As they say … Jesus!
The new archbishop of San Francisco isn’t just a conservative. All the bishops appointed by this pope are conservatives. The new guy overseeing the Catholic Church in one of the most socially liberal parts of the world is a genuine culture-warrior, someone who (literally) says that same-sex marriage is the work of the devil and who wanted to make the use of contraception a mortal sin.
Salvatore Cordileone also happens to be the father of Proposition 8. The East Bay Express, in an excellent profile, noted in 2009 that he
has cultivated one of the most theologically conservative worldviews imaginable. Especially when it comes to sexual matters, Bishop Sal is conservative and uncompromising.
What I hear through the Catholic rumor mill is that the Vatican folks who screen candidates for these jobs gave the pope a list of three names. He rejected them all and chose Cordileone.
So now the center of the crazy-looney-here-comes-the-devil branch of the Church has a powerful throne here in San Francisco. What this is going to do, of course, is drive gay people, and liberals, and moderates, and pretty much everyone who’s sane to question why they even stay in the Catholic Church. And maybe, as one gay Catholic told me, that’s exactly what Rome has in mind — get rid of the malcontents and the thinkers until the Catholic Taliban is all that’s left.
I suspect Bishop Sal is going to have some problems in his new assignment.