Box Turtle Bulletin

Mexican Catholic Archdiocese completely jumps the shark

You think Mexico’s drug cartels are a problem? Well you ain’t seen anything so bad as what’s really destroying the country: Teh Gehs!! (On-Top)

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico has called gay marriage worse than drug trafficking, Mexico daily El Universal reported.

Kidnapping, executions, intimidation, and the all-out war on the Mexican government? Pshaw! That’s nothing compared to Anita and Isabel tying the knot.

Something must be done! The Church must get involved and tell the people how to vote!

The church called for the ouster of the government of Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard.

“He and his government have created laws destructive to the family, the laws do worse damage than drug trafficking,” Hugo Valdemar, spokesman for the Archdiocese, said. “Marcelo Ebrard and his party, the PRD, are determined to destroy us.”
…
Last Sunday, the cardinal of Guadalajara, Juan Sandoval Iniguez, accused Ebrard of bribing the court to rule in the city’s favor.

Speaking in Aguascalientes, Iniguez said the court would not reach such an “absurd” conclusion unless it was motivated by a large sum of money.

“I do not know of any of you who would like to be adopted by a pair of lesbians or a pair of fags,” he said. “I think not.”

Bring back good ol’ fashioned morality. Bring back the old ways when life was simpler and everyone knew their place, and stayed in it. It’s the Real Catholic way.

Catholic Church opposes freedom of assembly in Jerusalem

The annual gay pride march in Jerusalem took place this year with few problems. (AP)

Thousands of Israelis marched calmly Thursday in Jerusalem’s longest gay pride parade despite opposition from anti-gay demonstrators.

Carrying rainbow banners, several thousand demonstrators walked along the 1.5 mile (2.5 kilometer) route. A few dozen black-suited ultra-Orthodox Jewish protesters at the beginning and end of the route held signs denouncing homosexuals, with slogans like “Gay Play in Hell, Not Jerusalem.” Many ultra-Orthodox Jews consider homosexuality an abomination.

But, unlike previous years, the ultra-Orthodox did not physically attack the marchers and no one hurt.

However, the Catholic Church has now given its opinion. Perhaps to no one’s surprise, the Church is in opposition to the freedom of assembly in the Holy City. (SL Tribune)

The Catholic Church’s highest official in the Holy Land has sharply criticized Israeli authorities for permitting a gay pride march through the streets of Jerusalem.

In a statement Friday after the city’s eighth annual Gay Pride Parade, which attracted 3,000 marchers, Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal said the parade, “its organizers and the authorities who allow it, care neither for the feelings of families nor the holiness of this city.” The patriarch said gays can “have their parade wherever they want,” as long as it is not in Jerusalem.

Ya know, it’s funny. When anti-gays oppose our rights, they love to say that they aren’t opposed to us as people or our rights in general, but it’s only these rights here that they oppose.

If we are wanting marriage in California, they aren’t opposed to civil unions, just marriage.

When we want civil unions in Hawaii, they aren’t opposed to all all recognition, just civil unions that are too close to marriage.

When we want limited domestic partnerships in Colorado that offer a few protections, they don’t oppose hospital visitation, just giving state sanction to homosexual relations.

When we ask a hospital to allow gay people to decide who will make medical decision, they don’t oppose us living how we want, they just want to protect the rights of the family to decide what is best.

When sodomy laws were overturned allowing us to live as we want without threat, they didn’t want us thrown in jail much, they just wanted to enact social disapproval of homosexual acts.

And on it goes.

So when Patriarch Twal says we can have our parades wherever we want, just not in Jerusalem, I’m frankly skeptical. Tell us Partriarch Twal, exactly where on the globe is it that the Catholic Church supports gay people marching?

Anne Rice: “I Quit Being A Christian”

Anne Rice, the New Orleans novelist who single-handedly made vampires cool again, was raised as a Roman Catholic. But like most cultural Catholics, the church wasn’t something that she took seriously. That changed in 2004 following surgery for a life-threatening intestinal blockage, when she announced that she would henceforth “write only for the Lord.” She embraced her Catholic roots and published her next novel, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, which was intended to be the start of a series chronicling the life of Jesus. Her next novel, Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, came out in 2008.

