UNITED STATES
Huffington Post
Tom Rastrelli
On Friday, July 27, the U.S. Catholic hierarchy took another leap to the anti-LGBT right when the Vatican named Bishop Salvatore Cordileone the next Archbishop of San Francisco. Cordileone, who helped draft California’s Proposition 8, is the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage. At the press conference following his promotion’s announcement, Cordileone restated his position that civil marriage is only the union of a man and a woman before saying, “I don’t see how that’s discriminatory against anyone.” Such contradictory statements may sound absurd to outsiders, but to Catholic clerics, who are formed in a homophobic seminary system, they are a means of survival.
In November 2001, two months before the Boston Globe unmasked Cardinal Law’s coverup of priest-perpetrated sexual abuse of children, I was in my final year of Catholic seminary. My brother seminarians and I stumbled through the predawn darkness and boarded a chartered bus. We were men in black (clerical attire) charged with a mission: Hobnob over breakfast with members of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, who were in Washington, D.C., for their annual meeting. Our goal: Get them to send more meat to our school, St. Mary’s Seminary, known in conservative circles as the Pink Palace.
As the bus rolled to a stop in front of the bishops’ hotel, my chest tightened. Openly gay Catholics wrapped in coats and scarves lined the dimly lit sidewalk. Candles flickered before their frozen faces as they maintained a silent, 24-hour protest of the Church’s teachings on homosexuality. I rushed past them with the herd of soon-to-be-priests.
In the safety of the conference room, which smelled of coffee, dry cleaning, and musk, we waited for the guests of honor to arrive. We bitched about the ungodly hour and planned our ecclesial courting: “What’s he looking for?” “He’s into Opus Dei, so you stay away from him.” “Thank goodness mine’s a liberal.” “Liberal with the altar boys!” “Is my collar straight?”
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