The Counter-Cathedral in the Castro.

San Jose Pastor Visits Most Holy Redeemer for Advice

In the August 24 article “Fr. Reese Comes to San Francisco: What Most Holy Redeemer Has come to Mean,” California Catholic Daily discussed the consequences of “tolerating” an openly homosexualist parish. The article noted that when in San Francisco, dissenters such as Bishop Kevin Dowling, Jesuit Fr. Thomas Reese, or Bishop Thomas Gumbleton make a beeline for Most Holy Redeemer. It has become San Francisco’s counter-cathedral, famous worldwide. The article also pointed out that such visits are not harmless. They certify the presence of a separate center of teaching authority in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, a counter-cathedral--at least when the subject is homosexuality. This is obvious to everyone who is not willfully blind; right now there is a student at Notre Dame University writing a paper on the “theology” of Most Holy Redeemer Church--as if a genuine Catholic parish could have its own theology! Allowing such a separate teaching authority to exist is proving to be a monumental failure of responsibility by the Archdicese of San Francisco, and predictable consequences have followed.

The current (November 18) issue of “Metro Active San Jose” has a long article called “Gay Catholics Come Out” by Ms. Jessica Fromm. The subheadline is “Secretly, San Jose is the most gay-friendly diocese in the nation. And now, one parish wants the world to know.”

The article profiled St. Julie Billiart Parish in San Jose and its pastor, Fr. Jon Pedigo. Ms. Fromm spends the first 3000 words or so discussing the situation in San Jose. It’s a familiar litany: the difficulty homosexualist Catholics have in accepting Church teaching on the reality of marriage and the intrinsic immorality of homosexual acts, how conflicted they are between their personal experience and the teaching of the Church (who isn't?) etc. etc. She interviews a familiar cast of characters: the former Jesuit priest James B. Nickoloff, who is same-sex “married” in the state of Massachusetts and is now a fellow at the (Jesuit) Santa Clara University; the Oakland Diocese’s Fr. Jim Schnexayder, co-founder of the Catholic Association for Lesbian & Gay Ministry; Mr. Bill Welch, former President of Dignity San Jose.

More importantly, Ms. Fromm relates what Fr. Pedigo did when he realized that many same-sex attracted Catholics were attending his parish:

“Pedigo said that as he started to notice the growing LGBT Catholic community that was coming to St. Julie's, he decided to consult the established gay Catholic community at the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in San Francisco's Castro District.” Instead of seeking advice from his bishop, Fr. Pedigo chose to consult MHR. That’s our point: MHR has become a de facto teaching authority--that’s why Fr. Pedigo consulted them, that’s why the Notre Dame student is writing a paper on their “theology." The Church hierarchy may deny that MHR has any actual authority, but Fr. Pedigo and others think they do, and are basing their actions on MHR‘s example.

Ms. Fromm continued, quoting Fr. Pedigo: "I said, 'Look, I'm a server in San Jose, and I have all these gay and lesbian people coming for baptism and wanting their babies to be baptized and raising their kids and their families Catholic. And we've got kids in the youth group who are sexual.' I asked, 'What do you guys do about this? What have you done?'"

What has Most Holy Redeemer done? It’s the church that from 2000-2008 hosted nearly-annual events by s/m groups in their parish hall; it's the church that allowed the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to receive the Blessed Sacrament; it’s the church that currently has at least six openly “same-sex married” parishioners serving at Mass as lectors, Eucharistic ministers, and acolytes; it’s the church whose Eucharistic minister/transgender activist “Lisa Rae” Dummer escorted the Young Adult Group to the 2007 Transgender Cotillion; it’s the church whose pastoral council member Matt Dorsey earlier this year condemned Archbishop Niederauer in the pages of the homosexualist Bay Area Reporter for his support of Proposition 8 and convinced the producers of San Francisco’s gay pride parade to award the Archbishop the “pink brick.”

According to Ms. Fromm, Fr. Pedigo has proved to be a good student: “From that time (when he consulted MHR) forward, Pedigo has freely acknowledged and supported the gay and lesbian Catholics who flock to St. Julie's. He publicly opposed Prop. 8, going so far as to post video interviews with gay Catholic families on his blog….”

Posted by Gibbons J. Cooney

Openly Homosexual SEIU Boss to Address Most Holy Redeemer on “Being Catholic”

On April 20, Mary Kay Henry, International President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), will address the parishioners of San Francisco’s notorious Most Holy Redeemer Church. According to the MHR bulletin, Henry’s subject will be “How Being Catholic Informs my Leadership.” Unsurprisingly for a speaker at Most Holy Redeemer, Ms. Henry is openly homosexual.