But her embrace of Catholicism was of a personal and spiritual nature, and as is not unusual among Catholics, didn’t extend to social issues:

Her views will not please all of the devout. Rice favors gay marriage. She believes the church position regarding birth control is a grievous error that is not supported by Scripture. She repudiates what she sees as intolerant, “sex-obsessed” church leaders, and says she does not find support in the message of Jesus for their focus on sexual orientation or abortion. She argues for a more inclusive church.

“Think of how the church bells would ring and the pews would fill if women could become priests and priests could marry. It would be the great resurgence of the Catholic Church in this country.”

But Rice was ultimately unable to reconcile her belief in Christ on the one hand, with the actions of fellow Christians and how those actions have stained the Christian “brand” on the other. She appears to have hinted at this with this post on her facebook page which appeared on Tuesday:

Gandhi famously said: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” When does a word (Christian)become unusable? When does it become so burdened with history and horror that it cannot be evoked without destructive controversy?

She answered her question yesterday morning, when she posted this to her facebook page:

For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten …years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.

She then followed that a couple minutes later with this:

As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of …Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

She followed those posts with two more quotations from the Book of Matthew posted on her facebook page as part of an ongoing set of discussions. So it appears that she hasn’t quit Jesus, just his followers on earth.

NOM in St. Paul: a disturbing perversion of Christianity

The National Organization for Marriage presented its usual speakers in St. Cloud, Minnesota today. But it also presented someone who made the most peculiar and disturbing speech we’ve yet observed on their tour.

First, let me say that it is appropriate that religious moral teaching – along with other codes of ethics – deal with appropriate sexuality. Violation, abuse of trust, maturity, fidelity and even abstinence are all issues about which people of faith may and should determine ideals and personal goals.

It is not peculiar or inappropriate for Christianity – or any other belief system – to establish rules of self-comportment which preclude using others sexually and which encourage abstinence before commitment and fidelity afterword. But lately I’ve seen faith leaders who go far beyond ethical sexuality and who have gone so far as to spiritualize and even deify heterosexuality.

Take, for example, this report by NOM’s blogsite (perhaps Maggie Gallagher) of a speech by Father Mike Becker, the rector of St. John Vianney Semi­nary in St. Paul:

Father Mike Becker, from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, told supporters today that from a spiritual perspective, “Marital intimacy is a prayer,” relaying the account of a woman who told him that she believed there were angels in the room rejoicing when her child was conceived.

That is, to me, shocking coming from a Christian minister.

The idea of “intimacy” as an offering to a deity is not a new one. Fertility cults, wherein deities are honored by sacred acts of f*cking, were at one time a dominant religious experience on the planet. Sexuality is a powerful force and linked as it is with procreation and rebirth and the cycles of the seasons, it was almost inevitable that it would become a focal point of worship.

But not for Christians. The Protestant long Judeo-Christian heritage is one of rejection of “sacred sex.” Indeed, most scholars agree that the Levitical sexual restrictions exist in a part due to the sex worship of neighboring Canaanites. And New Testament Christians set themselves apart from the collection of Roman deities with their temple prostitutes.

To say that “marital intimacy is a prayer” is not only heretical, but a very disturbing perversion of Christianity, as I know it to be. And to conjure up images of invisible demi-gods hovering about watching you have sex is not only exhibitionistic, but hearkens back to Samhain fires and Astarte temples. While these may have an appropriate place in the religious lore of others, they are certainly not a part of Protestant Christianity.

I am troubled that many of those who oppose civil equality for gay people do so not limit themselves to matters of sexual ethics. Rather, for a while some have been demonstrating an obsession with sex that borders on the deification of heterosexuality. But this is by far the most extreme that I’ve seen.

UPDATE: More from Courage Campaign:

We also met with Father Michael Becker, a Catholic priest whose main argument against homosexuality was centered around the practice of anal and oral sex. According to Father Becker, anal and oral sex lack dignity because they abuse their partners as instrumentalities of pleasure for non-procreative potential.

He said it, not me.

