US Bishops won’t budge on social issues

American Bishops acknowledged Monday that they failed to influence enough voters on election day but will not change their stance on gay marriage or birth control. 

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops met for their annual meeting Monday and reflected somberly on an electorate that rejected their strong stance on social issues, reports CBS News. 

Gay marriage scored several big victories on election day, despite vocal objections from Catholic bishops across the country. 

Maine, Maryland and Washington became the first states ever to approve same-sex marriage at the voting booth. Minnesota voters rejected a proposed constitutional ban on same sex marriage. 

Bishops also sharply criticized an Obama administration requirement that most employers provide health insurance that covers contraception. 

Despite their objections, Catholics voted for President Obama 50 percent to 48 percent. 

New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan the 250 Catholic bishops in attendance that they must look inward and examine their own failings if they are to have an impact on the wider culture, reports the Washington Post. 

“That’s the way we become channels of a truly effective transformation of the world, through our own witness of a repentant heart,” Dolan. 

“The premier answer to the question’What’s wrong with the world?’ is not politics, the economy, secularism, sectarianism, globalization or global warming … none of these, as significant as they are,” Dolan said. 

Instead, the bishop quoted English writer and Catholic convert G.K. Chesterton, “I am.”

The Vatican is also weighing in on victories for gay marriage in the US and Europe. 

On Saturday, the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, published a front page article claiming the church will never back down in its fight against same sex marriage, reports AP.

The article said that Catholics were fighting to uphold church teaching in the face of “politically correct ideologies invading every culture of the world". 

"The church is called to present itself as the lone critic of modernity, the only check … to the breakup of the anthropological structures on which human society was founded," it said.