Anti-Gay, Dick Cheney Like Timothy Dolan to Become Cardinal

In yet another sign that the Roman Catholic Church is continuing to lurch down the road to a totalitarian rule that will be increasingly hostile to LGBT citizens, the Vatican has announced that Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, will be receiving a cardinal's red hat. Dolan has already shown himself to be viciously anti-gay and all too prone to try to interfere with the nation's and New York State's civil laws. He's also shown himself to be a pathological liar and has made wild - and totally unsubstantiated - claims that Catholic parishes have been threatened with lawsuits for not not performing same sex marriages. Never mind that there is an express exemption in New York's law that would make any suit lawsuit baseless. Dolan has disingenuously claimed that gay rights are a threat to religious freedom - which he apparently defines as allowing the Catholic Church to dictate religious belief to everyone. If there is anyone who Dolan reminds me of it's Dick "Emperor Palpatine" Cheney: arrogant, dishonest, and ruthless. And these are the characteristics endorsed by Rome. It speaks volumes about the Church leadership and none of it is good. Here are highlights from the New York Times:

IT is not a good time for the Roman Catholic Church in America, but Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, the cardinal-designate of New York, has made it his mission to remind people that there is more to the church than scandal.

Pope Benedict XVI plans to make Archbishop Dolan a cardinal at a ceremony on Feb. 18 in Rome, giving him the red hat that signifies his new stature as a prince of the church. But even now, two and a half years after Archbishop Dolan arrived at the helm of the New York Archdiocese, his personality is not well known outside of religious circles. And the question remains whether this distracted, liberal, scandal-weary city is willing to listen to a conservative voice . . .

Since arriving in New York from Milwaukee, Archbishop Dolan, who was raised in Ballwin, Mo., has most often caught the public’s attention as the traditional unyielding Catholic voice of “no” — to same-sex marriage, to abortion and to sex education in public schools.

“What weighs on me the most,” he [Dolan] said in an interview in December, “is the caricature of the Catholic Church as crabby, nay-saying, down in the dumps, discouraging, on the run. And I’m thinking if there is anything that should be upbeat, affirming, positive, joyful, it should be people of faith.”

Catholicism in the key of joy is not an easy sell. Archbishop Dolan is a rising star within the Catholic Church in America — even before his elevation to cardinal, he was the elected president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. But reframing the church’s public image will take much more than a radio show on the archdiocese-run satellite Catholic Channel, which reaches only those already interested enough to tune in.

“Among Catholic insiders, Dolan is a huge hit,” said John L. Allen, a correspondent for The National Catholic Reporter who recently wrote a book about the archbishop. “But the problem for Dolan is that he has aspirations beyond just playing to that insider crowd. And at that level, he’s got to find a way to make himself visible in the national conversation on something other than the controversial policies” of the church on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.

[H]e describes the threat to religious liberty he sees in the government’s taking government contracts away from Catholic charities for refusing to offer adoption services to same-sex couples. “We see within our culture a drive to neuter religion, to push it back into the sacristy,” he said. “And, gosh darn it, we are worried about it.”

If Dolan doesn't like the image the Catholic Church has come to have for many, then he needs to stop pushing the lies and bigoted policies that promote that image. With one out of three people who were raised Catholic - fully 1/10th of the U.S. population - having left the Church, it's clearly the Church that needs to change and come out of the 13th century.