America's most high-profile Catholic official, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, has warned that the church needs to "do better" to ensure its "defense of marriage is not reduced to an attack on gay people". But he added that gay people were only entitled to "friendship" not "sexual love".

Asked about gay marriage in a week when the US supreme court heard two cases regarding same sex marriage, the archbishop of New York told ABC's This Week: "We want your happiness. You are entitled to friendship. But we also know that God has told us that the way to happiness, that – especially when it comes to sexual love – that is intended only for a man and woman in marriage, where children can come about naturally."

Speaking on Easter Sunday, Dolan cautioned that the church had not done a good job of defending its views on marriage. "I admit, we haven't been too good at that. We try our darndest to make sure we're not anti-anybody. We're in the defense of what God has taught us about – about marriage. And it's one man, one woman, forever, to bring about new life," he said. "We've got to better… to try to take that away from being anti-anybody."

Dolan told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that sometime "by nature, the church has got to be out of touch with concerns, because we're always supposed to be thinking of the beyond, the eternal, the changeless." He added: "Our major challenge is to continue in a credible way to present the eternal concerns to people in a timeless attractive way. And sometimes there is a disconnect – between what they're going through and what Jesus and his church is teaching. And that's a challenge for us."

His comments came after the supreme court heard arguments about the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8 banning gay marriage and the federal Defense of Marriage Act (Doma), legislation brought in by president Bill Clinton that restricts federal marriage benefits to opposite sex couples.

Polls show a majority of voters now back same-sex marriage, and that shift is increasingly being reflected in Washington. Earlier this month Bill Clinton joined president Barack Obama in calling Doma unconstitutional. In an editorial in the Washington Post he wrote: "When I signed the bill, I included a statement with the admonition that "enactment of this legislation should not, despite the fierce and at times divisive rhetoric surrounding it, be understood to provide an excuse for discrimination." Reading those words today, I know now that, even worse than providing an excuse for discrimination, the law is itself discriminatory. It should be overturned."