The news that Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone is unvaccinated just cost him a visit to a church in San Francisco.
“Because Cordileone is not vaccinated and we’ve had breakthrough vaccinations in the church, I’m not comfortable. I’m not comfortable with him coming unvaccinated,” said Rita Clunies-Ross, St. Agnes Catholic Church parishioner.
December 19 was the day Archbishop Cordileone was scheduled to visit Saint Agnes Church. Several weeks before his visit, churchgoers like Rita Clunies-Ross voiced concerns. Now this church is taking a stance.
“I called him and spoke with him and asked him to re-schedule his visit for a later time because many people in the parish had expressed concern about this. I feel it is important that everyone feel safe, and we all do our part to prevent the spread of COVID-19, especially now with the new Omicron Variant. These are stressful times enough and I felt his pastoral visit to us would be overshadowed by concerns about the pandemic,” said a bulletin Pastor George Williams posted on the church’s website, letting the parishioners know Archbishop Cordileone won’t be visiting them for now.
The San Francisco Archdiocese has been outspoken about the COVID vaccine, encouraging San Franciscans to get vaccinated.
Meanwhile, the archbishop is unvaccinated.
“It’s not that he is saying we don’t want you. We would more than welcome you here if you came vaccinated, if you respect the community you are visiting,” said Clunies-Ross.
In a statement the Archdiocese responded, “Health care decisions are a very personal matter. Archbishop Cordileone has every confident in Father Williams’ ability to know his people well, and respond to their sensitivities with compassion.”
In August, Pope Francis urged people to get vaccinated, calling it an act of love.
During an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Cordileone said his personal doctor told him, “it’s probably not necessary for him to be vaccinated,” citing his “immune system is strong.”
“If there was some health reason I could see it. There is not religious reason from the Catholic Church that would stop you from being vaccinated. I can’t see another reason,” said Clunies-Ross.
Pastor Williams said to ABC7 news, “It’s our policy here that all the priests who celebrate Mass need to be vaccinated out of concern for our parishioners. When I explained this to his Excellency, he graciously understood. We look forward to his visit when circumstances permit.”
Pope Francis urged caution on Monday in the “interpretation” of a damning report into child sexual abuse by French Catholic clergy, saying a “historical situation” must be viewed in context.
A landmark inquiry overseen by an independent commission confirmed in October extensive sexual abuse of minors by priests in France dating from the 1950s to 2020.
“When we do this kind of study, we must be attentive to the interpretation we make of it,” the 84-year-old pontiff told reporters onboard his flight back from a trip to Greece.
“Abuse 100 years ago, 70 years ago, was brutality. But the way it was experienced is not the same as today,” he said.
“For example, in the case of abuse in the church, the attitude was to cover it up — an attitude that unfortunately still exists today in a large number of families.”
He added that the “historical situation” must be interpreted by the standards of the time.
The pope, who after the publication of the report expressed his “shame”, revealed he had not read it himself but would discuss it with French bishops when they visited him later this month.
Dealing with the avalanche of revelations about sexual abuse by priests was one of the biggest challenges that Francis faced when he was elected pope in 2013. Francois Devaux, head of a victims’ association in France, expressed incredulity at the pope’s “distressing” lack of interest in the French inquiry.
“This will show everyone that the pope is at the heart of the problem,” Devaux told AFP, labelling his comments as “ignorance, stupidity and denial”.
The pope also condemned the “injustice” of the recent resignation of Michel Aupetit, the archbishop of Paris.
Aupetit, 70, quit following media reports of an intimate relationship with a woman, which he had categorically denied. A diocese spokeswoman said at the time that “he had ambiguous behaviour with a person he was very close to”, adding that it was “not a loving relationship”, nor sexual.
“When the gossip grows, grows, grows and takes away the reputation of a person, that man will not be able to govern… and that is an injustice,” Francis said.
“This is why I accepted Aupetit’s resignation, not on the altar of truth, but on the altar of hypocrisy.
“I ask myself, what did Aupetit do that was so serious he had to resign? If we don’t know the accusation, we cannot condemn,” the pope added, urging journalists to investigate.
He said Aupetit had been condemned by “public opinion, rumours. But what did he do? We know nothing”.
However, the pope referenced a breach of the sixth commandment — a ban on adultery — saying it was “not total, but little caresses and massages he gave to his secretary”.
“That is a sin. But it is not the most serious because sins of the flesh are not the most serious,” he said.
He added: “Aupetit is a sinner. As I am, as was Peter, the bishop on whom Christ founded his Church.”
In a statement last week, when the pope accepted his offer, Aupetit said he wanted to “protect the diocese from the division that always provokes suspicion and the loss of confidence”.
A United Methodist Church pastor in Indiana stepped down after performing in drag and speaking about inclusion on the show “We’re Here.”
