The appointment of Archbishop Levada to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith still raises some questions. Obviously there’s more to his appointment than meets the eye. Still, I keep hearing things that make me uncomfortable.
For instance, a newspaper that caters to gays in San Francisco named Most Holy Redeemer parish as the city’s “gay-friendly parish” and quoted its pastor:
Some observers call Levada, who will join Benedict in Rome in August, a politician. Others say enigma. But, said the pastor of the city’s gay-friendly parish, Most Holy Redeemer in the Castro district, he is like most American bishops, in a difficult straddle between the Vatican’s hard-line orthodoxies and the wishes of his diocesan flock.
... When Ratzinger was elevated to pope, the reaction at Most Holy Redeemer was horror.
“I went into retreat for a week,” joked the pastor, Father Stephen Meriwether, in his homily the next Sunday.
But Most Holy Redeemer is the only place in the San Francisco Bay Area where life-long Catholics can be enthusiastically gay and lesbian too—even with what amounts to a wink and a nod from the archdiocese.
“It’s don’t ask, don’t tell for Catholics,” said Gino Ramos, the head of San Francisco’s chapter of Dignity, an organization of gay Catholics.
So why is this rejection of the Church’s teaching on sexuality given a wink and a nod at Most Holy Redeemer parish? Could it be that the pastor, Father Stephen Meriwether, is also the chancellor of the archdiocese? That’s an awful big wink and nod from Levada.
