Archbishop Timothy Dolan yesterday said advocates of gay marriage “are asking for trouble,” arguing that traditional, one-man/one-woman marriage is rooted in people’s moral DNA.
“There’s an in-built code of right and wrong that’s embedded in the human DNA,” Dolan told The Post in an exclusive, wide-ranging interview, a week after becoming the New York Archdiocese’s new leader.
“Hard-wired into us is a dictionary, and the dictionary defines marriage as between one man, one woman for life, please God, leading to the procreation of human life.
“And if we begin to tamper with the very definition of marriage, then we’re going to be in big trouble. We’re not anti-gay — we’re pro the most basic definition of marriage.”
Dolan’s remarks come a week after Gov. Paterson held a press conference to announce his push for legislation allowing gay marriage, a move critics viewed as a provocative insult to the former Milwaukee archbishop on the eve of his installation at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Dolan, who has spoken with Paterson, said, “He does not strike me as the kind of man who would insult anybody, so, no, I would not interpret that as such.”
A burly Irishman who has charmed Gotham with his jokes and penchant for beer, cigars and baseball, Dolan yesterday firmly defended traditional Catholic values, even while arguing that “we can’t allow ourselves to give ammo to our enemies who want to picture us as just this stern, mean, naysaying church.”
For example, while calling abortion “intrinsically evil,” Dolan cited the archdiocese’s Catholic Charities arm for advancing a “pro-life” message by operating a nursery for babies born to inmates at the Bedford Hills women’s prison in Westchester County, which he visited this week.
“That’s pro-life at its best, and that’s where we gain credibility for our message — if we are giving the kind of creative, life-giving alternative to what we call the ‘culture of death,’ ” Dolan said. “So it’s not just that we’re constantly condemning something, it’s that we’re proposing an alternative.”
Dolan and other bishops have criticized the University of Notre Dame for inviting President Obama — who supports abortion rights — to give this year’s commencement speech at the iconic Catholic school and accept an honorary degree.
But Dolan acknowledged he did not speak out against Notre Dame when President George W. Bush received the same invitation in 2001, despite Bush being an avid supporter of the death penalty and, later, of the Iraq War — two positions that deeply conflicted with then-Pope John Paul II’s views.
“On those two hot-button issues that I’d be uncomfortable with, namely the war and capital punishment, I would have to give [Bush] the benefit of the doubt, to say that those two issues are open to some discussion, and are not intrinsically evil,” Dolan said. “In the Catholic mindset . . . that would not apply to abortion.”
Asked about allowing Roman Catholic priests to marry — which is currently forbidden — Dolan said, “I would be on the side of saying I don’t think it should change, and I don’t think it will happen, but I have no fear talking about it.”
The archbishop said he has learned that the Episcopal, Eastern Rite Catholic and Orthodox Christian denominations are “still having a vocation crisis” — a shortage of priests — “even though those priests are married.”
“Marriage is not the answer to all these problems,” he said.
Dolan said the church — aong with other social institutions — for years held the “tragically wrong” belief that child molesters could be “cured” and be allowed to resume work with kids.
“But I think sometimes we forget that the leaders of the Catholic Church [weren’t] the only group in the world that unfortunately had that mistaken approach,” he said.
And now, Dolan said, the policy the American bishops adopted to deal with molester priests on the heels of a nationwide scandal in 2002 is something that other groups should consider emulating.
Asked what he has to say to Catholics alienated from the church by that scandal — or for other reasons — Dolan said, “I would say, ‘Don’t let past hurts, or don’t let preconceived notions, cloud the beauty, the truth, the warmth, the joy, the liberation of being Catholic. Give her another chance. She is your family.’
“Just like we go through with our own family — I did with mine — on periods when I get ticked off with them, I get tired of them, where I don’t care to go to Sunday dinner because I’m mad at my brother or sister and my mom and dad. I recovered from it, and I say there might be some things that I’m angry about in my family. There might be some hurts that I’m nursing. But my family’s all I’ve got.”