By The Rainbow Sash Movement
The Rainbow Sash Movement (LGBT Catholics) is calling on San Francisco’s Archbishop elect Cordileone to engage with us in a dialogue of love around the issues of justice and charity for LGBT People. We have become increasingly distressed by the tone of the Archbishop Elects statements as concern Gay Marriage. We find particularly troubling the increase in the use of violent and abusive language directed at the San Francisco LGBT Community. Such language is inappropriate. These divisive and exclusionary statements are contrary to sound pastoral practice.

Examples of such statements are “troubling moral and social phenomenon,” “a serious depravity,” “the spread of the phenomenon,” “approval or legalization of evil,” “grave detriment to the common good,” “harmful to the proper development of human society,” “intrinsically disordered.” How can you consider such vile and toxic language invitational?

Condemnations leveled at sincere Catholics attempting to make sense out of their faith journey are pastorally destructive.

As a Roman Catholic Organization we are speaking out to make clear that all members of God’s family are sisters and brothers deserving of the Lord Jesus and deserving of the same dignity and respect owed any human being. We would hope that Archbishop elect Cordileone would recognize the inalienable dignity of the human person is the only path toward justice and reconciliation.

In the recent past the Archbishop elect has assumed a tone that can only be categorized as hostile towards the LGBT community. What other group in the Church has been assaulted and violated by such mean-spirited language? We can no longer remain silent on this issue.

Many of our LGBT brothers and sisters have been forced to choose out of self-respect and self-love, to withdraw from active participation in the Church and question how they can remain members of a Church they experience as abusive.

The Catholic Church is most Catholic when it is inclusive and embracing, and least reflective of the gospel of Jesus when it is exclusive and rigid.

We are calling on Bishop Cordileone to enter into dialogue with us prior to his October 4th installation. We are also calling on him to tone down his language when attacking Gay Marriage.

We call on him to remember that the Church’s theology, including her moral teaching is always in dialogue with the broader lived experience of her members. We encourage a new atmosphere of openness and dialogue with San Francisco’s LGBT Community.

While we do not understand the Archbishop elect’s hostility to the San Francisco LGBT Community in language and tone we deplore it as ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and ask that it stop immediately. Stridency, in the end, makes us unable to hear each other and civility and public dialogue suffers. In the end we live with each other in a situation that generates anger, fear, and mistrust. Sadly some of the voices of the Archdiocese of San Francisco including Bishop Cordileone have aggravated the situation.

We request that the Archbishop Elect begin an earnest dialogue with us as members of the Mystical Body of Christ. No matter where we stand on the issues, we all can benefit from a clear understanding of the different ethical and moral positions.