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NEW YORK, May 24, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan defended problematic comments Pope Francis’ reportedly made about God making people gay, saying such comments amounted to “conservative, traditional, Catholic, orthodox teaching.”

“But what he says is beautiful, don’t you think?” Dolan said on his radio program Tuesday regarding the Pope’s alleged comments in April to Juan Carlos Cruz, a victim of the Chilean clergy abuse crisis. 

Cruz told reporters this month that during his private papal audience the Pope spoke about homosexuality.

“He told me ‘Juan Carlos, that you are gay does not matter. God made you like that and he loves you like that and I do not care. The Pope loves you as you are, you have to be happy with who you are,’” Cruz recalled of the conversation. 

Dolan said that the pope telling Cruz “God loves you and so do I” in response to Cruz telling the Holy Father he is gay is something Jesus would have said.

“That’s sort of conservative, traditional Catholic orthodox teaching,” stated Dolan. “The Catechism insists on that.”

Francis’s reported comments to Cruz have largely had the same damaging result as his problematic “Who am I to judge” statement, with widespread interpretation of them as a go-ahead for homosexual activity and suggestion that Church teaching on it could change. The alleged statements by the pope to Crus have likewise met with celebration from the LGBT lobby.

The Church does not define or identify human beings by their sexual inclinations and holds that homosexual tendencies are “objectively disordered” (CCC2358) – thus same-sex attraction could never be something willed by God. 

The Church also teaches in CCC2357 that homosexual acts are “acts as acts of grave depravity,” “intrinsically disordered,” and “contrary to the natural law.” 

“They close the sexual act to the gift of life,” Catholic teaching states. “They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity.” 

“Under no circumstances can they be approved,” the 2357 passage concludes, denoting thus that any encouragement of them would constitute a conflict with the Church’s teaching, and risk inviting those with same-sex attraction to sin. 

Dolan qualified his response on Francis’ alleged comments to Cruz, first saying while he doesn’t doubt Cruz’s reliability, the information released was third-hand, “So one would want to get a clarification.”

The Vatican press office has said regarding the matter it does not comment on private conversations held by the pope.

The cardinal also made an effort to align the statements attributed to the pope with Church teaching. He stressed that Church teaching includes the call to accept same-sex attracted individuals with respect.

“Yes, yes,” he emphasized, “while any sexual expression outside of a man and woman in marriage is contrary to God’s purpose, so is not treating anyone, including a gay person, with anything less than dignity and respect.”

The cardinal pointedly drew a parallel between the Catechism’s teaching on marriage and its passage on treating those with homosexual tendencies with respect, and said Francis was simply repeating what’s in the Catechism. 

Dolan’s defense of the controversial comments attributed to the pope does not come as a surprise. 

In 2014, the Cardinal applauded a football player, saying “Good for him,” when the player declared publicly that he was homosexual. The following year he led Manhattan’s St. Patrick’s Day parade as grand marshal, despite backlash from faithful Catholics unhappy with the organizers’ decision to allow an openly homosexual activist group to march in the event.