NY Catholics March Despite Ban

Marchers from St. Francis Xavier, a gay-welcoming Catholic church which had been participating in New York City’s Gay Pride parade for several years, were forbidden by NYC Archbishop Timothy Dolan from marching with a banner identifying their parish’s name in last weekends parade. Their response? They marched with a blank banner. Here’s CNN’s coverage:

Lithuania Pride tomorrow

After the usual roadblocks and lawsuits, the Lithuanian high court has determined that gay people can assemble tomorrow. (It had been banned under the argument, “if I let you march, it will incite people to try and kill you”)

We should expect that, as usual, the good holy moral and deeply devout Catholics of the fine godly nation will show their true Christian spirit and will try and hurt, maim, denounce, or pelt the participants with rotten food or excrement. Lithuania is a strongly Catholic country and they tend to share the current Pope’s attitudes about religious freedom, human rights, and personal dignity.

LA Times’ Oliphant discusses SCOTUS and religion

A few weeks ago, I noted that with the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court of the United States would no longer have a Protestant Christian as a member. Now James Oliphant, writing for the LA Times discusses the same.

He reports that many observers dismiss the importance of religious diversity. And he quotes one of the few Justices who discuss the matter

Scalia, one of the few justices who have spoken about the role of Catholicism in their deliberations, has done so largely as a means of reconciling his faith with his votes to uphold death sentences. He has said that any Catholic judge who believes the death penalty is immoral should resign.

But he has emphasized that his faith has had little effect on how he views his role as a judge.

“I am hard-pressed to tell you of a single opinion of mine that would have come out differently if I were not Catholic,” he said in a 2007 speech.

How very odd. I could probably identify dozens in which Scalia’s faith-system dictated his position.

Papa Ratzi to meet victims of pedophile priests this weekend

Is there anywhere on God’s Green Earth that Catholic priests haven’t molested kids? Anywhere?

From the Times Online

The Pope is ready to meet victims of clerical sex abuse when he visits Malta at the weekend, but only if the encounter is conducted in a “calm and discreet” atmosphere rather than under the media spotlight, his spokesman said today.
…
The diocesan authorities in Malta said this week that of 45 child abuse allegations against priests on the island, 19 were found to have no basis but 13 were going ahead and another 13 cases were “pending”.

At a press conference on Monday eleven former victims of abuse by priests on Malta, led by Lawrence Grech, 37, who claims that he was abused regularly at an orphanage at Santa Venera, asked to meet the Pope “for a few minutes to help us heal and to overcome this trauma”.

Really? Santa Venera, Malta?

I mean c’mon. The island nation of Malta is about the same size as Oakland, CA and Santa Venera has about 6,000 residents. But I guess that’s big enough for at least one pedopriest.

Take action now, your parish is at risk!!

If you live in Connecticut, you must take bold action to protect your parish. Politicians want to change the statute of limitations on child molestation, and we must not let them attack the Holy Mother Church in this way.

Call your Congressman now!

This would be a tasteless parody if it weren’t what the Catholic Church in Connecticut is actually doing. (CNN)

A bill in Connecticut’s legislature that would remove the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases has sparked a fervent response from the state’s Roman Catholic bishops, who released a letter to parishioners Saturday imploring them to oppose the measure.

In a letter inserted in Sunday bulletins, the bishops appealed to parishioners to take action to fight the change.

This bill would retroactively eliminate the statute of limitations for civil lawsuits related to allegations of child sexual abuse. Connecticut already has the longest retroactive statute in the United States – 30 years past the age of 18. Over the past several years in states that have even temporarily eliminated the statutes, it has caused the bankruptcy of at least seven dioceses. House Bill 5473 would make Connecticut the only State without a statute of limitations. This bill would put all Church institutions, including your parish, at risk.

And as for the victims… well, the Church is the real victim here.

This unfairness is greater because Catholic institutions have largely resolved their problem of childhood sexual abuse through zero tolerance practices implemented in 1992 and excellent safe environment programs beginning in 2002.

So Catholics should oppose the change because it would allow the Church to be held liable for the molestation of their children by pedophile priests and might cost the Church some money. They make no pretense, it’s all about money.

Almost every day I am dumbfounded at the way in which the Catholic Church just doesn’t get it. Rather than show repentance for the horrific and inexcusable pattern of systematically covering up heinous acts of abuse by those entrusted to be the Church’s most intimate contact with the World, they continue to shift blame, circle the wagons, protect their leaders, blame the victims who “want it”, and do anything to protect their assets and power.

