The Catholics love their saints -- Peter, Paul, Andrew, James, John, Joseph, Dominic, Benedict, Bruno, Francis of Assisi, Francis de Sales, Francis Xavier, Frances Cabrini, Francis of Rome, Bridget, Jean-Baptiste Vianney, the Little Flower, Juan Diego, Catharine the Great, Padre Pio, John Paul II and, of course, Patrick -- but so do the Anglicans: St. Alban, St. Dunstan, St. David of Wales, St. George of England, St. Hilda of Whitby, St. Boniface of Wessex, St. Andrew of Scotland, Queen Margaret of Scotland, the Venerable Bede, Julian of Norwich, Bishop Richard of Chichester, Augustine of Canterbury, Archbishop Cranmer ...

In early September, an announcement revealed that organizers of the yearly event had caved into the mounting pressure of the LGBT movement and would allow gays to march in the parade "under their own banner." To top it all off leading next year's parade is the Roman Catholic cardinal from New York -- Timothy Dolan.

"In recent months, Catholic officials have tried to emphasize the church's acceptance of gays and lesbians as individuals, while defending the church's opposition to same-sex marriage," The New York Times reported. "That rhetorical shift has been embraced by Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, who will serve as grand marshal for the parade next year."

The conservative Catholic media went into overdrive.

"You've Been Dolanized!" proclaimed Rod Dreher of the American Conservative. "I wonder how long it's going to take before (Dolan) realizes that he will have earned no new friends -- the people he's trying to charm are still going to hate him and make fun of him -- and alienated the old ones who would have normally been his most loyal ones?"

Rorate Ceali called the news "The Saint Patrick's Day Massacre," quoting from Monsignor Charles Pope, a blogger on the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, DC's website.

"Now the St. Patrick's Parade is becoming of parade of disorder, chaos, and fake unity," the Monsignor writes. "Let's be honest: St. Patrick's Day nationally has become a disgraceful display of drunkenness and foolishness in the middle of Lent that more often embarrasses the memory of Patrick than honors it."

Jesus ate with sinners

"Cardinal Dolan is charged to model Christ, not the Pharisees," decried Elizabeth Scalia, who blogs as The Anchoress.

She does her best to give the New York cardinal -- who is about to turn his red silks in for Irish green or gay pink or even into the LGBT rainbow -- the benefit of the doubt, reminding her readers that Jesus sat with the sinners, dined with the tax collectors, and forgave women caught in adultery.

"Why would a bishop -- say, for instance New York's Cardinal Archbishop Timothy Dolan -- participate in a political dinner that hosts real tax-collectors and known liars and sinners (as opposed to the less-obvious ones) and rather few actual holy men and women?" the Anchoress asks.

Two years ago, Cardinal Dolan (VIII New York Cardinal) hosted the Al Smith Dinner, an annual white tie fundraiser for Catholic Charities in New York, which is held at an iconic landmark, the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. His special guests were Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. The grand gala, which raised $5 million for charity, was named for former New York Governor Alfred E. Smith who was the first Roman Catholic to run for president of the United States in 1928 and was soundly shellacked by Herbert Hoover.

The conservative Catholic media was incensed that Obama who, generally is seen as non-Christian, particularly ultra anti-Catholic, and on the stump for a second term in the White House, was being provided with a photo op with the photogenic New York prelate. In post dinner pictures, Cardinal Dolan is shown, with his head thrown back, riotously laughing as Obama and Romney trade one-liners. The only tense moment seems to come when Obama and Romney greeted each other and shook hands. Cardinal Dolan, who at the time was President of the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, had a guarded grimace on his face as the introductions played out.

Conservative Catholics pleaded with Cardinal Dolan not to invite Obama to the premier Catholic fundraiser. The President had already attended the 2008 Al Smith Dinner when, as a presidential candidate, he was invited to attend by Edward Cardinal Egan (VII New York Cardinal). The grassroots plea to show restraint fell on deaf ears. Obama went a second time so both the Cardinal and the President got their smiling photo op.

"If we do not want to see a bishop seated next to a sinner unless that bishop is loudly consigning the sinner to hell, well then, we don't want to see a bishop sitting next to anyone," the Anchoress writes. "But we were never supposed to want to be like the Pharisees, nor expect it of our shepherds."

