A hierarchy which has forfeited moral authority should expect that their services won't be needed by those who want to lead moral lives

Cardinal Timothy Dolan has forfeited any legitimate claim made by him or on his behalf of moral leadership, the man is instead an example of the worst kind of hierarchical hypocrite and seeker of worldly power and money - it's always mostly a matter of money.  As one of the higher profile appointments of Benedict XVI he is a good example of the moral lapses and lapses of judgement in that disastrous papacy, a continuation of the equally bad if not worse papacy of John Paul II.   His career as the Archbishop of New York has been one of crass power seeking and opportunism, his most recent scandalous political activity openly becoming a part of the effort to cement the completely amoral dictatorship of Trump in place not only risks dragging the entire Catholic Church into scandalous turpitude, he has, in fact, accomplished that.   If he had reached the age of 75, an age at which, I believe, bishops are required to give the Vatican a letter of resignation,  Pope Francis should immediately retire him.  He should reassign him to some place his ignominy has warranted, and I don't mean as the rector of one of the big churches in the Vatican like the equally degenerate Bernard Law got when he took it on the lam from the pedophile priest scandal during the Bush II regime. 

In this column Jamie Mason analyzes what Dolan is getting for trying to reinstall the biggest moral degenerate of the modern American Presidency 

But what has the cardinal really gained through Trump's support of his anti-abortion and religious freedom crusades?

Dolan and his church have won the right to deny loving same-sex couples the chance to adopt children; the ability to flout employment laws and fire ministers and teachers at will for any reason; the freedom to deny women, both Catholic and non-Catholic, access to contraception; the privilege of blocking millions of dollars of critical funding to international aid organizations if they even dare to advise poor and victimized women about the option of abortion; the chance to obstruct women from their constitutional right to reproductive choice.

And in order to achieve these goals by ingratiating himself to Trump, think about who and what Dolan has thrown under the bus. Consider the refugees on our border who are treated like they are in concentration camps, their children put in cages; the people of color and Jews living in fear of the white supremacists and anti-Semites who feel emboldened by this president; the poor and hungry Americans who have had their food stamps programs gutted.

Also sacrificed are those who are suffering or dead from the coronavirus because this president in his hubris closed the office of pandemic preparedness and presided over one failed federal response after another. As The Huffington Post reported, the president also used the shock of the outbreak to push forward callous rollbacks on our environmental protections, suspending the enforcement of bedrock clean air and water laws and pushing forward a proposal to open a portion of an Alaskan National Park to copper, zinc and other minerals mining.

That is just the tip of the iceberg of the ravages that Trump has unleashed on the American people and our planet. What a "great friend" the cardinal has in this president.

Yes, Dolan and other bishops are probably desperate for funding for Catholic schools, but prostituting the church to Trump is the worst possible solution to save an institution that is supposed to teach morality and hope to our children.

Rather than pander, why not just peddle one of the dozens of parishes he closed down in Manhattan to keep these entities afloat? Some of these properties are worth tens of millions of dollars.

After Saturday's call, the mutual smarminess oozed into Sunday morning, with Trump attending the livestream of Sunday Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral. The president, via Twitter, encouraged everyone to join him.

Dolan opened his homily by playing cutesy with Trump, saying he heard we have a "former neighbor worshipping with us," alluding to the fact that Trump Tower, the Mordor of 5th Avenue, is just blocks away from the cathedral.

Dolan, for good measure, heaped a bit more mendacious praise on Trump, thanking him for "working so hard to see that we can safely return to church as safely possible."

In his media appearances, Dolan often likes to put on an aw shucks, simple servant kind of image. (Those of us who watch CBS News were subjected to three such appearances by the cardinal on Easter Sunday.) But this latest episode reveals that this shepherd of the church is also a cynical, political operative, as willing to manipulate as he is to be manipulated. This might be easier to bear if he were just another one of Trump's dupes, but Dolan has shown too many times that he is eagerly complicit.

Long after the president finds his rightful place in the trash heap of history, one question will still linger over Dolan: What did it profit you to gain Trump's utterly corrupt world?

A good application of the principle that Jesus stated about gaining the world to lose your soul.   It is clear by his recent actions - though I think it was clear a lot earlier than that - that Dolan joins a long list of hierarchs of the Catholic Church and other pseudo-Christian leaders made that choice a long time ago.  

If the Vatican will not dismiss or force the resignation of such moral degenerates as Timothy Dolan, they should not be surprised when Catholics dismiss the moral authority of the hierarchy and seek to find it in dissident priests and Catholics, in their own congregations and groups which are not formally authorized by the hierarchy, which hold Eucharistic services and masses presided over by former priests, by ordained women, by lay Catholics and in some cases by clergy from other denominations.   A hierarchy which has forfeited moral authority should expect that their services won't be needed by those who want to lead moral lives. 

As valuable and necessary as it has been for Pope Francis to try to reestablish the democratizing features of Vatican II that Dolan's patrons  JPII and Benedict XVI tried to revert to Vatican dictatorship, allowing the likes of Dolan to stay in office harms the entire Catholic people and the entire world.  Timothy Dolan should be removed from office and publicly dressed down for this.   Considering that priests have been kicked out of the priesthood under the two preceding papacies for following their conscience in the pursuit of justice, some of them having more moral credibility than the hierarchs and Popes who dismissed them, it's a big mistake for Pope Francis to allow someone as morally compromised as Dolan to remain in office.  It leads me to question his leadership.