San Francisco Catholics Petition the Vatican

More evidence of how gay marriage ideologues invert everything. When they say mercy, they mean "fire the Guy." When they say don't discriminate, they mean "shut down their business." And when they say tolerate, they mean "no faithful Catholics need apply"

SF Gate commissioned a poll about whether Archbishop Cordileone should be removed. Here are the results. Should Pope Francis remove Archbishop Cordileone from the San Francisco archdiocese? • 77% No, the archbishop is upholding the values of the Catholic Church • 12% Yes, the archbishop is fostering a climate of intolerance • 10% No, the archbishop is right to oppose same-sex marriage • 1% Yes, his morality clause for teachers in parochial schools defies the law The people have spoken. It seems like the "prominent" 100 do not speak for the people.

One of the signers of the ad is a principle in Nibbi construction. Google nibbi.com and St.Francis of Assisi-La Porziuncola Nuova to see the magnificent work done by this firm to give San Francisco the chapel of the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi.So yes, I think loosing the trust and support of people from Nibbi construction is quite significant. Archbishop Quinn closed the parish of St. Francis of Assisi one of San Francisco's most historic Roman Catholic Churches. Archbishop Levada realized its significance to S.F. and reopened the church as the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi. I live in San Francisco,people all over the Bay Area are talking about this loss of trust in the decision making process within the Archdiocese under the episcopal leadership of Archbishop Cordileone.

Here's the splash-page lead-in to this thinly disguised editorial screed: "A divided archdiocese calls for mercy and imagination, not digging in and building bunkers." Evidently, "mercy and imagination" = views of rich white Left Coast elitists who support Dem/progressive agenda uncritically, while "digging in and building bunkers" = pointing out that Catholic teaching has some problems with same. Strikes me that AMERICA here is taking its journalistic cues from MSNBC.

Mr. Elbe your comment "Race discrimination was immoral. Opposing same sex marriage or pointing out that homosexual behavior is immoral is not." Is only half correct. There is nothing immoral about being gay or gay marriage. Here's why... In our genome, you know the one that God created before there were pens and papers, he created gay and straight and bisexual and black and white and male and female. God created a world that is not as binary as you would like. Amazingly all of the diversity in our species is due to a 0.5% variation in our genetic make up. Homosexuality is woven into our species at the chromosomal level. You can find the papers on the internet. I suggest you read them because they are compelling. The simple, compelling truth is if something is found in nature, like homosexuality, it is part of God's Plan. There are scores and scores of studies demonstrating this. You can keep pointing to the Bible and saying that is "the Truth" but there is also truth in our genome. Please educate yourself to the actual reality that is found on this planet. Not the beliefs of our ancestors that are not standing up to the test of time to reason or research. There are many deep truths in the Bible and I look to them. I also know that we have grown intellectually as a species and we now actually know what a water molecule looks like. We know more about the world and how it works than our ancestors did. Now that you know about these papers, if you refuse to read them, and to refuse to alter your behavior is to commit a sin. You cannot be blindly faithful to an idea when it causes other people real harm. How many gays, like people of African descent, have been killed, injured physically or in other ways, just because of who God made them to be? We will never know the exact number but I do know that the Church has been wrong before and is wrong now on this issue. Archbishop Cordileone seems to get particular joy out of antagonizing gays. I know, I used to live there and remember him as Bishop of Oakland. And to do that in San Francisco is to disrespect the memory of people like Harvey Milk who were killed just because they were gay. If I had been asked to sign the petition that was in the Chron, I would have without reservation. It is wrong to dump water on the homeless and only change the policy when you are caught red handed. It is wrong to prevent girls from participating in our liturgies as mass is a family event. It is wrong to threaten to fire people when they are exercising their conscience because of some morality pledge. Think about it Mr. Elbe. If we went back to the 1950s and a pledge like the one that Cordileone is promoting existed, but it was about the prohibition of support for civil rights for blacks, where would your loyalty be? With the Church or with the blacks?

