The following comes from a March 10 email from one of our readers.
An open letter to San Francisco city attorney Dennis Herrera in response to his National Catholic Reporter editorial “Controversy in San Francisco highlights importance of Pope Francis, synod on family” from the lay Catholic group Ecclesia Militans of San Diego:
Dear Dennis,
As your fellow Catholics, we pray that you will join Archbishop Cordileone in rejecting the immoral lifestyles so popular today. With the grace given by frequent reception of the sacraments, including Confession and Holy Communion, Our Lord will strengthen you to uphold eternal truth and to lead others to it. None of us can do it alone, but with God’s help in the sacraments, and with the help and example of likeminded family and friends, we can be strong and conform our lives to His will.
In opening yourself to grace through repentance and reconciliation, in choosing Christ and his Church over a culture of death and the lies of secular humanism and relativism, your courage will have an everlasting impact on your son, your family, and your community. Please let us know your decision quickly so that we may continue to pray for your new life, and support your decision.
We are undeniably dismayed by many of your statements in your recent National Catholic Reporter editorial. We also deplore your attack on Abp. Cordileone, your Catholic archbishop and spiritual father.
You describe you and your wife as “raised Catholic” and “beneficiaries of Catholic educations.” Unfortunately, you display a profound lack of true Catholic sensibilities and education in many of your remarks. This may not be your fault, as the Church has suffered from the “diabolical disorientation” spoken of by Fatima seer Sister Lucia, including poor catechesis, for many decades. You may not have been properly taught the faith.
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If so, we would like to take this opportunity to provide some remedial catechesis.
To begin, homosexual activity is still an “act of grave depravity” (i.e., mortal sin) according to the Catechism and perennial Church moral doctrine. Therefore, as a Catholic, you were wrong to invalidate state marriage laws in 2004. Your duty as a Catholic was and is to uphold Church teaching on the exclusivity, sexual complementarity, and indissolubility of marriage as the union of one man and one woman, not to use your high political office to work against it.
As a Catholic, you should have no problem with Abp. Cordileone’s proposed “morality clauses.” What, precisely, is so “chilling” about his directive that Catholic teachers “conform their hearts, minds and consciences, as well as their public and private behavior” to tenets of church teaching that include “chastity” and “abstinence from all sexual intimacy outside of marriage” and that they refrain from “gravely evil” acts like “masturbation, fornication, the viewing of pornography and homosexual relations”?
Yes, the Church still believes all those old-fashioned things about sexual morality, even if many people today do not. We submit that Abp. Cordileone’s directives are only “chilling” to those who don’t truly believe and live the Catholic faith and who are dedicated to the false god of progressive liberalism.
And why the shock over Abp. Cordileone’s additional requirements that faculty “affirm and believe” church teaching on “the sinfulness of contraception”; that they accept that “the fundamental demands of justice require that the civil law preserve the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman”; and that medical procedures that assist in reproduction are “gravely immoral” for betraying spouses’ “right to become a father and a mother only through each other”?
Again, these requirements are only troubling to those who are poorly educated in the Faith, or who have purposely decided to oppose them.
You said: “Without a duty for me to respond professionally…I was liberated to contemplate the matter personally, and in many ways more meaningfully, as a Catholic and a parent.”
Dennis, ask yourself: Why are people Catholic? The answer is that Catholicism is true. Yet, you have spent your career as city attorney of San Francisco defending and promoting a lie—sodomy-based so-called “gay marriage”—and now you are promoting more lies by attacking Catholic moral teaching in schools as a parent.
You said: “As parents especially, we place a high priority on encouraging faithful Christian discipleship in our son, and we do everything we can to make sure he has the benefit of a well-formed Catholic conscience.”
Your son will learn much more from his father’s actions than from any teacher or schoolbook. A well-formed Catholic conscience includes the duty to uphold over two millennia of Church teaching against the current cultural tide of sexual anarchy—in short, to be counter-cultural. Is your son receiving such example and guidance from you?
You said: “But the controversy stirred up by the archbishop’s needless insertion of personal morality dictates into faculty handbooks highlighted to me the mounting challenges today’s Catholic parents face as we strive to make our church relevant in the lives our children will lead.”
We agree that “needless insertion of personal morality” is certainly challenging for “cafeteria Catholics” who wish to pick and choose which facets of Church teaching they agree with. But being a true Catholic requires you to conform your whole heart and mind to that of the Church.
Further, it is not your job or ours to make our Church “relevant” to anyone, including children. The Church has withstood more than 2,000 years of heresy and assault, and will continue to withstand them, because she is the bride of Christ, her Founder.