Parade organizers pressured to cave

Although the parade has no direct ties to the Catholic Church or the Archdiocese of New York, it does joyfully celebrate a favorite Catholic Irish saint and has always been an important cultural event for the Big Apple's Irish Catholic community. Again Cardinal Dolan is getting mired in the mud of politics. This time the politics of the New York St. Patrick's Day Parade and the outcry that is being raised up from it as he unashamedly embraces the LGBT crowd and endorses its full participation in the Irish-Catholic celebration.

"Organizers of the world's largest St. Patrick's Day Parade say they're ending a ban and allowing a gay group to march under its own banner for the first time," the Associated Press reported on Sept. 3. "The parade committee said that OUT@NBCUniversal -- a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender support group at the company that broadcasts the parade -- would be marching up Manhattan's Fifth Avenue on March 17, 2015 under an identifying banner."

The inclusion story was first broken on Sept. 2 by The Irish Voice, an Irish-American newspaper in New York. "Gays Will March" the banner headline read.

Since first breaking the story, The Irish Voice has continued to cover the unfolding event. "Gays to march in NYC Parade, with Cardinal Dolan as 2015 Grand Marshal" (Sept 2); "Saving the New York's St. Patrick's Parade from itself" (Sept 2); "Media crush as NY parade committee announces historic move" (Sept. 4); "The man who changed the history of the NYC St. Patrick's Day parade" (Sept 10); "New York's Irish LGBT groups file applications to march" (Sept. 10); and "St. Patrick's Day VP says 2015 New York parade is all set" (Sept. 10).

The New York parade has been under tremendous pressure to relent and compromise its long-held and deeply engrained Catholic moral teachings even though Pope Francis says in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel) that "The integrity of the Gospel message must not be deformed." Parade organizers say that they are "remaining loyal to church teachings" even as their long-standing LGBT prohibition has been breached.

"Organizers have diligently worked to keep politics -- of any kind -- out of the parade in order to preserve it as a single and unified cultural event," the Parade organizers said in a media statement. "Paradoxically, that ended up politicizing the parade."

Just hours before the 2014 New York St. Patrick's Day Parade was to step off, Guinness, an Irish beer maker, suddenly dropped its support of the parade when Stonewall Inn, a New York City gay liberation bar threatened to stop selling the Irish brew if the beer company sponsored the parade. GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) also threatened to hold an anti-Guinness event on St. Patrick's Day if the Irish beer company did not follow in the tracks of the Dutch beer maker Heineken that did pull its tap on the New York parade.

It wasn't only beer makers who caved to strong LGBT intimidation and pressure. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who considers himself spiritual but not religious, refused to march in the parade. He did, though, host a St. Patrick's Day breakfast at Gracie Mansion and attended the parade Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

History of the New York Parade

The New York St. Patrick's Day Parade is a simple parade. No floats, no vehicles, no outlandish costumes, no balloons. There are plenty of horses, a few carts, a lot of bands, numerous marching police and fire units, many military groups, some Irish dancers and baton twirlers, various waving flags and banners, and scores of bagpipers in their colorful tartans and kilts.

The parade officially dates back to 1762 when Irish Catholics, serving in the British Army and garrisoned in New York, marched down to the local pub to the cadence of fife and drum to toast King George III and drink to the "the prosperity of Ireland" in celebration of the Irish Saint's feast day. A very Irish-Catholic thing to do. It expanded from there.

In 1683, the Second Earl of Limerick, Thomas Dugan, was sent to Colonial America by Prince James, the Duke of York, who eventually became King James II, for whom the King James Version of the Bible is named. Dugan ruled from Fort James located on the south tip of Manhattan. New York is so named because of Prince James' York dukedom. There Dugan served as the Provincial Governor of New York. As a Catholic and an Irishman, speculation is that in all likelihood he and his friends celebrated St. Patrick's Day, but since there were no newspapers at the time, no printed record of the event has survived. The first New York colonial publications to mention St. Patrick's Day celebrations are: the New York Weekly Post Boy (1756); the New York Gazette (1762); and the New York Mercury (1766).