Bishop blames the “God-killing” Jews for Church’s pedophile priest crisis

The Catholic Church and an Italian news source are in a dispute over statements purportedly made by Monsignor Giacomo Babini, the Bishop Emeritus of Grossetto. Babini says he never made the remarks and Pontifex claims to have tape. (Time Online)

A retired Italian bishop has provoked fury by reportedly suggesting that “Zionists” are behind the current storm of accusations over clerical sex abuse shaking the Vatican and the Catholic Church.
…
Monsignor Babini’s reported comments follow a series of statements from senior Vatican cardinals blaming a “concerted campaign” by “powerful lobbies” for accusations that Pope Benedict XVI was involved in covering up cases of clerical abuse both as Archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982 and subsequently as head of doctrine at the Vatican.

None has explicitly blamed Jews or any other group. However Bishop Babini, 81, said Jews “do not want the Church, they are its natural enemies”. He added: “Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are deicides [God killers].”

The Catholic Church is in crisis over criticism of the way they enabled and protected priests who molested the children in their care. So far, their response has been to deny any institutional fault and to seek to push the blame to those whom they already consider to be their enemies.

They’ve blamed the gays outright and some now may be suggesting it’s all a Zionist Plot. History cautions against going in this direction.

Vatican Official Blames Rape of Girls by Priests on Gays

That’s how the AP is reporting it:

“Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and pedophilia. But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true,” said (Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio) Bertone. “That is the problem.”

…At least one of the highest-profile pedophiles in the Chilean church victimized young girls, including a teenager who became pregnant. At the time, the archbishop of the capital, Santiago, received multiple complaints about Father Jose Andres Aguirre from families concerned for their daughters. But the priest — known to his parishioners as Father Tato — continued serving at a number of Catholic girls schools in the city. Later the church sent Aguirre out of Chile twice amid abuse allegations. He was eventually sentenced to 12 years in prison for abusing 10 teenage girls.

The Cardinals assertion is a willful faith-based slander, similar to the kind of blame that has been levied against gays here in the U.S. against priests who are equal-opportunity abusers. It’s worth noting that the California priest who Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) in 1985 demurred from defrocking for tying up and raping boys in his parish, was finally convicted in 2004 of molesting a young girl at the home which that very same by-then ex-priest shared with his wife. His crimes also led to a lawsuit against the  Oakland diocese by seven women who said he abused them in the 1970’s, apparently before he tied up those two boys.

Experts on child sexual abuse point out that for many perpetrators the gender of the victim is inconsequential. But who needs experts or common sense when gays makes such a convenient scapegoat?

Supreme Court loses its last Protestant

John Paul Stevens, the US Supreme Court’s oldest and longest-serving justice, has announced that he will retire. And the President is undoubtedly already weighing potential replacements.

It is likely that President Obama will place diversity as a desirable attribute. The court currently contains its first (modern) Hispanic jurist, second African American jurist, and both second and third female jurists; for most of its history, the court has been comprised of white men. A candidate that further advances racial or gender diversity will be seen as a potential voice for excluded Americans.

Some may wonder if it is time for a gay or lesbian nominee. While I would love to think that possible, I doubt that this President will appoint a gay Supreme Court justice. Yet even the discussion over the possibility is good for our community.

But one thing I hope that this president considers – that will not likely get much attention – is religious diversity. Currently, the court has six Roman Catholics, two Jews, and the sole Protestant is Stevens who is now retiring.

This matters.

A great many cases that come before the SCOTUS involve issues of religious freedom or religious views. And Christianity is the dominant religion in this country.

But having only one brand of Christianity on the court yields only one perspective on what “Christianity” means. Even the most liberal of Catholics accepts as normal certain ideas that most Protestants reject. And without a Protestant voice on the court, the religious assumptions of the majority of Americans goes unstated.

As recent cases have revealed, the “orthodox Christian view” about homosexuality is relevant to whether laws are based in tradition and faith or in bigotry. In the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial, denominational stances were cited as evidence of a lack of (or presence of) animus. But if the only Christians on the court come from a faith that values hierarchy, church tradition, and doctrine handed down from a central authority, then testimony from affirming churches can seem rogue or heretic.

So without Stevens, the presumptions about Christianity on the court will be limited to those that come from being raised in (or converted to) Roman Catholicism. And I do not think that this is healthy and I hope that Obama considers this when making his final cut.

Pope Directly Involved In Sex Abuse Coverup

[Update: Copies of relevant letters have been posted online here.]

