Serial COVID-19 safety protocol violator Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone insists he is more pro-life than you, despite all the preventable outbreaks in his diocese, and uses the new Texas abortion law to argue that both Biden and Pelosi cannot be good Catholics and support abortion rights.
There is a certain irony to eccentric Sith lord and San Francisco Catholic archbishop Salvatore Cordileone considering himself the standard-bearer of the pro-life movement, considering his DUI history, and his flouting of COVID-19 protocols that has produced many a hotspot among SF Catholic churches. I guess it depends how you define pro-life, right?
The good bishop defines pro-life as denying the seriousness of a pandemic that has killed nearly five million worldwide, and Sunday was not the first time he was given a Washington Post op-ed to argue his views. But he had yet another Post opinion piece published Sunday, this one entitled “Our duty to challenge Catholic politicians who support abortion rights,” which does not mention President Biden or Speaker Pelosi, but clearly targets them in an attempt to further inflame the culture wars over the new Texas abortion ban.
The article is behind a paywall, but significant portions of it are reprinted by Yahoo News and the National Catholic Register.
“You cannot be a good Catholic and support expanding a government-approved right to kill innocent human beings,” Cordileone wrote in the WaPo. Both Biden and Pelosi have spoken against the new Texas law.
He then delves into a frequent form of conservative trolling, equating his own assholery with the struggles of the Civil Rights movement.
“When considering what duties Catholic bishops have with respect to prominent laymen in public life who openly oppose church teachings on abortion, I look to this country’s last great human rights movement — still within my living memory — for inspiration on how we should respond,” he wrote. He cited a 1960s-era Archbishop Joseph Rummel who ignored court orders and desegregated New Orleans churches.
To equate supporting abortion rights with the racist segregation in the 1960s is a stretch. But perhaps a stretch you’d expect from a guy who, when you Google his name, the first thing you see is a class-action lawsuit ad to get a lawyer for sexual abuse victims who’ve suffered under his tenure.
Related: COVID Outbreak Hits North Beach Catholic Church That Hosted Illegal Wedding [SFist]
Image: SFArchdiocese.org