We suggest you read Pope St. Pius X’s encyclical Pascendi Dominic Gregis (On the Doctrines of the Modernists) and his Oath against Modernism to understand that the Church cannot conform to the “spirit of the age” in order to become more “relevant.” Church teaching is relevant and applicable throughout all ages, in all places, and for all people, and does not need to be updated.
You wrote: “But we should make no mistake that his generation (and those to follow) will view prohibitions on same-sex marriage with the same disdain my generation held for racist Jim Crow laws. For my son and his contemporaries, rejecting discrimination isn’t at odds with a well-formed Christian conscience—it’s the product of it.”
You mistakenly conflate same-sex so-called “marriage”—an outgrowth of mortally sinful homosexual behavior—with immutable characteristics such as race. Every true Catholic is rightly called to “discriminate” against homosexual behavior and its negative societal consequences, and indeed to “discriminate against” all sin!
The fact that, for your son and his contemporaries, “rejecting discrimination isn’t at odds with a well-formed Christian conscience—it’s the product of it” shows that your son and his contemporaries actually do discriminate against Catholic teaching.
You wrote: “So when church ideologues express disdain for contemporary society (as Cordileone often does) or bring disproportionate emphasis to the catechism’s most discriminatory and divisive elements (as Cordileone did last month), it risks losing a generation of Catholics quite unlike anything has before.”
Abp. Cordileone is doing what any good bishop is duty-bound to do: to teach, govern, and sanctify his flock. Your interpretation of his actions as an expression of “disdain for contemporary society” and characterization of his emphasis on perennial Church moral teaching as “the catechism’s most discriminatory and divisive elements” again shows your misunderstanding of Catholic doctrine.
The good archbishop is trying to lead a society run amok with moral relativism back to goodness, truth, and beauty. You should be applauding and supporting him, not mischaracterizing his actions in this way.
You wrote: “Catholic parents like my wife and me, who are doing the important field work of trying to instill Catholic values in our children, are grateful to Pope Francis for emphasizing our faith’s capacity to bring us together instead of divide us. But we could do without Cordileone’s efforts to seemingly teach the opposite.”
Cafeteria Catholics and most secular citizens who still have a conscience are very glad to hear the interpretation of Pope Francis’ teachings as related by the news media. However, Pope Francis has not changed perennial Church teaching.
Conscience is the seed of faith, the natural gift from God infused in every child. Free will, reason, and conscience are meant to lead us to Him, through our decision to love, serve, and obey Him. Ignoring the teaching of the Church in order to justfy self is dangerous to our eternal life with God, and can lead to sin which separtes us from both God and reason.
Using lies to deceive our children and lead them into sin is a most grievous and evil sin. Jesus said, “But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea.” (St. Matthew 18:6)
Abp. Cordileone is not teaching our children—or the adults in their charge—the opposite of Pope Francis’ teachings. Abp. Cordileone is teaching them the truth even if “itching ears” prefer to believe lies.
Again, Dennis, as your fellow Catholics, we pray that you conform your heart and mind to the Church to which you profess to belong. The inexhaustible treasure of Church teaching, which leads us to true holiness and happiness, is yours—if you will only prayerfully assent to it and turn away from false secular liberalism.
Sincerely in Christ,
Ecclesia Militans of San Diego
A gracious response.
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“Catechesis is nothing other than the process of transmitting the Gospel, as the Christian community has received it, understands it, celebrates it, lives it and communicates it in many ways.” (General Directory for Catechesis #105)
It is a good possibility that “… transmitting the Gospel, as the Christian community has received it, understands it, celebrates it, lives it and communicates it…” was poorly excuted or completly lacking. Such is the norm today.
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Dennis Herrera is a Catholic public figure who scandalizes other Catholics. The Archbishop should have counseled him. Then if Dennis still persisted obstinately in giving scandal, the Archbishop should have barred him from the Eucharist, both to avoid scandal and to keep him from receiving the Sacrament unworthily.
Politics is, at its very core, is actually about power.
Power corrupts. It explains why so many Catholic politicians suddenly replace God with their new power.
Vaccinate with frequent reception of the Eucharist.
A reaction without a link to the source:
https://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/controversy-san-francisco-highlights-importance-pope-francis-synod-family
Well worth the read. And striking how civil the comments are.
Remember that the “National Catholic REPORTER” is fraudulently “Catholic”.
They are not a Catholic publication. Anytime one sees “ncronline” know that it is the “Reporter”.
See Mel’s post below which includes linked documentation directly from the Diocese Bishops.