At what point should American prosecutors consider filing racketeering charges against senior American and Vatican officials of the Roman Catholic Church? We now have evidence that the current head of the Church was directly and personally involved in a conspiracy to conceal criminal sexual exploitation in the United States. The Associated Press has found the smoking gun:

The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children, citing concerns including “the good of the universal church,” according to a 1985 letter bearing his signature.

…The letter, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the Diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle.

[Updates: the full text of the letter is available here. Fourteen other letters written by priests concerning Kiesle’s conduct are available here.]

Kiesle had been accused of tying up two young boys and molesting them in a San Francisco-area church rectory, for which he got off with an unbelievable slap on the wrist of three years probation in 1978. When his probation ended in 1981, Kiesle asked to leave the priesthood and the diocese submitted papers to Rome to defrock him. Oakland’s then bishop John Cummins wrote to Ratzinger in 1982, saying “It is my conviction that there would be no scandal if this petition were granted and that as a matter of fact, given the nature of the case, there might be greater scandal to the community if Father Kiesle were allowed to return to the active ministry.” Ratzinger’s response?

In the November 1985 letter, Ratzinger says the arguments for removing Kiesle are of “grave significance” but added that such actions required very careful review and more time. He also urged the bishop to provide Kiesle with “as much paternal care as possible” while awaiting the decision, according to a translation for AP by Professor Thomas Habinek, chairman of the University of Southern California Classics Department.

But the future pope also noted that any decision to defrock Kiesle must take into account the “good of the universal church” and the “detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke within the community of Christ’s faithful, particularly considering the young age.” Kiesle was 38 at the time.

Stephen Kiesel in 2002, after having been arrested for molesting three girls thirty years earlier.

Kiesle had just been ordained in 1972, which means that he must have been tying up and molesting children right out of the gate. This article from 2002 indicates that he had been accused of molesting girls “thirty years ago.” It also gives you an idea about how notorious this guy was. Police suspected he was responsible for the abduction of Amber Swartz-Garcia in 1998 from her Pinole, CA home, as well as the abductions of three other missing girls. Police searched the home Kiesle shared with his wife in Truckee, but found no evidence in that case. (Another convicted felon later confessed to Amber’s killing.)

That same year however, he was arrested and charged with thirteen counts of molestation after three women came forward to accuse him of abusing them while serving in a parish in Fremont in the 1970s. This appears to have been the “thirty years ago” allegations mentioned earlier. All but two of those charges were thrown out after the US Supreme Court found California’s law extending the statute of limitations unconstitutional, but I haven’t been able to find out what happened with the remaining two charges. In 2003, he and the diocese were sued by seven women who said they were abused at St. Paula’s church in during the 1970s.  He was sentenced in 2004 to six years in state prison after pleading no contest to molesting a young girl in 1995 at his Truckee home.

But the well-founded fear that Kiesel would go on molesting more children wasn’t Ratzinger’s greatest concern, it was the fear of bad publicity that led to him arguing for further delay after already delaying for three years. This, despite Kiesle asking to be defrocked, and his bishop all but begging that Ratzinger laicize him, saying that Kiesle would be a threat to children if he remained in the priesthood.

But Cummins isn’t exactly the hero in all of this. While he was warning Ratzinger that Kiesle was a danger to children, what did he do?

As Kiesle’s fate was being weighed in Rome, the priest returned to suburban Pinole to volunteer as a youth minister at St. Joseph Church, where he had served as associate pastor from 1972 to 1975. [Emphasis mine]

And it gets worse.

Kiesle continued to volunteer with children, according to Maurine Behrend, who worked in the Oakland diocese’s youth ministry office in the 1980s. After learning of his history, Behrend complained to church officials. When nothing was done she wrote a letter, which she showed to the AP.

“Obviously nothing has been done after EIGHT months of repeated notifications,” she wrote. “How are we supposed to have confidence in the system when nothing is done? A simple phone call to the pastor from the bishop is all it would take.”

She eventually confronted Cummins at a confirmation and Kiesle was gone a short time later, Behrend said.

[Update: Behrend’s 1988 letter complaining about Keisle’s working with youth is available online here.]

Kiesle was no longer a priest by 1987, although documents reviewed by the AP don’t show how, when or why he was laicized. The AP has constructed a complete timeline of the Kiesle case. Another timeline is available at BishopAccountability.org.

