Don’t let S.F. Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s charm fool you

By C.W. Nevius,

This week, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone met with The Chronicle’s editorial board. He’s charming, humorous and engaging.

He’s also dead wrong.

The controversy stems from his proposed changes in the collective bargaining agreement with teachers in archdiocese high schools that would designate them as “ministers.” In addition, “clarifications” to school handbooks would emphasize that employees would have to follow the teachings of the church, leading some parents and teachers to call the additions morality clauses because they involve things like same-sex relationships and abortion.

Cordileone may have reconciled his personal beliefs — saying he would allow gay students at archdiocese schools but adamantly opposes the right of same-sex couples to marry — but many of the rest of us are still shaking our heads.

Cordileone made every effort to minimize the controversy, but his explanations were difficult to follow at best.

ake his statement: “To call an act gravely evil does not mean that the person who does the act is an evil person.”

That may be clear to him, but I don’t get it. Among the “evil” activities he’s talking about are homosexuality, same-sex marriage and even in-vitro fertilization. It’s the kind of chilling distinction that puts everyone on edge.

A woman who identified herself as a “Sacred Heart Cathedral parent” sent an e-mail to The Chronicle to say how much the directives concerned her.

“Fifteen years ago … I decided to have a child through donor insemination,” she wrote. “The result was my wonderful son … now a proud freshman at Sacred Heart Cathedral. We both feel very strongly that the way our family was created was anything but ‘gravely evil.’”

Or consider this e-mail from an anonymous student:

“I am gay and many of my friends are LGBTQ or allies,” the student wrote. “These changes will make us feel less safe and welcoming in the school, no matter how many times Cordileone claims these changes won’t affect our experience while attending a Catholic school.”

So we asked Cordileone if an openly gay student would be allowed to attend school.

Gay kids ‘welcome’

“Gay students are certainly welcome in our schools,” he said. “I am very proud that our schools make students who are gay feel welcomed and protected.”

Great, so that sounds like he’s coming around, right? But in the next breath he said, “We need to know how to package the message so they can see the truth and beauty in the message.”

Presumably the message is that homosexuality is a sin.

You can listen to this hairsplitting until your head spins, but whether he appoints a committee to discuss education issues or says “we are not on a witch hunt,” the core message doesn’t change.

The archdiocese intends to campaign against gay relationships, same-sex marriage and abortion in order to support the outdated, conservative values of the church.

His response to his plan to designate school principals as “ministers” is a textbook example. At the editorial board meeting, I read Cordileone an e-mail from a labor attorney who wrote, “Once someone is classified as a minister of a church, almost all of their workplace rights disappear … possibly including collective bargaining, free speech and employment law.”

Cordileone said he understood.

“We have dropped the word ‘minister,’” he said, “because of this concern that the word ‘minister’ means the teacher will not have any rights.”

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