Cardinal Dolan: If Not for Religious Violations, Church Would Have Been Obamacare 'Cheerleaders'

Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press with David Gregory, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York said that the Catholic Church ideally would have backed Obamacare but for President Obama’s attempt to cram down violations of the First Amendment on Obamacare’s back. “We bishops have been really kind of in a tough place because we’re for universal, comprehensive, life-affirming healthcare,” Dolan said, emphasizing that church support for universal government healthcare dated back to 1919 in the United States. “So we’re not Johnny-come-latelies. We’ve been asking for reform in healthcare for a long time.”

Dolan added, however, that the Obamacare mandate which stifled the religious expression of Catholic businessowners had sunk Catholic support for Obamacare. “Where we started bristling and saying, ‘Uh-oh, first of all this isn’t comprehensive, because it’s excluding immigrant and it’s excluding the unborn baby,’ so we began to bristle at that.” He continued by saying that President Obama’s administration had asked the church members to “violate” the “dictates of our conscience.”

Dolan said, “we began to worry and draw back and say, ‘Mr. President, please, you’re really kind of pushing aside some of your greatest supporters here.  We want to be with you, we want to be strong. And if you keep doing this, we’re not going to be able to be one of your cheerleaders.'”