Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York on Sunday clarified what he believes Pope Francis meant when he said the Catholic Church could support civil unions for same-sex couples.
“He didn’t come right out and say he was for them,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Dolan said that the Pope would like the Church to “look into it and see the reasons that have driven them.”
“Rather than quickly condemn them… let’s just ask the questions as to why that has appealed to certain people,” he said.
The cardinal said that gay marriage concerned him not just from a religious standpoint, but in terms of culture as well.
“It’s also the building block of society and culture,” Dolan said about traditional marriage. “So it belongs to culture. And if we water down that sacred meaning of marriage in any way, I worry that not only the church would suffer, I worry that culture and society would.”
