"To begin with, the Catholic Church does not have a 'policy' on marriage — it has a teaching that is rooted in Scripture; it has policies on things like keeping soup kitchens clean.

"Two, why did it take him so long to label the Catholic Church's teaching on marriage 'bigoted'? After all, it has maintained the same teaching for 2,000 years.

"Three, why has he not slammed all world religions — in both Eastern and Western civilizations — as being 'bigoted'? After all, none bless the idea that two men should be allowed to marry.

"Four, why has he not come clean and told us exactly how 'tolerant' he is about qualifications for marriage? To be specific, does he find it 'bigoted' to oppose incestuous marriages? How about polygamy? Or the idea that three men can marry?

"Five, why would he want to maintain membership in an organization that is 'bigoted'? Does it not make him a bigot for supporting a 'bigoted' organization on Sundays?" In the 1990s, Donohue was at the forefront of a Catholic witchhunt against the much-missed, thoughtful ABC-TV drama "Nothing Sacred." The program centered around a good priest (played by the magnificent Kevin Anderson, pictured left) who pastored a liberal, social-justice-focused parish while questioning his diocese's conservative leadership and, sometimes, his own faith. The show was not anti-Catholic in any sense — in fact, Anderson's Father Ray was a fine priest who lived Jesus' mandate to love. Donohue and the Catholic League set its sights on "Nothing Sacred" before the drama hit the airwaves, and the show, due to low ratings, was cancelled after a few months. Not that the failure of one TV show is a huge deal, but you can guess that I don't think much of William Donohue's ability to deal intelligently with people or things that even question his point of view.

His response to Kennedy only bears that out. Donohue rails about policy vs. teaching. That's just a semantic smokescreen. As is demonstrated by the recent developments in the US Episcopal Church, theological thinking and interpretations can and do evolve over time.

A wide variety of scriptural interpretations exist within the Roman Catholic Church too, whatever the robed men in Rome have to say about it. Liberal theologians such as the Rev. Richard McBrien of the University of Notre Dame and the Rev. Raymond Collins of the Catholic University of America are among those who dissent from traditional church teachings on a number of hot-button topics (though not necessarily on the gay-marriage issue), and they are just the iceberg's tip. As the Roman church's child-sex-abuse scandal continues to unfold, many members of US Catholic laity are re-thinking the notion of blind adherence to their leadership's dictates and their readings of scripture. As noted sociologist-author the Rev. Andrew Greeley recently told the Charlotte Observer, "Vatican officials seem to think that they still have the same kind of credibility they once had, and they don't. I'm not saying that's good or bad, but that's certainly what the evidence seems to show." A recent CBS News report on just-uncovered Vatican documents, which AF&O commented on last week, doubtlessly will make many more Catholics reconsider whether their leadership has its priorities in line with God or with their own power and secrecy.