Last weekend the incoming archbishop of San Francisco was arrested in San Diego on suspicion of drunken driving. Prior to that, he gave a radio interview to KCBS in which he basically said that he wants to set aside stereotypes and get to know us on a human level, so that he can then educate and lead us into holiness. The problem is that he conflates holiness with intellectual assent to the doctrinal pronouncements of church officials. The rest of us meet holiness in the human, in our failings, in relationships, in graced encounters with those who are different from ourselves. We also find it in community, especially in the sacramental life of the church. We all depend on grace. I am praying that the bishop will use the occasion of his alleged DUI to enter more fully into communion with ordinary people, especially those who happen to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.
Heretofore the Catholic approach in San Francisco has been to bracket human sexuality, or to tentatively raise it as one of a host of peace and justice issues. If now-retired Archbishop John Quinn was occasionally forced to defend the anti-gay tradition, he usually exercised a more pastoral approach. Our beloved "queer sanctuary" at Most Holy Redeemer is a testament to Quinn's pastoral sensitivity. Though he caved to Rome on domestic partners, Quinn, "the people's bishop," stood watch with us during the AIDS crisis, opposed anti-gay violence, and was in most instances supportive of LGBT civil rights. He helped us defeat the Briggs initiative.
Cordileone is no Quinn.
The first question Cordileone fielded at his St. Mary's debut concerned Proposition 8 and sex abuse. He elicited nervous laughter when he affirmed that he was for marriage and against abuse. I admit I was also startled by the question. Marriage and sex abuse do not belong together. In the big picture, however, the hierarchy's dysfunctional and misguided responses to both issues reveal its culpable incompetence to deal with issues of human sexuality.
His talking points are not entirely original. The Vatican letter that forms the basis for the anti-marriage activism of church officials today ("Considerations regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons") was written in 2003, just two years after the abuse scandal broke in the United States. The Vatican itself is the authoritative source of the false and hateful argument that same-gender marriage harms children. Is it going too far to suggest that the hierarchy began saying these things in order to draw attention away from its own culpability in the abuse crisis? That would be cynical.
Yet I cannot avoid the feeling that we have been scapegoated. While the institutional church has distanced itself from early efforts to blame the problem of sex abuse on gay priests, the church has since launched a crusade against the visible LGBT community. At the same time, Catholic support for LGBT rights has topped 70 percent according to one poll, and LGBT-allied Catholics are finally speaking out. We no longer buy the anti-gay pronouncements of church officials. As Kathleen Kennedy Townsend put it, marriage equality is consistent with what the church has been trying (and in some respects failing) to teach for two thousand years.
The teaching of the church is love.
So what does Cordileone mean when he says that he loves me and wants to help me?
Let's review: Cordileone used his religious office to help engineer the overturn of marriage equality in California in November 2008. Even though it was frequently couched in positive, sweet-smelling rhetoric, Prop 8 was a stinker motivated by anti-gay animus (as the court ruled). It was in no way a defense of marriage, and in no way helped traditional families. It did, however, hurt non-traditional families. In that sense it was a "hateful" measure, and not consistent with the love he claims to feel for us. He has not to my knowledge repented of that hate, and continues to advance it through his role as the head of the U.S. bishops' Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage. I will say no more here about his anti-gay activism, which has also been reviewed in an essay by Jamie L. Manson in the National Catholic Reporter (http://tinyurl.com/chnskdw).
We are all too familiar with the Christian admonition to love the sinner, hate the sin. The problem, of course, is that the Catholic tradition considers the genital expression of my sexual personhood in a committed, monogamous relationship categorically sinful. But on a more basic level, the problem is our preoccupation with the sins of others.
Love the sinner, hate the sin imposes a moral judgment on the other, resulting in the most pathetic and patronizing pseudo-love imaginable. It is the same love a benevolent master professes for the slave, or the abusive husband for his victim-wife. But if you actually love me and want to help me, by all means stop your anti-gay activism. Don't refer me to the Courage apostolate. When you have lifted your foot from my neck, then by the grace of God I will stand up and tell you as a free person what I think of your alleged love. If I sound angry, that is because I am angry.
But I will not hate you, and I will try my best to love you. Not because I can claim as some Christians do to have achieved the ability to love everyone. Yet I may love you, and declare here that as God allows I will love you. That is a choice I am free to make, consistent with my dignity as a child of God and my calling as a Catholic. I choose and am able to love because I have answered for myself the question, "" that was prophetically tagged on the walls of Most Holy Redeemer when your hateful Prop 8 passed. I have found love, and am growing in love with my husband, in my community, and at the table of my beloved church. Love is a place where everyone is welcome, even the "Father of Prop 8."
Eugene McMullan is a parishioner at Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church.