Now this is subversive. Katie Pavlich has drawn attention to Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s benediction at the Democratic National Convention for its explicitly pro-life stance. The relevant portion reads as follows:
Thus do we praise you for the gift of life. Grant us the courage to defend it. Life without which no other rights are secure. We ask your benediction on those waiting to be born, that they may be welcomed and protected.
But if you listen to the whole prayer, there is actually more. Around the 2:50–3:10 mark, Dolan prays:
Show us anew that happiness is found only in respecting the laws of nature and of nature’s God. Empower us with your grace, so that we might resist the temptation to replace the moral law with idols of our own making or to remake those institutions you’ve given us for the nurturing of life and community.
I can’t imagine what else Dolan is referring to here except marriage, the primary institution given to us by God for the nurture of life and community, and the very one that the Democratic Party is seeking to remake, contrary to the laws of nature.
The man who was asked to deliver the benediction at the Democratic National Convention delivers a benediction that runs directly contrary to the Democratic Party platform on the two most significant moral issues of our day: the protection of human life and the definition of marriage. This is subversion at its best.