Basically the parade is a five miles long walking parade down Fifth Avenue in New York with all of the more than 300 marching groups streaming in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral, where Cardinal Dolan has his archdiocesan cathedra (bishop's throne). The parade winds between 79th and 44th streets and along the outer edge of Central Park. Enroute marchers not only pass the Catholic cathedral but they also file by St. Thomas Episcopal and Fifth Avenue Presbyterian churches. Nearly 180,000 marchers participate as nearly three million spectators line the Fifth Avenue to watch. Another five million watch on television or over the Internet.

Conservative media backlash

The Associated Press also quotes Cardinal Dolan as saying: "I know that there are thousands and thousands of gay people marching in this parade, and I'm glad they are." Fox News reports that the Cardinal gave the New York St. Patrick's Day Parade organizers his "confidence and support" saying, "I have no trouble with the decision at all. I think it is a wise one."

When the Cardinal is talking about "gay people marching in this parade", he means as individuals and being part of a larger group, such as being members of a fire battalion, in a police unit, or a members of a marching band. However, the LGBT crowd has not been recognized as a gay group marching with their own banner specifically identifying them as out-of-the-closet homosexuals.

"[T]he Saint Patrick's Day Parade has, at least in New York City, long been a trooping of the sinners ..." the Anchoress explains using the Parable of the Prodigal Son -- a father running out to welcome his wayward son back home -- to make her point.

"I'm not sure a bishop has a choice but to run out to meet prodigals, regardless of motivating factors," she continues. "The Father wants everyone to come home and be with him. Once they're at the doorstep, they may be encouraged to come in; once they're inside, they can be talked with, nurtured, fed, encouraged, formed, and made whole. This cannot happen as long as they are off in the faraway places."

Catholic layman Michael Voris, the ultra conservative host of The Vortex, is outraged by the Cardinal's openly supporting the gay left while leading next year's St. Patrick's Day Parade as grand marshal. Voris has dedicated three Vortex episodes to the St. Patrick's Day Parade controversy, even interrupting his own series on Mother Angelica, the Poor Claire foundress of The Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) in Alabama.

"First, we have Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who gave the big thumbs up to gays in the St. Patrick's Day Parade," Voris informs his Internet audience. "Excuse me, your Eminence, but New York already has a gay parade. You oughta' know -- you let unfaithful priests and parishes celebrate it, and your best Catholic buddy, abortion-loving, same-sex-supportin', livin'-with-his-concubine, going-to-Mass, receiving-Holy-Communion, wouldn't-want-to-say-he-isn't-a-Catholic-in-good-standing [Governor] Andrew Cuomo leads the whole march."

Just three months ago Voris was infuriated over the fact that St. Francis of Assisi and St. Francis Xavier Catholic churches, both in Manhattan, were deeply involved in the New York Gay Pride Parade. The Assisi parish threw open its doors for a Pre-Pride Mass, while Xavier unfurled a long rainbow flag down its aisle to signal its welcoming inclusiveness.

"You give a shout-out during your Palm Sunday Mass to Apostate #2 -- VP Joe Biden. And that was after chowin' down some supper with anti-Catholic kingpin himself Obama, at your ridiculously defended Al Smith Dinner," Voris ranted on. "If only the three of you could get Obama to convert to your brand of Catholicism, the four of you [Cardinal Dolan, President Obama, Governor Cuomo, & Vice President Biden] could hold a bridge tournament for unfaithful Catholics."

For more than two decades, the New York St. Patrick's Day Parade has been under enormous pressure to let gays into its annual cultural St. Patrick's Day party as a unit, under their own banner.

In 1993 John Cardinal O'Connor (IV New York Cardinal) was unyielding in his refusal to allow gays to march when pressured by the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization for permission to march under their own banner.

"Irish Catholics have been persecuted for the sole reason that they have refused to compromise Church teaching," Cardinal O'Connor said. "What others may call bigotry, Irish Catholics call principle. Neither respectability nor political correctness is worth one comma in the Apostles' Creed."

For many years the Irish Catholic fraternal organization, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, originally dating to 1836, organized the St. Patrick's Day Parade and kept a tight lid on gay involvement. However the Hibernians eventually stepped back fearing lawsuits.

In 1995 U.S. Supreme Court decided in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc. to allow private sponsors of the Boston St. Patrick's Day Parade to exclude whomever they like in forming their parade. Following that lead the New York parade, under new direction, kept its rigid guidelines on parade participates. So far Boston organizers have not folded to mounting LGBT political pressure.

