Cardinal Dolan: remarks at Al Smith dinner

October 22, 2012

Cardinal Timothy Dolan has released the full text of his remarks at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, at which President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney traded jokes.

Cardinal Dolan said that the United States is “a country which considers religious liberty our first and most cherished freedom, convinced that faith is not just limited to an hour of Sabbath worship, but affects everything we do and dream.”

Cardinal Dolan called Al Smith (1873-1944), the first Catholic presidential nominee, “a man of deep Catholic faith and ringing patriotism, who had a tear in his Irish eyes for what we would call, the ‘uns’: the un-employed, the un-insured, the un-wanted, the un-wed mother, and her innocent, fragile un-born baby in her womb, the un-documented, the un-housed, the un-healthy, the un-fed the under-educated.”

“Government, Al Smith believed, should be on the side of these ‘uns,’ but a government partnering with family, Church, parish, neighborhood, organizations and community, never intruding or opposing, since, when all is said and done, it’s in God we trust, not, ultimately, in government or politics,” he added.

 

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Further information:

• Al Smith Foundation Dinner (The Gospel in the Digital Age)
• Obama, Romney trade jokes at Al Smith Dinner (CWN, 10/19)