I’m guessing there’s not much actual scientific education informing several of the comments below (esp. Vince and G Miller). I suppose one can make the analogy of race and homosexuality just as others can make the analogy between homosexuality and pedophilia. But, let’s state a few scientific facts. There are clear chromosomal (XY vs. XX), genetic, hormonal, physiological and pathological distinctions (e.g. breast and prostate cancer) between men and women (of all mammalian species). The difference is huge, testable and scientifically indisputable. On race, there are identifiable differences in inheritance, in skin, facial features, and in disease predispositions (e.g. sickle cell anemia), etc. It is rarely a problem for a person to be identified by police by race and sex (hence the current controversy re African-Americans killed in police custody) and most government forms still look for those distinctions, even if this very data is simplistic and used for ideological reasons (e.g. for affirmative action or other racial/diversity counting here in the USA, or political and economic ethnic discrimination that still goes on in many parts of the world). However, sexual orientation is only known by self-identification. Despite extensive ideologically-driven and coolly-objective research, no “gay” gene, no chromosomal difference, no biological test of any kind has been identified that can accurately distinguish a homosexual from a heterosexual, or even come close to identifying a bisexual. None. Nada. Apart from the very rare cases of XXY (Klinefelter’s syndrome) or XYY, the same goes for most transgenders and transsexuals. And it is pure ideology that drives the ever-expanding alphabet soup of sexual orientation (see the NYT article on LGBTQIA, or the article on LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM at the bottom of my comment). This malleability is consistent with the people who “discover” their orientation late in life, even after having married, promised life-long commitment and had several children, and those who experiment in their teens or young adulthood, or identify as “bi-curious,” etc. I am happy to be corrected if shown a distinct medical test that might refute the current state of science, not just an article pushing trends in population studies. A test approved by the FDA would be a perfect counter, if anyone knows about one. None the less, it is also indisputable that a percentage of the population “think” or feel that they are sexually excited or attracted by members of their own sex, or are actually unable to have sexual intercourse with a person of the opposite sex, or are unable to use their sexual organs correctly (to generate children), or that some are attracted to BDSM or other fetishes, etc.. Hypotheses include hormonal effects in the womb, as yet undiscovered genetic or epigenetic traits, family dynamics, childhood experiences, other psychological events, sexual experimentation, ideological motivations, and even sexual boredom. Whatever the reason for the experienced orientation, there is no moral culpability just for being tempted, for experiencing a desire, unless sought out and encouraged. For those who have those feelings, sometimes deep-seated, and obsessive-compulsive, and are yet trying to live a chaste Christian life according to biblical and Church teaching, they are to be commended. They could be heroic, even saintly, especially if they do resist the prevailing ideological libertinism. They should be supported and loved by fellow Christians, who know they too are struggling with other no-less-strong temptations to sin. For all of us, it should be “love the sinner, not the sin.” This is the attitude that Pope Francis commended, when he famously said "who am I to judge". Here is the full quote: "I believe that when you are dealing with such a person, you must distinguish between the fact of a person being gay and the fact of someone forming a lobby, because not all lobbies are good. This one is not good. If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him? The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this in a beautiful way, saying ... wait a moment, how does it say it ... it says: “no one should marginalize these people for this, they must be integrated into society”. The problem is not having this tendency, no, we must be brothers and sisters to one another, and there is this one and there is that one. The problem is in making a lobby of this tendency." And those who are lobbying to discriminate against faithful Catholics should be called out for their own discriminatory injustices. LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM (No, This Is Not A Joke) http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/21404/ NYT LGBTQIA article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/fashion/generation-lgbtqia.html?pagewa... TIME article on race: http://time.com/91081/what-science-says-about-race-and-genetics/ Pope Francis full text http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2013/july/documents/papa-francesco_20130728_gmg-conferenza-stampa.html

The point that Ed Gleason and I are both making is that in San Francisco over the years coalitions of Roman Catholics who actually are Bay Area residents joined across socio-economic divides to bring into existence projects that were seen as important ways we as local Catholics expressed our tradition. The National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi came into existence due to public pressure by local Catholics against the closure of a Roman Catholic Church that we the local Catholics felt was vital to the story of San Francisco. I'm a small time donor, the Nibbis are much larger donors. Same goes for the new St. Anthony's Dining Room, a fixture of Catholicism since the OFMs founded it in the , I believe , 1950s. On a personal note by late dad was baptized at St. Francis of Assisi in 1905 a year before the original church was gutted by the fires of SF's 1906 earthquake. My maternal grand parents ( a German man and a Polish woman) met each other at St Boniface Church the home parish of St. Anthony's Dining Room . My grandmother could speak German my grandfather could not. They both were going to St. Bonifice because there were OFMs there who could speak German. All of this was before 1900.Like many local Chinese families would say "Many of us are long time Californians.

Successively repeating your original comments is not engaging others in fruitful dialogue.