Ms. Henry’s “Catholicism” bears the same relation to Catholicism as “same-sex marriage” does to marriage, and in fact, Henry admits as much. On May 29, 2012, Henry told the Denver Post "I think of my church as the church of the people and not as the institutional hierarchy that has doctrines that are not connected to my faith." In other words, her faith is something other than Catholicism.

That the doctrines “not connected to Henry’s faith” include the doctrine that homosexual acts are sinful and the doctrine that marriage is between one man and a woman goes without saying. But they are not unique. In an April 12, 2011 SEIU press release, opposing a congressional attempt to defund Planned Parenthood, Henry wrote:

"Planned Parenthood is an essential part of our nation's healthcare system, yet a handful of ideologically-driven Members of Congress want to prevent millions of American women from receiving life-saving healthcare. Since its formation, Planned Parenthood has been a leader in providing access to services such as cancer screenings, annual exams and other important preventive services. Every dollar in federal funding goes toward preventive care. Simply put, Planned Parenthood saves lives.”

“Simply put, Planned Parenthood saves lives.” Obviously, another Catholic “doctrine not connected to Henry’s faith” includes the doctrine that human life is to be protected from conception until natural death.

Less than a year later, on February 13, 2012, writing as President of the SEIU, Henry urged Senator Barbara Boxer to vote against the Blunt Amendment. The Blunt amendment, written in response to the HHS contraception mandate, would have allowed employers to refuse to include contraception in health care coverage if it violated their religious or moral beliefs. It was defeated in the senate. Every Catholic bishop in the United States supported, and still supports, such a conscience exemption. As a result of the rejection of the Blunt Amendment, a number of Catholic Universities and other institutions and persons were forced into suing the government in an effort to simply exercise their first amendment right to religious freedom, to be faithful to the Church. Yet Ms. Henry, who claims the name "Catholic", used the considerable power of her union to oppose this.

Ms. Henry’s invitation is a particular slap at San Francisco’s Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage. On March 26 of this year, the day the Supreme Court heard arguments on the Proposition 8 case, the Archbishop, joined by thousands of others, was speaking in front of the court against the redefinition of marriage. A scant two hours before, Ms. Henry, in the exact same spot, had been addressing a crowd in support of the redefinition of marriage--precisely the opposite message (see photo above, courtesy of SEIU Facebook page)..

Given her leadership role in opposing non-negotiable teachings of the Catholic Church it seems contradictory that Henry would title her talk “How Being Catholic Informs my Leadership.” It compels the obvious questions: 1) where she could have arrived at such a definition of what “Catholic” means, and 2) in what sort of “Catholic” environment could she have been practicing, that such a definition went unchallenged.

But when one learns that Henry has been a parishioner of Most Holy Redeemer since 2007, was indeed listed as a lector in the church at that time, the contradiction resolves itself, and the root of her understanding of “Catholicism” crystallizes. In the past we have referred to Most Holy Redeemer as “the counter-cathedral in the Castro.” We meant, and still mean that, quite seriously. As we have demonstrated (and Ms. Henry's appearance is one more piece of evidence), the real lived religion at Most Holy Redeemer is not Catholicism, but the celebration of homosexuality. The word “Catholicism” is used, but the reality symbolized by the word is abandoned, and a new self-created thing is shoved into its place. The corruption is identical to the phrase “same-sex marriage”: the word “marriage” is used, but is emptied of its content and demonically assigned a diametrically opposed meaning.

As the inverted image of San Francisco’s St. Mary’s Cathedral, the counter-cathedral becomes the source of inverted teaching. On November 23, 2009, we noted an article in the publication Metro Active San Jose, called “Gay Catholics Come Out.” The article profiled San Jose’s St. Julie Billiart church. The Metro wrote “(Fr. Jon) Pedigo said that as he started to notice the growing LGBT Catholic community that was coming to St. Julie's, he decided to consult the established gay Catholic community at the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in San Francisco's Castro District.” We wrote at that time “Instead of seeking advice from his bishop, Fr. Pedigo chose to consult MHR. This is our point: MHR has become a de facto teaching authority--that’s why Fr. Pedigo consulted them, that’s why a Notre Dame student is writing a paper on their ‘theology.’ The Church hierarchy may deny that MHR has any actual authority, but Fr. Pedigo and others think they do, and are basing their actions on MHR‘s example.”