Sunday, November 30, 2008

Proposition 8 and the Archdiocese

Speaking of "fifth columnists," Proposition 8 has certainly clarified positions within the Archdiocese of San Francisco. While Archbishop Niederauer has written and spoken in support of the victorious amendment, that's not the case throughout the Archdiocese. We've already posted about the donations made by Brian Cahill, Executive Director of Catholic Charities, and Fr. Cameron Ayers, SJ, Pastor of St. Agnes Church, to the "No on Proposition 8" Campaign. We can now add Most Holy Redeemer Church to the mix. Three current members of the MHR Pastoral Council donated to the "No On Proposition 8" campaign. A past President and past Vice-President of the MHR Pastoral Council have done so as well. (Go here for links to donation records). This is no surprise.

Back on August 28, 2007, we reviewed Fr. Donal Godfrey's book "Gays and Grays: the story of Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church." Our review was called: "MHR and How it Got That Way" . We argued that Fr. Godfrey's book shows that the true organizing principle at MHR is not Catholicism, but homosexuality. We also showed how this could be proven by examining what happened whenever Catholic teaching and the celebration of homosexuality came into conflict. Whenever that happened, Church teaching was abandoned.

On November 25, Salon did an interview with Richard Rodriguez "Why Churches Fear Gay Marriage." Mr. Rodriguez is a well known TV commentator, and a parishioner at MHR. His interview once more undercores our point. He completely rejects the Church when it is in conflict with his own sexual desires:

"I belong to a Catholic parish in San Francisco (Most Holy Redeemer), where my partner and I are acknowledged by the other people in the parish as a couple. We take communion together, the priests know who we are, they're supportive of who we are, and what we are, and they see us in various roles -- giving eulogies to dead friends but also helping to baptize little babies. We're very much a part of that community. That's why I'm not prepared to lose it because some archbishop in Colorado or cardinal in Los Angeles is behind Proposition 8. It is not my church that they're talking about, it's not even my experience of love."

Posted by Gibbons J. Cooney

2 comments:

CaliforniaCrusader said...

Thank you for speaking out as a Catholic voice to protect traditional marriage. I enjoy reading your insightful comments. For my thoughts on the effects of same sex marriage in schools, you can go here: http://californiacrusader.wordpress.com/2008/11/30/prop-8-in-schools-%E2%80%93-teachable-moments-and-unintended-lessons/

Frank said...

He completely rejects the Church when it is in conflict with his integrity. You'd understand that if you had ever had integrity, but you whored out your integrity when you took an oath of obedience to this abomination of a Pope