…on the subject of chastity and sexual morality. By which His Eminence means, it has cowered in a little ball and said “Don’t Hurt Me.”

Humanae vitae “brought such a tsunami of dissent, departure, disapproval of the church, that I think most of us—and I’m using the first-person plural intentionally, including myself—kind of subconsciously said, ‘Whoa. We’d better never talk about that, because it’s just too hot to handle’,” said Dolan.

“We forfeited the chance to be a coherent moral voice when it comes to one of the more burning issues of the day,” he added.

Dolan went to explain that the sex abuse scandal “intensified our laryngitis over speaking about issues of chastity and sexual morality, because we almost thought, ‘I’ll blush if I do. . . . After what some priests and some bishops, albeit a tiny minority, have done, how will I have any credibility in speaking on that?’”

For what I have done, and what I have failed to do….