Commentary on U.S. Bishops' Meeting: "The Moral Credibility of Catholic Bishops in the United States Is in Tatters"

Barry Blitt's "Welcome to Congress" cover for New Yorker, 9 November 2018

Now if a knock-off cover could only be produced, showing all those whited-out men in suits as the Catholic bishops at their latest meeting….

Frank Cocozzelli Presents His Annual Coughie Award: And the Winners Are . . . Maureen Mullarkey and Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone!

It's that time of year — Coughie time! I have come to look forward to Frank Cocozzelli's annual announcement of his Coughlin Award, given to the U.S. Catholic who has, well, here's Frank's explanation of what the Coughie is all about: 

Cordileone Opens His Mouth Again, Nonsense Falls Out Again: "The Clear Biological Fact Is That a Human Being Is Born Either Male or Female"

It seems to me sadly predictable that San Francisco archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, the "father of proposition 8," who took credit for snatching the right of civil marriage from gay couples in California in 2008, would want to weigh in with a loud, media-grabbing statement about the Caitlyn Jenner story. After all, the hard evangelical right, the Catholic bishops' allies in the culture war against the LGBT community, had already been weighing in before Cordileone opened his mouth. The never disappointing (if one is looking for clownish religious-right soundbytes, that is) Rev. Mike Huckabee, for instance, had made ill-informed, pretend-jocular, but base-revving remarks about women's locker rooms and men who pretend to be women in order to lurk in said rooms.

Discussions That Should Be Placed Side by Side: Abuse Survivors Want Juan Barros Removed as Bishop of Osorno, San Francisco Catholics Want Salvatore Cordileone Removed as Archbishop of San Francisco

Two items I've read this morning strike me as a revealing synchronistic fit for one another. The first is Kristine Ward's editorial in today's edition of NSAC (National Survivor Advocates Coalition) News. Kristi is commenting on the recent meeting of Marie Collins, Peter Saunders, and other members of the pope's abuse advisory commission with Cardinal Sean O'Malley, the pope's "fixer." She notes that NSAC members "are appalled that they [the lay members of the abuse advisory commission] are the people who had to initiate the action to speak with the commission chair, Cardinal Sean O'Malley and through him seek to get the attention of Pope Francis."

Here's the Ad from Today's San Francisco Chronicle, Asking Pope Francis to Remove Salvatore Cordileone as Archbishop of San Francisco

Here's the ad that appeared in today's San Francisco Chronicle, which I discussed in my first posting today. Thanks to Taku Imagawa for emailing it to me. (See Chris Morley's helpful suggestion below: if you click the link, it takes you to an even bigger and more legible copy of the ad.)

In News: Calls for Removal of Archbishop Cordileone, Vatican Ends Investigation of Nuns, Pope and Environment, Roe v. Wade and Marriage Equality, Hot Mess with Chilean Bishop

Here's a hodgepodge of news stories (and commentary) about Catholic-themed issues previously discussed on this blog:

Droppings (and Sprinkles) from the Catholic Birdcage: "If You Cannot Find Christ in the Beggar at the Church Door, You Will Not Find Him in the Chalice"

Abby Zimet at Common Dreams, in commentary entitled "The Un-Francis: I Was Hungry and You Gave Me Food, I Was Thirsty and You Gave Me Drink, I Was Homeless and WTF You Drenched Me With Sprinklers To Drive Me Away":

Cardinal Burke Throws Down the Gauntlet: "I Shall Resist" (Is This Cordileone's Message, Too?)

The new insert added by Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone to the faculty handbook of employees of Catholic high schools in the San Francisco archdiocese: all administrators, faculty, and staff of these schools are to 

Archbishop Cordileone's New Anti-Gay Handbook for Catholic Schools: A View from the Belly of the (Evangelical) Beast

Because I live in a heavily evangelical part of the country, and grew up in the Southern Baptist tradition, I think that readers of Bilgrimage sometimes forget that my perspective on issues of concern to American Catholics is often not precisely the perspective of many U.S. Catholics — a large percentage of whom live in the northern half of the United States and have little to no familiarity with the evangelical-dominated culture of the bible belt states. I want to issue that proviso as I begin to talk about the story now making the rounds in the Catholic media about Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone's new faculty handbook for Catholic schools in San Francisco, targeting gay folks and those who stand in solidarity with gay folks. 

More on National Congregations Study's Finding That U.S. Churches Are Moving in Gay-Inclusive Direction — Except Catholics: Whys and Wherefores

Yesterday, I briefly discussed the results of the National Congregations Study's survey released on 11 September, a survey that shows all religious bodies in the U.S. moving in a gay-inclusive direction in recent years except the Catholic church. The survey is receiving wide attention. Its results have been summarized by Cathy Lynn Grossman at the Religion News Service site and at the new CRUX site, and by Michael Paulson for New York Times.

New "Secret, Shadowy Version of NOM" Formed: Continuing Thick Ties of National Organization for Marriage to Secret, Shadowy, Rich and Powerful Catholic Group Opus Dei

Interesting news about the National Organization for Marriage, which is staging the "March for (Some People's) Marriage" in Washington, DC, today: Jeremy Hooper of the Good as You blog site has obtained a copy of an invitation to a meeting of what Hooper calls "some sort of secret, shadowy version of NOM (Super NOM?)" called the Princeton Group hosted on June 13 by NOM dignitaries. These include NOM president Brian Brown, co-founder Maggie Gallagher, board chair emeritus Robert George, founding board member Luis Tellez and, oh — surprise! — none other than the archbishop of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordileone, whose determination to attend NOM's "March for (Some People's) Marriage" today has proven so controversial.

Mid-Week News Snippets: Teresa Forcades on Gay Love, Cordileone and NOM, Religious Right and GOP, and Catholics and Gays

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At Gay Mystic, Jayden Cameron uses the occasion of the publication of Sister Teresa Forcades's new book És a les nostres mans to remind his readers of the interview she did earlier this year with Pikara magazine (English translation at Iglesia Descalza), in which she says, 

Mid-Week News Items: Marriage Equality and Religious Groups

More mid-week news tidbits, these focusing on religion and gay issues (the Cincinnati story discussed below does focus on gay issues, since it's about the attempt of Catholic institutions to weed out and control employees who show any support at all for gay people or gay rights):

The "Religious Liberty" Crusade Against Gay Rights: Making the Connections, Identifying the Main Players

For those seeking information about which particular groups have been pushing the "religious liberty" legislation targeting gay folks in various states in the U.S. at present, Dylan Scott has published a helpful article at Talking Points Memo today. Scott notes that major players in the movement to push anti-gay "religious liberty" legislation are the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the American Religious Freedom Program of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), and Focus on the Family.

U.S. Catholic Bishops Continue to Try to Convince Their Flocks That Gay Marriage Is Evil, But . . . .

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I suspect it's not self-evident to many people with good heads on their shoulders and hearts pumping blood infused with milk of human kindness rather than bitter bile that the loving, publicly recognized marital unions of two people of the same sex are an incomparable threat to the stability of the cosmos. Or an incomparable evil demanding that people of good will spend millions of dollars funding political lobbies designed to prevent that evil from growing in our midst, while many people around the world who are hungry, lack access to basic medical care, need housing, jobs, education, etc., would benefit greatly from that wasted money.

Remarks of Archbishop Nienstedt Linking Gay Rights to Devil Gaining Wide Attention, with Video Coverage on YouTube