Fourteen-Year-Old-Men and Other Faithful Logic
How on Earth has San Francisco been getting by all this time without an Archibishop? Back in May, our old Arch-b got transferred to Rome, and we've been without a replacement since. But good news! Utah's giving us Bishop George Niederauer -- in fact, he's being installed today -- and despite being appointed by the Pope, the guy's not all that hostile to the gays. In fact, he seems downright friendly. Verrrrrry friendly. And he's utterly failed to fall into line with the Church's latest talking point, which is that abuse of children by priests is the fault of homosexuals, not pedophiles. But before we get to that, let's have some news about Planned Parenthood.
Awhile back, we somehow found our way onto the mailing list of "San Francisco Faith: the Bay Area's Lay Catholic Newsletter." Though we have no particular beef with Catholicism, we just can't quite understand the fervor of the folks behind this particular newsletter. Bunching their panties this month is a rumor that our local Planned Parenthood Golden Gate didn't notify the authorities of a statutory rape. The case against PPGG is overwhelming: someone said it's true on the internet! A poster on a PPGG messageboard (it's been removed, but you can read the cache here) claimed have been raped by her 17-year-old boyfriend at age 11. PPGG, the poster said, aborted her baby, and now six years later she's sitting in the very same office, writing her testimonial. Well, that certainly has a ring of truth to it; especially considering some of the other forum posts, which range from pro-PP sob stories to anti-abortion rants to sheer gibberish. Even though the story makes no claim that PPGG didn't report the rape, right-wing blogs and self-declared news agencies are all atwitter over this latest kerfuffle.
So: a random internet person posts an anonymous, unverifiable story on an unmoderated forum, and it's regarded as unimpeachable truth. Awesome! Hey, maybe if the victims of pedophile-priests had done the same, the Church would've listened to them, too.
After the jump: bloody Mary, pitching to the Pontiff (if you know what we mean), and why pedophiles are bad, but homosexuals are worse.
Other news from around the bay: a statue of Mary at Vietnamese Catholic Martyrs Church in Sacramento has been crying blood, but church higher-ups aren't investigating. If her condition doesn't improve, they'll send around "field investigators and lab experts," but for now they're just advising the Church to strap Kotex pads to the statue. (Kidding about that last part.)
So, what of this George Niederauer character? Well, he'll be replacing our unusually moderate former-Archbishop, WIlliam Levada. George and Will were boyhood friends back in high school, and George has made such "WHAAAA?"-inducing statements as "I'm personally opposed to abortion but I can't impose my moral judgement on others," and that he plans to ordain homosexuals. WHAAAA? Apparantly, George learned a lot during two-and-a-half years of service at Saint Victor's in West Hollywood, and made lots of friends: "gay men never felt ill at ease dealing with him," said a Monsignor at St. V's, "we would be invited to their homes in West Hollywood." Oh, we thought he looked familiar -- we must've bumped into him at Kathy Griffin's barbecue.
Neiderauer's coming to SF because Levada recommended that the Pope install him here. So "SF Faith" muses, "which of his qualities does Neiderauer think Levada 'pitched to the pontiff'?" WHA WHA WHAAAA? Oh Judy, you did NOT just say "pitched to the pontiff." Somebody think up some kind of sexual act for that to be slang for RIGHT THIS SECOND. Excuse us while we get our minds out of the gutter -- in the mean time, you can just amuse yourself with this partial list of Niederauer's favorite authors: Tennessee WIlliams, Evelyn Waugh, Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Parker, T. S. Eliot ... ooh, he's so sensitive.
George is making some conservatives uncomfortable because he's failed to latch onto a key talking point regarding the Church's sexual abuse problems. A lot of Church officials have made statements that it's "a homosexual scandal, not a pedophilia scandal," and in fact the latest issue of Faith makes the argument that the abuse victims were all men (which is news to us -- 14-year-olds count as men these days?), so the Priest's only sin was homosex, not pedosex. But George told the Chron, "People who see the sex abuse scandal as having as 'the' cause the sexual orientation of the priests, I felt they are mistaken. Because when we're talking about pedophilia we're talking about a sickness, an illness, an aberration."
Critics have responded to his statement by pointing out that the Church considers homosexuality to be a sickness, too. Fair enough. So, as an analogy, let's say someone's suffering with both a sore throat and leprosy, and their limbs have started falling off. How would you feel about a doctor who said, "this is a sore-throat symptom, not a leprosy symptom"?