New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan has stood by his recent dealings with President Trump in the face of criticism from Catholic Democrats, insisting Catholics believe in dialogue and engagement.
“Now the left wing is snotty about the fact that I was part of a conference call with Catholic leaders, and I just say, ‘Look, are we in the sacred enterprise of accompaniment and engagement and dialogue, or are we not?” he asked in an online Facebook interview with Jesuit Father Matt Malone, editor-in-chief of America Media.
“When you do it, you risk criticism on both sides. When you don’t do it, well, then what do you do? You become Amish,” he said.
On Friday, Catholic Democrats from the George Soros-funded group Faith in Public Life (FPL) posted an online letter blasting Cardinal Dolan and other bishops for engaging in a phone call last Saturday with President Trump, insisting that the president is “not pro-life.”
“Instead of challenging Trump’s cruelty toward immigrants, denial of climate change and racism, Cardinal Dolan praised the president,” the letter declared. “He even joked he talked to Trump more than his own mother.”
“The cardinal then went on Fox News to thank Trump for his sensitivity to ‘the feelings of the religious community,’” the letter lamented.
In his interview Friday, Cardinal Dolan said he takes heat from the right and from the left, which is the price of engaging in dialogue.
“Put it in perspective: I’m getting much more criticism from those on what you might call the ‘right,’ who are saying, ‘Why in the world did you work with Sen. Schumer on the sustenance package” and with Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio? Dolan asked.
Dolan said his approach is an answer to Pope Francis’s call for “bridge-building.”
The Catholic program director at Faith in Public Life is John Gehring, the former communications director at Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, a group created by John Podesta, former campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton, to plant the seeds of “revolution” in the Catholic church. The plot to subvert the Catholic church from the inside was revealed by WikiLeaks in 2012, when it published a series of Podesta’s emails.
Faith in Public Life is not the only left-wing group to attack Cardinal Dolan for engaging in dialogue with President Trump.
On Tuesday, the progressive National Catholic Reporter (NCR) published an editorial lambasting the cardinal for “capitulating” to the Republican Party.
In their op-ed, the newspaper’s editors insisted that “the cardinal archbishop of New York has inextricably linked the Catholic Church in the United States to the Republican Party and, particularly, President Donald Trump.”
As an unabashed lackey for the Democrat Party, NCR said the Trump administration had “masterfully manipulated” the U.S. bishops into participating in a conference call with the president, during which Cardinal Dolan reportedly said he considers himself a “great friend” of Trump and that he was “honored” to start the comments on the call.