Gays want more as OUT@NBCUniversal is invited in

Now that the gays are in, they are not happy with the limits placed on them. The color of the day is green or the Irish tri-colors of green, white and orange but not pink nor rainbow. The gays are not content with small advances; they want the whole loaf and are disappointed that only one LGBT group will march in 2015.

"As an Irish-Catholic American, I look forward to a fully inclusive St. Patrick's Day Parade," said GLAAD president Sarah Kate Ellis. "Discrimination has no place on America's streets, least of all on Fifth Avenue."

In the long run, the LGBT crowd wants to include their half-dressed debauchery that is so prevalent in their Gay Pride events around the country and even the world. The New York St. Patrick's Day Parade is a class act. Such lewd nakedness would be out of place at the St. Patrick's Day Parade whose marchers are all dressed in crisp uniforms, elegant tuxedos, or matching Irish tartans and Gaelic kilts. Even green hats, beads, and other costumes are not permitted in the Parade's reviewing stands.

The Irish Queers and other gay groups are upset that they can't march with the Cardinal while displaying their banners.

"We welcome this cracking of the veneer of hate," an Irish Queers' statement said. "It allows NBC's gay employees to march, but embarrassingly has not ended the exclusion of Irish LGBT groups."

Nathan Schaefer, executive director of Empire State Pride Agenda, called the announcement "disappointing and self-serving" saying that "While this development is long overdue, inviting one group to march at the exclusion of all others ... is a far stretch from the full inclusion we deser"e."

Less than a week after the announcement that the NBC group will march, the Irish Queers are calling for the OUT@NBCUniversal group to boycott the St. Patr'ck's Day Parade if other LGBT groups are not let in. They feel that only the inclusion of the NBC group is just a ploy and corporate publicity stunt to lure the beer brands back into supporting the parade.

"This is not a policy change," Irish Queer member Gabby Cryan said. "This is a token gesture. This is not actually including the Irish lesbian and gay, queer community in New York City."

The word is out that NBC, which televises the St. Patr'ck's Day Parade, was willing to drop its long-standing coverage of the event unless the parade organizers bowed to pressure to include gays marching under their own banner. Little wonder why OUT@NBCUniversal was the first and only group chosen.

"We call on OUT@NBCUniversal not to be pawns in this triangulation of homophobia, money and public relations," Emmaia Gelman, another Irish Queers member, tells rival network C--S - New York.

So far, the one gay voice that has not been heard since the inclusion of gays in the New York parade is that of Episcopal Bishop Vicky Gene Robinson (IX New Hampshire). He is strangely silent on the news.

Dolan called to step down as grand marshal"

"If news of the compromise is true, Cardinal Dolan must publicly reject the offer to be Grand Marshal and encourage the organizers to cancel the parade rather that accede to the demands of N"C," writes Pat Archbold, a commentator with the National Catholic Registe". "This is an incredible chance to witness that the Church still actually believes what it is supposed to belie"e."

Philip Lawler, the editor of Catholic World News, also said the New York cardinal should step down as grand marshal even though he is a board member of the St. Patrick's Day Foundation of New York City.

"No doubt there was a time, some years ago, when the St. Patrick's Day Parade really was a Catholic observance. But over the years the religious aspect of the event has faded into the background, overwhelmed at first by the tribal celebration of Irish identity, and later by the same forces that govern any civic celebration. For the vast majority of participants and observers, the St. Patrick's Day Parade is no more a "Catholic" event than a Notre Dame football game," Lawler writes. "Still the tradition had survived that the cardinal-archbishop of New York would stand on the steps of his cathedral, greeting the marchers, giving the parade his endorsement, keeping up the pretense that this march was a religious event. For next year's parade, Cardinal Dolan had been named grand marshal, emphasizing the link to the [Catholic] Church and the implicit blessing of the participants."

Catholic World News is a conservative Catholic-based Internet news organization similar to how VirtueOnline www.virtueonline.org is a conservative Anglican-based Internet news organization.

"If this really is a Catholic event, it cannot include a group defined by its opposition to Church teaching. If it is a Catholic event, forget Guinness, forget NBC, forget the hoopla, and quietly honor St. Patrick," Lawler writes. "But if it is not a Catholic event -- if it is just another civic celebration, to which all are welcome, regardless of their attitude toward the Church -- then it's time to end an anachronism. There should be no reviewing stand outside St. Patrick's Cathedral, no sign of [Catholic] Church sponsorship. Cardinal Dolan should step aside as grand marshal."

