New York City, N.Y., Apr 15, 2009 / 12:07 pm
In his first meeting with the New York press, Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan pledged to bring Catholics back to Mass, increase vocations, preach the truth and not sidestep controversial issues like gay “marriage” or abortion.
Dolan, the former Archbishop of Milwaukee who recently became the head of the second largest archdiocese in the U.S., began his first press conference by promising to be “a communicator.”
In his first day on the job, Dolan said he will sit down with trusted advisers to discover what strategies have worked in the past and what is the most effective way to communicate the positions of the Church on “controversial moral issues.”
When questioned about whether or not he would be an “agent of change,” on issues where society disagreed with the Church, Dolan firmly stated that as a bishop his “goal is to change [the faithful’s] lives to be in conformity with Jesus and his Church, not to change the teachings of Jesus and the church to be in conformity with what we want.”