San Francisco’s been all atwiz the past few days over the news about His Excellency Salvatore Cordileone, now Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland and currently awaiting his new title “His Grace” and his installation as Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco.
It seems that His Excellency was down in his home town of San Diego last weekend celebrating his recent reward from the Vatican for being an indefatigable foe of gays and originator of the infamous Prop 8 of 2008. In collusion with the current Archbishop of San Francisco, George Niederauer, he launched the mendacious but effective campaign to deny gays the secular marriage rites they had been granted by the state supreme court. And at the festive dinner last Friday night he guzzled enough good California wine that he failed a sobriety test at a roadblock near the UCSD campus and was hauled off to jail.
Which of course connoisseurs of Roman Catholic hypocrisy just loved and sent the news viral. The Chronicle published one of my gay friend Louis’ letters pointing out that His Excellency has made a career of calling Louis a “grave threat to the family” even while His Excellency goes jovially driving around drunk as a lord. Look, i relish my role as a threat to His Excellency’s thirteenth-century theology, but who’s the graver threat to the lives of his contemporary Californians?
Still, there were a couple of things that none of the letters pointed out.
First, the news accounts all agree that when the arresting officer asked for his occupation, Cordileone admitted that he was “a priest”. How perfectly Jesuitical, “a priest”. Just a run-of-the-mill, ordinary, altar-boy-groping priest. Move along, folks, nothing to see here. It was left to some nosy San Diego police department worker to out Cordileone as Bishop of Oakland, Archbishop-in-Waiting of San Francisco, indefatigable foe of gays and pushy nuns, and one of the most powerful men in the entire American Roman Catholic hierarchy.
So why was His about-to-be Grace so modest? Could it be for the same reason that the Roman Catholic Church has routinely covered up the child abuse of its priests? For the same reason Penn State covered up decades of sexual abuse by Coach Sandusky? Could it be that protecting the institution is vastly more important than revelation of the truth? That embarrassing truths must be concealed to the greatest degree possible to protect the revenue stream?
And second, the news accounts all mention that one of the passengers was Cordileone’s 88-year-old mother and that she was allowed to drive the car away from the scene. Hmmm. Yes, i certainly understand that there are many people in America who are 88 years old and still have drivers’ licenses, but i should think that even if she were not legally drunk, whatever modest amount of alcohol she had consumed plus all the difficulties of being 88 years old would not have made her the first choice as driver.
Well, unless she was the only passenger who had a drivers’ license. See, in California to get a drivers’ license you have to pass both written and driving tests. Oh, and you have to be over 18 years old.
No no, it may not as bad as we connoisseurs of Roman Catholic child abuse might think. I mean, maybe word will leak out that the passengers were his mother and his two favorite love children.
But then, after i read this article in the gay newspaper Bay Area Reporter, i started to feel a sense of shame for mounting the above vicious personal attack on His Excellency. I loathe the Roman Catholic heirarchy so deeply because of their continuing hateful attacks on me that i routinely lose perspective and write something nasty in an attempt to strike back against my persecutors. I could be more effective as a warrior against that rotten church if i avoided the personal attacks and simply focused on the church’s abundant evils, reminding myself all the while (as i have mentioned before) that there are millions of Catholic worshipers who are appalled at the current teachings of their church and the actions of their heirarchy. Do read that article i linked to at the beginning of this paragraph.
Meanwhile, enough of those fluffy flowers for a while