San Francisco’s Archbishop George Hugh Niederauer
(Photo: Mark Constantini, San Francisco Chronicle)
About a month ago, I wrote about a secret 1997 Mormon memo that proposed the Mormon leadership discreetly solicit a number of established religious faiths in a concerted plot to thwart marriage equality for queer families. According to ABC News, the memo sent by the LDS General Authority (an organization with church-wide jurisdiction) contained a reference specific to the Catholic Church, which read, “…the public image of the Catholic Church is higher than our Church. In other words, if we get into this, they are the ones with which to join.”
At that time, the Catholic Archbishop of Salt Lake City was none other than the current Archbishop of San Francisco, George Hugh Niederauer. Niederauer served as Archbishop of SLC from 1994 until three years ago today, when in 2005 he assumed the position formerly held by Cardinal William Levada, who was called to the Vatican to assume the position formerly held by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) as Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, sometimes referred to by Vatican critics as The Inquisition.
Curiously, Archbishop Niederauer is now taking credit for recruiting the Mormons (and their millions) as players in Proposition 8, which eliminated marriage equality in California. He’s also called, as have the Mormons, for tolerance and civil discourse in the wake of Prop 8.
These machinations have mesmerized critics of both Churches — comme moi, and, as Dan Aiello in a lenghty and thought-provoking article for the Bay Area Reporter notes, angered both queer leaders and LGBT Catholics.
From the Bay Area Reporter:
SF archbishop calls for tolerance, raises ire
With a letter to San Francisco Catholics explaining his role in Proposition 8 that included a call for civil discourse from both sides, San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer has raised the ire of LGBT leaders who are challenging the sincerity, tone, and purpose of the archbishop’s message.
“In the weeks since the adoption of this amendment the media have carried many speculations about the role of the Catholic bishops in California, and about my role in particular, in the passage of this proposition. It is my wish to clarify here what was done and why it was done, and offer some thoughts about the way forward amid so many misunderstandings and hard feelings,” wrote Niederauer.
[ … ]
In his message, called “Moving forward together,” which appeared on the San Francisco Archdiocese Web site December 1, Niederauer emphasized that he and the California Catholic Bishops Conference were responsible for the Mormon involvement in the debate, a point that may be contradicted by the recent leak of a 1997 internal Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints memo that evidenced a Mormon strategy seeking recruitment of California’s bishops to the cause.
The Catholic bishops of California were first to endorse the proposition and then “urged Catholics and organizations of lay Catholics, to work for its passage,” Niederauer claimed.
The plot then proceeds to thicken as Aiello points to the obvious collusion of the Catholic and Mormon Churches in the passage in 2000 of California’s Prop 22, which defined marriage as between “one man and one woman.”
Pop Quiz Time: Who was the Catholic Archbishop of Salt Lake City during the Prop 22 campaign? If you said, George Niederauer, you’re absolutely correct, and come sit by me.
In Dan Aiello’s article, Marrianne Duddy-Burke, Executive Director of the Catholic GLBT organization DignityUSA, is having none of what Archbishop Niederauer’s selling:
The timeline and the mechanics of the Mormon involvement, I wish I knew for sure, but I can’t say what came first,” she said. “What’s important here is that a coalition of religious leaders used their moral authority, their funding resources, and their pulpits to institutionalize discrimination against us and our families. He [Niederauer] is clearly a major player in this issue. What we know as Catholics is the leadership of the church has been in the forefront of every single one of these marriage equality battles from state to state, but what we see also is ambivalence and non-uniformity among Catholic voters on marriage equality.
Niederauer wrote in his letter, “Tolerance, respect, and trust are always two-way streets, and tolerance, respect, and trust often do not include agreement, or even approval. We need to be able to disagree without being disagreeable. We need to stop talking as if we are experts on the real motives of people with whom we have never even spoken. We need to stop hurling names like ‘bigot’ and ‘pervert’ at each other. And we need to stop it now.”
As Duddy-Burke put it, “You can’t call us sick and sinful, or as he did in this letter, ‘perverts,’ then suggest that we should speak to each other nicely.”
A second Dan Aiello article in the very same edition of the Bay Area Reporter brilliantly demonstrates Niederauer’s disdain for “tolerance” and inability to “disagree without being disagreeable.”
From The Bay Area Reporter:
Newsom’s comments keep Catholics in their seats
Now Proposition 8 is even making breakfast tough to eat.
Comments made by Mayor Gavin Newsom about Prop 8 during his remarks at the 11th annual Mayor’s Interfaith Thanksgiving Prayer Breakfast last month drew a standing ovation from “75 percent to 80 percent” of those in the room but kept Archbishop George Niederauer and Mormon representatives firmly in their seats.
[ … ]
Newsom spoke “about his personal struggles and specifically about the Catholic Church and the Mormon Church,” said openly gay Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who was at the breakfast and described the mayor’s remarks as “emotional and eloquent.”
Maurice Healy, spokesman for the Archdiocese of San Francisco, described Newsom’s “unprepared remarks” as “an intemperate attack on those religions and people of faith who supported Proposition 8.”[ … ]
Asked if the archbishop, who was seated next to Newsom, “turned his back on the mayor following the remarks,” Healy responded, “[Your readers] should know also that the chair and vice chair of the San Francisco Interfaith Council subsequently apologized to Archbishop Niederauer for the conduct of the mayor.”
DeLange confirmed a letter had been sent.
“What we said in our letter to the archbishop was that we regret that Mayor Newsom chose this occasion to express his anger at the Catholic Church and other religious people whom he perceives as instrumental in the passage of Proposition 8 in the November 4 election,” DeLange said.
[ … ]
[State Senator Mark] Leno was moved by the emotional tone of Newsom’s words, which he said included the mayor’s confession of the pain he felt when he was denied communion by the church at his swearing-in ceremony after his re-election because he is divorced.
“Among Gavin’s comments in his presentation was the fact that as someone who’s been divorced the church has the right to deny him communion, and he understands and must accept that,” Leno said, but that the separation of church and state requires elected officials to protect the civil rights of every citizen “irrespective of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.”
According to Leno, “75 percent to 80 percent of the room” gave Newsom a “thunderous, standing ovation,” which he believed was “a direct rebuke of what the archbishop has done in supporting Prop 8.”
The BAR article includes a Bill Wilson photo of Mayor Gavin Newsom and Archbishop Neiderauer at the Mayor’s Interfaith Thanksgiving Prayer Breakfast. While clearly sharing a table with Newsom, the stone-face Niederauer is staring in the opposite direction.
Apparently exhibiting “tolerance, respect, and trust,” as far as the Archbishop is concerned, is a one-way street. We are expected to remain agreeable, while Niederauer and his Mormon financiers and co-conspirators continue to remain aloof and disagreeable.
These holier-than-thou bigots, hiding behind their church facades and priestly robes, made no attempt at face to face discussions before they conspired to eliminate marriage equality. They continue to revel in their victory over basic human rights, while insisting on civility on the part of their victims. Forget about it. Now is the the time for responses of the in your face variety.
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Perhaps they should have considered civility before taking away our fucking rights. Sick fools.