Pastor Craig Duke at the start of his drag performance in an episode of the unscripted HBO show “We’re Here.” The show’s second season premiered in October.
When Pastor Craig Duke stepped onstage in a small town in southern Indiana, wearing a cotton-candy-pink wig and a sparkly dress under his white robe, he knew his performance would rile some members of his congregation.
He did not, however, expect his drag debut to bring an end to his role leading Newburgh United Methodist Church in a suburb of Evansville.
Mr. Duke’s performance was part of the unscripted HBO show “We’re Here,” which documents L.G.B.T.Q. people and their allies in small towns who put together a drag show, led by three drag all-stars.
The episode that featured the pastor premiered in early November and in it, he explained that he appeared on the show so he could be “empathetic, not just sympathetic” to the community’s gay members. Three weeks later, the church announced that he had been “relieved from pastoral duties.”
In an interview this week, Mr. Duke said he had received enough critical feedback since the show aired to convince him he could not continue leading the church, which he said had about 400 congregants. He said that he was hurt by the negative responses but that he had also received hundreds of messages of support.
“I experienced as much love and acceptance, and dare I say more, within the drag culture and the L.G.B.T.Q. community than most people would experience within the settings of the church,” Mr. Duke said. “Not one person questioned what I was doing there; it was complete acceptance.”
Mr. Duke last preached on Nov. 14, a week after his episode aired. A local church leader said in a letter to the congregation dated Nov. 26 that Mr. Duke would be relieved from his duties on Dec. 1.
The superintendent of the south and southwest district of the Indiana United Methodist Church, the Rev. Mitch Gieselman, wrote in the letter that he had received numerous messages both supporting and criticizing Mr. Duke’s actions.
Mr. Gieselman said that the pastor had not resigned or been fired, but that his salary had been significantly reduced and he and his family would have to move out of the parsonage by Feb. 28.
“While there is a diversity of opinion regarding the moral implications of Rev. Duke’s actions, he has not been found to have committed any chargeable offense or other violation of the United Methodist Book of Discipline,” Mr. Gieselman wrote.
The pastor’s supporters created an online fund-raiser, which had raised more than $56,000 as of Wednesday morning. He said any money raised over the $30,000 goal set to help his family would go toward creating a new faith community in town that he hopes is more inclusive.
Pastor Craig Duke, middle left, and the drag queen Eureka O’Hara, middle right, performed at an event after Mr. Duke’s drag transformation on the HBO series.Credit…
The public split in this congregation came during a stalemate about rights for L.G.B.T.Q. members of the United Methodist Church, which has nearly 13 million members worldwide. Roughly half of them are in the United States.
Ahead of a 2020 meeting of global delegates, a group of church leaders introduced a proposal to split the church, citing “fundamental differences” over same-sex marriage. The traditionalists signed a letter declaring that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” But the debate on the proposal has been delayed for nearly two years because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The proposal, which would create a denomination that continues to ban same-sex marriage and the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy, is scheduled to be debated at the church’s general conference in August 2022.
The interim pastor at Newburgh United Methodist Church, the Rev. Mark Dicken, said the Methodist church had “regrettably” been fighting over this issue for more than 40 years.
“Very regrettably, the extremely conservative wing of the United Methodist Church has crammed through rather draconian provisions in their attempt to control clergy and their ministry to L.G.B.T.Q. people,” Mr. Dicken said.
Mr. Dicken worked at the church in Newburgh from 2004 to 2011 and came out of retirement to lead the congregation again.
“The tribalism and polarization that’s going on in our culture, particularly in our political culture, has filtered down into the church,” he said.
In the HBO show, which was nominated for an Emmy in 2020, three drag stars, Shangela, Bob the Drag Queen and Eureka O’Hara, confront these divisions while mentoring people for the show-ending drag performance. All three posted messages of support for Mr. Duke after the news about him leaving his position became public.
O’Hara, who was the pastor’s drag mother or mentor, said on Twitter: “Craig is an amazing person and deserves the same love that he shares with everyone around him.”
The pastor, who is straight and described himself as “heteronormative,” was nominated to be featured in the show by the Evansville Pride group. He said he had never heard of the show but decided to participate to share a message of God’s unconditional love and to support his daughter, who identifies as pansexual. He used Joan of Arc O’Hara as his drag name.
He said the negative response from some members of the congregation was especially painful because of the way it hurt his daughter. But his wife and the rest of his family are “sticking together,” he said, and they have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support.
He said he was grateful for his experience in drag.
“It was real, it wasn’t vaudeville, it was powerful, as the words they taught me, it was fierce, it was authentic,” Mr. Duke said.
Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate operated 48 residential schools in Canada
Evelyn Korkmaz, a survivor of abuse at St. Anne’s Indian Residential School, has long been calling on the Oblates to release records in Canada and Rome.
A Catholic order that ran residential schools across Canada now says it will open up its archives in Rome to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR).
This is welcome news for survivors, many of whom have long called for the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate and other Catholic entities to make their records available.
Survivor Evelyn Korkmaz says she remains skeptical, though.
“The devil is in the details. We have to know the details before anybody agrees to releasing these documents,” said Korkmaz, a survivor of abuse at St. Anne’s Indian Residential School in Fort Albany, Ont.
She wants access to her own student records, as well as journals and other archives, so she can trace her experience at the school.
“We’ve been disappointed in the past. So I don’t want to get my hopes up and get these documents and find out that they were redacted,” said Korkmaz.
A joint statement between the NCTR and the Oblates, released on Tuesday, said the religious order will grant “full access to critical residential school records.”
Stephanie Scott is the executive director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
The centre’s executive director, Stephanie Scott, said she’s had recent discussions with Oblate Father Ken Thorson about access to the records and he offered an opportunity to “investigate their archives, find some research, see what’s available.”
“There could have been letters written that ended up in Rome that are there, so we’re going to find out what truly exists,” said Scott.
Those records belong to Canada. They belong to the people first and foremost.
– Brenda Macdougall, University of Ottawa
The Oblate leadership is now seeking the most appropriate way to figure out what documents may exist, and to ensure documents related to Oblate involvement in residential schools might be made available, Thorson told CBC in an email.
He said documents will not be redacted and “any records from residential schools found in this process would be returned to Canada.”
“We are looking to the [centre] for guidance in the development of an appropriate third-party process to facilitate this preliminary work. We anticipate being able to share more about this in the near future,” said Thorson.
“The records that we had looked at here are no longer in this country,” said Brenda Macdougall, a professor and research chair in Métisfamily and community traditions at the University of Ottawa.
She and a research colleague made the discovery when updating an academic article.
“Those records belong to Canada. They belong to the people first and foremost. … They have to come back through subpoena or the Church. The Pope himself can suspend canonical law and return them,” Macdougall told CBC in November.
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation already holds close to 7,000 survivor statements and more than five million records, said Scott.
She said there’s a commitment to finding all residential school records “no matter where they are located or how long it takes.”
Color me unsurprised. San Francisco’s homophobic gem of a Catholic Archbishop, who’s more concerned with making abortion and gay marriage illegal again than with a silly pandemic, claims that his personal physician has told him he doesn’t need a COVID vaccine.
Maybe the Catholic Church in San Francisco employs physicians who practice Christian Science-style faith healing, but Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone says that his doctor has, bizarrely, advised against him getting vaccinated because, and we quote, “my immune system is strong” and it’s “probably not necessary” for him to get vaccinated. This is odd but hardly surprising given what we know about the man — and all this came out during an interview this week with the Chronicle’s “It’s All Political” podcast in which Cordileone was glad to discuss the conservative-leaning Supreme Court’s likely upcoming overturning of Roe v. Wade.
“The problem is… that too many women have no choice,” Cordileone says, making a circular argument about why women get abortions instead of being pro-life. He argues that many women are lied to in abortion clinics and when they change their minds at the last minute, they’re pushed by clinicians to go ahead and abort their pregnancies.
As for why he’s not vaccinated, Cordileone says, “There are a number of reasons, and from what I’ve been able to learn about the vaccines, and about the dangers of COVID, and talking with my own primary health care physician, I do have a good immune system, and he told me that it’s probably not necessary for me to be vaccinated. He didn’t dissuade me from being vaccinated, but he said it was fine if I didn’t get vaccinated.”
He then goes on to parrot various conservative-pundit talking points, spouting some pseudo-science about how these “aren’t really vaccines in the traditional sense” because they don’t offer long-term immunity from the virus, only temporary protection. And he says something that no scientist has asserted, which is that booster shots will likely be needed “every six months” going forward.
And then he blathers on about how he’s been in multiple situations in which he probably would have been infected if he didn’t have this blessed-by-God immune system, including being in an enclosed space with someone who later turned out to be COVID-positive.
He’s also not concerned about spreading the virus to others unknowingly, because, again, he’s a self-appointed expert and he says that asymptomatic people “very rarely” spread the virus, and he would stay home if he were feeling sick.
Anyway, he’s an asshole! We knew this already.
As ABC 7 notes, after the Pope told all Catholics that getting vaccinated was an “act of love” to our fellow humans, Cordileone issued a statement saying, “I join Pope Francis and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in advising you to get vaccinated if your doctor recommends it.”
But, he’s still a political animal who’s at odds with most of the residents in the city in which he lives. And he’d rather go with Joe Rogan and Fox News on this.
