Everything's Up To Date In San Francisco

They've gone about as fer as they can go. OK, so that was originally "Kansas City," but it seemed to fit. And before you ask, that sign wasn't seen in front of a Chick-fil-A restaurant (if you can't read it, click on it to enlarge it). Still, those pesky Catholics just don't seem to get it. St. Nancy Pelosi has frequently announced the Catholic view of gay marriage, but the Pope and the curia just keep on disagreeing with her. When will the Catholic leaders wise up?

Not any time soon, apparently. Pope Benedict XVI has just appointed Bishop Salvatore J. Cordileone as Archbishop of the San Francisco diocese. Cordileone (whose name translated means "Sal the Lion Heart"), currently chairs the US Conference of Catholic Bishops Subcommittee on the Defense and Promotion of Marriage. Outside of California, he is largely known for his defiant stand on Obamacare mandates. Inside California, he is known for his active support for Proposition 8, the traditional marriage amendment that is being considered at the United States Supreme Court.

Undoubtedly, St. Nancy must be having the vapors. How could the Pope appoint a new archbishop for San Francisco who is so out-of-sync with the crypto-Catholic views of the Pelosians? Recently, Cordileone took a strong stance against the Pelosi/Obama moves to gut the Defense of Marriage Act. For that, he has predictably been denounced as supporting a view of gay rights "that is akin to racism." Well, what traditional conservative or religious point of view hasn't been called racism?

Cordileone gave a nod to his Christian allies recently by saying: "If you take marriage apart, everything comes unraveled. It's been frayed at the edges, and now moving more and more toward the center. But you take marriage out, it all comes unraveled. It all comes tumbling down. And again, the evangelicals, they understand that. They understand this is an attack of the Evil One at the core institution." That produced a Pelosi reaction which countered that the Bishop had gone too far. "The Evil One." What an archaic belief. Still, there are those of us who believe that Satan is the great liar, and the greatest lie he tells is that he doesn't exist. But we aren't Pelosians.

I'm beginning to like the sound of that. The Pelosian Heresy. Hmmmm. Well, never mind, we have to move on. Like so many religious opponents of gay marriage, Cordileone has been denounced as a hater of gays and lesbians. They can't cite a single instance of his ever having said or done anything approaching that, but the current fashion is to equate opposition to gay marriage with hatred of gays. His stance on gay marriage is strictly theological and practical, without any venom for the participants in the ceremonies. For instance, “How well we as a society protect and promote marriage and the family is the measure of how well we stand for the inviolable dignity and good of every individual in our society, without exception. The consequences for our future—especially that of our nation’s children—cannot be greater and must not be ignored.”

In his letter to the Judiciary Committee considering the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Cordileone wrote: "Children have a 'fundamental human right' to a mother and father and redefining marriage would lead to attacks on the religious liberty on those who defend traditional marriage." One can take the position that same-sex parents can provide the same nurture as opposite-sex parents (and many have). But where's the alleged hatred for gays?

Says Cordileone: "In places where marriage’s core meaning has been altered through legal action, officials are beginning to target for punishment those believers and churches that refuse to adapt,” said Cordileone. Any non-conforming conduct and even expressions of disagreement, based simply on support for marriage as understood since time immemorial, are wrongly being treated as if they harmed society, and somehow constituted a form of evil equal to racism." And he's correct. Canadian and Australian courts have already punished pastors who refused to perform gay marriages. One in England was put on probation on the condition that he never again preach any "hateful" Biblical sermon on homosexuality without first submitting it to a government panel for approval or disapproval.

Can't happen here? Bet me! Look at how First Amendment religious freedom is already being entirely ignored by the Obama administration in its promotion of Obamacare birth-control mandates. This administration and liberal courts all over the country believe that nebulous "human rights" trump religious freedom every time.

During the Proposition 8 campaign, the main religious target was the Mormon Church. They are still a relatively small minority in the former Golden State, and it was easier to attack them as homophobes than to attack the large number of evangelicals and Catholics who had taken very public stands in favor of traditional marriage. The thing is that several prominent Mormons put big bucks into the pro-Prop 8 campaign, and they were easy to isolate and defame.

So how does Cordileone actually feel about gays and their relationship to the Catholic Church? Here's a sample: “I think the challenge for us in the church is to help people who are in a situation of sexual orientations where they feel alienated from the church and sometimes experience it very directly. We need to learn, continue to learn, how to be welcoming, let them know that we love them and we want to help them, and that our stand for marriage is not against anyone but its because we believe this is foundational for the good of our society. “ Pretty hateful, huh?

I don't see the new archbishop excommunicating St. Nancy for her views on marriage and abortion any time soon the way a couple of bishops have denied communion to certain prominent Kennedy family members. But I'd love to see it, personally, in the cathedral. And I'm not even Catholic.