NEW YORK (AP) — The Roman Catholic Church will intensify its efforts to prevent legalization of same-sex marriage, the president of the nation’s Catholic bishops said.

Bishop Wilton D. Gregory said Aug. 29 the bishops could endorse a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution to define marriage as only being between a man and a woman, though he stopped short of making such an endorsement himself.

Gregory, of Belleville, Illinois, said the church is seeking “the best, most effective and surest means” for protecting marriage. “At this point, everything is on the table,” he said.

The Vatican denounced same-sex marriages in a July doctrinal decree, while Canada’s government is working to legalize them — a move that Gregory said “brought this close to us.”

Some Republicans in Congress are calling for a constitutional ban on gay marriages nationwide. President Bush has not endorsed that proposal but has said marriage should be between a man and a woman, and “we ought to codify that one way or the other.”

Gregory said, “We believe the government has an obligation to protect marriage as an institution,” and U.S. Catholic leaders will cooperate with “others who are similarly concerned with preserving the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious understanding of marriage in society.”

In a wide-ranging interview, Gregory also opposed any reconsideration of the church’s requirement of priestly celibacy, as was proposed in a petition to him from more than 160 Milwaukee priests this month. Priest organizations in Illinois, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania are considering similar petitions.

The current sexual-abuse crisis “is not a moment when the church needs to, or in fact intends to, review every one of our constitutive qualities and identities and beliefs and practices,” Gregory said. “It’s a moment of very intense feelings, raw feelings, but the whole store is not up for sale.”

“I don’t believe that there is any linkage between the abuse of children and celibacy,” he added, because if that were so, sexual abuse within families would not be so widespread.