Cardinal Dolan's Message To Gays

New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan appeared on ABC News This Week this morning where George Stephanopoulus asked him: "What do you say as a minister, as a pastor – to a gay couple that comes to you and says, 'We love God. We love the Church. But we also love each other, and we –– want to raise a family in faith.' What do you say to them?"  Dolan's response:

“Well, the first thing I’d say to them is, ‘I love you, too. And God loves you. And you are made in God’s image and likeness. And – and we – we want your happiness. But – and you’re entitled to friendship.’ But we also know that God has told us that the way to happiness, that – especially when it comes to sexual love – that is intended only for a man and woman in marriage, where children can come about naturally,” Dolan said. “We got to be – we got to do better to see that our defense of marriage is not reduced to an attack on gay people. And I admit, we haven’t been too good at that.

"We try our darndest to make sure we’re not an anti-anybody. We're still – we're – we're tryin'. We're tryin' our best to do it. We gotta listen to people, like the couple that you just described – that say, 'We don't feel comfortable here.' Jesus died on the cross for them as much as he did for me. But you got a point. Sometimes we're not as successful or as effective as we can be in translating that warm embrace into also teaching what God has told us about the way He wants us

Dolan added that in some ways the Catholic Church is always going to be behind the times because "we’re always supposed to be thinking of the beyond, the eternal, the changeless."  Dolan was one of the most vigorous opponents to sames-sex marriage in New York state. As the head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops he continues to work to thwart LGBT rights nationwide.

UDPATE: Here's the clip.