Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York says
the Roman Catholic Church has been “caricatured as being anti-gay.”
Dolan made his comments during a Meet
the Press interview that NBC will broadcast on Sunday.
Host David Gregory touched on the issue
of gay marriage, noting that Illinois just became the 16th
state to legalize the institution.
“Regardless of the church teachings,
do you think this is evolving in such a way that it's ultimately
going to be legal everywhere?” Gregory asked.
Or, he added, will there be “a
backlash?”
“I think I'd be a Pollyanna to say
that there doesn't seem to be kind of a stampede to do this,”
Dolan answered. “I regret that.”
When asked why the church is losing on
the issue, Dolan said: “Well, I think maybe we've been outmarketed
sometimes. We've been caricatured as being anti-gay.”
Dolan insisted that the church was not
“anti-anybody” and would not abandon its opposition.
“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's a tough battle,” he said.
Dolan protested loudly in 2011 against
passage of a marriage bill in New York, calling same-sex marriage
“Orwellian social engineering” and an “ominous threat” to
society.
(Related: Timothy
Dolan says Catholic bishops were “deceived” on New York gay
marriage.)