Cardinal Timothy Dolan is to close the conventions of both political parties. By playing to either side of the aisle, he has helped make himself -- and the Catholic Church -- irrelevant to both.
The conventional wisdom is that by attending both conventions, he is demonstrating that he is nobody's servant; that he is not beholden to any political party; that he is above partisanship.
What's he's really done, of course, is try to appease everybody, which is why he satisfies nobody.
Yet I should qualify that last remark. He has not satisfied those who are on the front lines fighting the tyrannical HHS Mandate (e.g. this open letter). What he has done, however, is given approbation to people who would seek to benefit from the good name of "Catholic" without bothering to honor its principles.
This is what happens when you give priority to being politically savvy instead of just doing the right thing: the souls doing the good work are betrayed and demoralized, while the characters who despise you simply exploit your weakness.
How significant is Cardinal Dolan's actions? It's as if St. John the Baptist left off the sermons so that he could waltz with Salome. Quo vadis, Eminence?
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After the event: Not many folks care what he said; his presence at an atheist's convention is just about all that most folks will remember. Now, if he had declared that all the pro-choice Catholic politicians and those who supported them were excommunicate -- *that* might have been something.
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