What will LA’s new Cardinal selection mean for CA’s fight for marriage equality?

Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony will retire in February, 2011, and the Catholic Church has just announced his replacement, Archbishop Jose Gomez of San Antonio. Considering that California will likely be voting again in 2012 on whether the state will recognize same-sex marriages, and considering the importance which the Holy See places on this issue, I doubt this move is unrelated.

As a Mexican native, Gomez will have a natural appeal and a greater sense of authority than had Mahony. And he could be a far more committed opponent of equality.

Cardinal Mahony was active in seeking Latino and other Catholic vote in favor of Proposition 8. Yet his was not the image of the initiative and his activism seemed more cursory than heartfelt. He opposed equality but not with ferocity.

This may, in part, be due to Mahony’s less rigid ideologies and his affiliation with the more moderate wing of the Church, one focused on advancing social good rather than upholding the dictates of Rome. Jose Gomez is cut from a different cloth. (LA Times)

During his six-year tenure atop the San Antonio archdiocese, Gomez emerged as a leading advocate for doctrinal conformity, determined to stave off what he saw as creeping secularism in the church.

He denounced one Catholic university when it invited then-Sen. Hillary Clinton to campus, because she favored abortion rights, and another when it invited a Benedictine nun, because she had advocated the ordination of women. Under his reign, a local Catholic high school ended its relationship with an organization that raised money to fight breast cancer, because the same organization gave grants to Planned Parenthood. After a 17-year-old lay advisory commission created by his predecessor suggested that gay marriage might be a human rights issue under one reading of the church’s teachings, Gomez disbanded the commission.

“The doors were closed for collaborative communication,” Mary Moreno, one commission member, said in an interview Tuesday. “We just got a letter. And when things are done like that, it kind of leaves a sting.”

Such hardline authoritarianism is natural considering his affiliation within the church. Gomez comes out of the conservative Opus Dei movement, one which frequently seems present when the Church lodges attacks the civil freedoms of non-Catholics, especially gays and lesbians.

And Gomez does believe in advancing his church’s agenda by means of the ballot box. In 2008 he wrote an op-ed in the San Antonio Express-News in which he said

Recently, the Express-News published its voter’s guide. It was a comprehensive listing of races and candidates running for office in November. I’m sure it was a helpful tool for many. I recognize it is challenging to make any voter’s guide comprehensive. However, the inclusion of the fundamental life issues for pursuit of the common good would have made the publication a more complete, accurate and useful tool at this critical time.

People need to know the positions of the candidates on the key issues that protect the right to life such as abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research and capital punishment. Voters also would have been better served if they had been provided information about the candidates’ positions on the definition of marriage, the basic cell of society as a union between a man and a woman.

But Jose Gomez may find that being Cardinal in Los Angeles is quite different from being Archbishop in San Antonio. He’ll soon discover that California’s Latino Catholic politicians are socially liberal and will not fall in line to follow the Church’s anti-gay positions. It will be interesting to see to what extent the new Cardinal will seek to impose his will on the local political power structure. And it will be interesting to see whether Gomez’ support for immigrants (with which he shares ideology with local Catholic Latino politicians) will cause him to tread more lightly on those other issues with which he disagrees.

But in any case, I think that this move is likely to change the game in the next proposition battle. I suspect that Gomez will be much more aggressive in the Church’s campaign to impose its will on its neighbors.

Cardinals blame press coverage of pedophile priests on gay marriage

The Catholic Church has come up with a new way to blame their current problems with pedophile priests and institutional cover-ups on the gay community. Yes, they are still blaming the press, but now they’ve assigned the media a new motivation (telegraph):

The head of the Vatican City State’s government, Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, also came to the defence of the Pope, condemning what he said was a campaign of “hatred against the Catholic Church.”

Another cardinal, Julian Herranz of Spain, said that the Pope’s opposition to gay marriage and abortion put him at odds with “powerful lobbies (which) would like to impose a completely different” agenda on the Church.

Yep. The only reason why the press cares about the kiddie-diddling priests is because of gay marriage. Un-huh, sure. See if that sells.

Ya know, if these Cardinals had cared about the children who were victims of predatory priests even one tiny fraction as much as they care about the Pope’s reputation, there never would have been a scandal.