Meanwhile in Washington, Monsignor Pope is calling for the end of the parade and the Al Smith dinner.

"In New York City in particular, the 'parade' is devolving into a farcical and hateful ridicule of the faith that St. Patrick preached. It's time to cancel the St. Patrick's Day Parade and the Al Smith Dinner and all the other 'Catholic' traditions that have been hijacked by the world," the Washington monsignor writes. "End the St Patrick's parade. End the Al Smith Dinner and all other such compromised events. Better for Catholics to enter their churches and get down on their knees on St. Patrick's Day to pray in reparation for the foolishness, and to pray for this confused world to return to its senses."

After the Monsignor's comments were posted on the Archdiocese of Washington website, they were taken down; however, they were preserved by Rorate Ceali.

"I removed the post upon further reflection due to the strong nature of the language I had used in parts of it. I apologize if the language I used caused offense," the Monsignor explained on his blog stating that he must present Veritatem in Caritate (the truth in charity). "I remain concerned about the central point of the article, namely, how we as Catholics can effectively engage a culture that increasingly requires us to affirm what we cannot reasonably affirm."

Monsignor Pope is not the only Catholic commentator calling for the cancellation of the New York St. Patrick's Day Parade.

"If a parade that is meant to honor a great Saint is being used to promote a sinful agenda, it should be cancelled rather than allow it to be used in such a way," writes Archbold who lives on Long Island. "It is one thing for a parade committee to fold under pressure, but it is quite another that the Cardinal Archbishop of New York would be asked to lend his name and office to the parade. Such an action can be viewed in no other way than total capitulation to gay identity groups. [This] is a shameful and sinful capitulation by the parade organizers and Cardinal Dolan."

"My predecessors and I have always left decisions on who would march to the organizers of the individual parades," Cardinal Dolan explained as the furor surrounding the parade grew. "As I do each year, I look forward to celebrating Mass in honor of Saint Patrick, the Patron Saint of Ireland, and the Patron Saint of this Archdiocese, to begin the feast, and pray that the parade would continue to be a source of unity for all of us."

Dolan should resign as cardinal

Voris wants more than Cardinal Dolan stepping down as next year's grand marshal. He wants the Cardinal's red silks.

" ... officially welcoming gays into the parade celebrating one of the most revered Saints in the Church is purely diabolical. That's right, Your Eminence, someone has got to say it to you flat out -- you are in the grip of the Devil. You continue to be a non-stop source of scandal for the faithful, both in what you do and in what you fail to do. You have, in this case, given your blessing to an organized group of souls publicly celebrating their sodomy in a parade that celebrates the sanctity of a man who converted a nation away from paganism," Voris says calling the New York Cardinal to account. "What you are doing is evil, and if you can't see that, then you are blind. You give your approval to sin -- public approval to mortal sin from a Churchman. You have done this before, but never on so grand a scale. You give active homosexuality a free pass in your Archdiocese. You go on national television and distort the Gospel of Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ. What the hell is wrong with you?"

Voris says that when a bishop, or a cardinal in this case, is given the care of souls and does just the opposite, he is wicked. And he considers Cardinal Dolan wicked.

"You are not fit to be a successor of the Apostles. You sully the Bride of Christ with your wickedness. How dare you parade, now literally parade, around New York in the red robes of a cardinal, meant to signify the death you would happily undergo to preserve the flock, when in reality, far from preserving them from death, you are actually bringing death to them," Voris continues. "What you are doing is evil and wicked. You need the humility to publicly recognize your sin, admit it, repent of it, and resign your office now!"

The Anchoress is a little more measured in her opinion of the Cardinal than her fellow Catholic colleagues.

"So yeah, the bishop [Dolan] has some work to do; he cannot ebulliently run out to meet the disobedient ones (who may someday convert and conform their lives to become the best Catholics ever, but are still a long way off) without also warmly seeking out the obedient ones, and soothing their resentment -- letting them know that they are seen, heard, beloved, sharing and fully welcome," she writes. "They are absolutely not getting that message from him, right now."

Mary Ann Mueller is a journalist living in Texas. She is a regular contributor to Virtueonline