemitism was invented in the NT bible but the RCC kept the flame burning for nearly 2,000 years and this led right to the Holocaust. Which they didn’t do much about even though they might have been able to. Pacelli, Pope XII has been called Hitler’s Pope. And we all remember the Inquisition and the Crusades, two of the latter being against…other xians.
That moral high ground of theirs is below most people’s basements. Rather than wait for them to wake up, people long ago fought wars to get rid of them and moved on. Those groups are called…Protestants although these days there are others. We are one of them.
This is like saying that the public’s vast preference to eat ice cream over shit is just a marketing failure.
In some fairness, the Raping Children Church had a lot of assistance from Martin Luther whose antisemitism in his writings was as bad if not worse the anything in Mein Kampf.
Martin Luther was…a Catholic!!!
He did become a Protestant later in his life though.
He insisted? Ohhhhh, that means what he said is true and we must not point out the glaring, I mean, painfully GLARING, obviousness of the fail.
How can you claim to be against equality yet it not be evidence of your negative perceptions of the value, or otherwise, of a non-heterosexual person?
Seriously, I find myself astonished that a person can begin a statement asserting that they are against people being treated equally, yet want to pretend that they are not ‘anti’ whichever group is being discriminated against. It is mind-bendingly surreal.
Actually, his antisemitism began after he left the church and founded the Lutheran Church.
“We’ve been caricatured as being anti-gay.”
Yeah, when all you have to do is quote them, it’s not a caricature…..
“This is like saying that the public’s vast preference to eat ice cream over shit is just a marketing failure.”
I’d like permission to use this in future conversations, haha!
I guess you are supposed to love and admire an Irishman who can look you in the eye and tell a bald-faced lie with a straight face. It’s such a talent!