The Archbishop’s Campaign Against Grave Evil

Archbishop Cordileone is the wise and revered leader of the Roman Catholics in the archdiocese of San Francisco, which comprises San Francisco, San Mateo, and Marin counties and according to its website incorporates some 400,000 Catholic souls; but he wants more power and has tipped his hand in a recent letter to the staff at four Catholic high schools in the archdiocese explaining that a new faculty handbook will state that “all extra-marital sexual relationships are gravely evil and that these include adultery, masturbation, fornication, the viewing of pornography and homosexual relations”.  Furthermore, teachers are expected to “refrain from public support of any cause or issue that is explicitly or implicitly contrary to that which the Catholic Church holds to be true”.

Ummm, yes, but not a problem, you say since the Catholic Church is free to state church doctrine for all Catholics, no matter how ludicrous.  And folks, you can’t get any more ludicrous than a ban on masturbation, the most universal human pastime.  As a woman who was one of Kinsey’s interviewees famously said, “I invented it and if i could have patented it, i’d have made a million dollars.”

Ahhh, but wait.  There’s a problem after all – 18% of the teachers are not Catholic, and worse yet, Cordileone has proposed adding to the next contract a clause stating that all school staff are “ministers of the church” who “are bound to conduct all of their activities” without contradicting the church, “regardless of individual job description, subject matter taught or personal doubt or assent.”

So what His Grace really wants to do is force everyone to abide by the rules of the Roman Catholic Church, and he’s starting with the non-Catholic employees of those schools since he has leverage over them.

Not, of course, that this desire is unique to the Roman Catholics.  In fact, it’s a feature of almost all religions since they want to enforce compliance with their doctrine by all citizens, not just the members of the faith.

Which is why i revere the founding fathers of this country, who wisely added the first amendment to our constitution expressly forbidding the establishment of any religion.  They knew enough history to understand what happens when any religion has the power to make laws applying to everyone.

Look at every theocracy today.  Wherever Islam has the power, it enforces Sharia law in the most brutal manner just as when Christianity had the power, it happily burned heretics at the stake.  I see no real difference.

His Grace has a long history of attempting to force Roman Catholic doctrine on all of us.  My great joy is that his efforts have come to no avail.  Well, other than a temporary victory over the gays with Prop 8 and that thankfully reversed by the courts.

I look forward to seeing the results of his campaign against masturbation.  I mean, his wars on adultery, contraception, pornography, and homosexuality are going so well that it’s nearly Mission Accomplished in the extirpation of those grave evils, so it’s time to open a new front.

I have it on good authority that Vatican scientists have invented a new device that can detect whether anyone has had an orgasm in the past week.  When the Morality Police have been fully funded and are conducting random testing in our streets, any citizen who comes up with a positive test and cannot produce a certificate of marriage with one person of the opposite sex will be burned at the stake.

A side effect will be an exponential increase in marriages.

And speaking of new fronts, how ’bout  Brian Goggin and Dorka Keehn‘s newest piece, “And My Room Still Rocks Like a Boat on the Sea (Caruso’s Dream),” at 59 9th St. in San Francisco.