This is a wonderfully written letter. I agree completely with what they say. However, Pope Francis’ interviews and Synods undermine anything Catholics can say to SF City Attorney Dennis Herrera regarding Sodomy because Our Pope is not on our side on this matter and is unable to Judge even injustices that cry to Heaven for Justice. So here we are, on our own, trying to keep the Faith alive by supporting one good Archbishop.
One way I found to support the SF Archiocese although I belong to the LA one is by supporting their new project of a St. Neri Oratory. Gifts are Tax-deductible so it is a good way for me to do my bit:
Oratory-in-Formation at
Star of the Sea Parish
4420 Geary Boulevard
San Francisco, CA 94118
415-751-0450
They are very good about sending a letter for tax purposes. They already have 4 members, which is the minimum of clerics for establishing an oratory. I expect great things will come from this ++Cordileone foundation.
God points…
There are no such things as “CAFETERIA Catholics”. Just FAITHFUL Catholics and Catholic HERETICS.
The two most important Books in the Catholic Faith are:
1) Sacred Scripture (a Catholic Bible) which in entirety contains the speech of
God (CCC 81);
2) “Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition” (aka – “CCC” ,
dark green cover, 1997) which contains the Doctrine of the Faith in entirety.
SACRED SCRIPTURE: Regarding Homosexual Acts – Gen 19:1-29; Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:9-10; 1 Tim 1:10; Jude 1:7.
CCC: Regarding Homosexual Acts – # 2257, 2358, 2359. & 2396.
Just a reminder to all readers that the “National Catholic REPORTER” is not a “Catholic” publication.
It was condemned by their Diocese Bishop Helmsing in 1968.
https://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00Cofv
And this was reiterated by their current Diocese Bishop in 2013.
https://catholickey.org/2013/01/25/the-bishops-role-in-fostering-the-mission-of-the-catholic-media/
The “National Catholic REPORTER” was told not to use the name “Catholic” in its title by its’ Diocese Bishops, but continues to FRAUDULENTLY pretend to be a ‘Catholic’ publication to purposely cause confusion.
Faithful Catholics do not read or support the “REPORTER” which uses the same acronym of “NCR” as the older “National Catholic Register” just to cause more confusion.
From Cardinal George – regarding Pope Francis:
” The question is raised, why doesn’t he himself clarify these things?
Why is it necessary that apologists have to bear that burden of trying to put the best possible face on it?
Does he not realize the consequences of some of his statements, or even some of his actions?
Does he not realize the repercussions?
Perhaps he doesn’t. I don’t know whether he’s conscious of all the consequences of some of the things he’s said and done that raise these doubts in people’s minds. ”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/static/cardinal-george-on-pope-francis-why-doesnt-he-clarify.html
Never TOLERATE Mortal Sin of any kind.
If you love your Neighbor as required by Jesus, you will not want him or her to go to Hell for eternity.
Therefore you will not support your neighbor on the road to Hell.
It is not any government’s job to support IMMORALITY which includes but is not limited to:
Adultery, Homosexual Acts, Fornication, Pornography.
YOUR RESPONSIBILITY for the SINS of OTHERS:
CCC: ” 1868 Sin is a personal act. Moreover, we have a responsibility for the sins committed by others when we cooperate in them:
– – by participating directly and voluntarily in them;
– – by ordering, advising, praising, or approving them;
– – by not disclosing or not hindering them when we have an obligation to do so;
– – by protecting evil-doers. ”
The MORTAL SIN of SCANDAL:
CCC: ” 2286 Scandal can be provoked by laws or institutions, by fashion or opinion.
Therefore, they are guilty of scandal who establish laws or social structures leading to the decline of morals and the corruption of religious practice,
or to social conditions that, intentionally or not, make Christian conduct and obedience to the Commandments difficult and practically impossible.
This is also true of business leaders who make rules encouraging fraud, teachers who provoke their children to anger,
or manipulators of public opinion who turn it away from moral values. “
Great letter — Well, People, this is how you do it, one brick at a time. Focus on the individual, and make them answer up for their own shortcomings (or that they come to the realization that they are not whom they profess to be).
Yes, Dennis Herrera is not much of a Catholic, certainly better labelled a CINO. Now, a day may come when no one cares about being called that, but today having such a label seems to matter. Sadly, so many public “Catholics,” people like Bret Baier (Fox News), simply attach the Catholic label to themselves, until they understand that they do not share in its beliefs.
Time to move on Herrera (and Baier), and join the Kennedys and their pals — the “cafeteria” Catholics — demanding that the Faith bend to them and to their will and desire. Not quite, it seems, what Christ had in mind. The Church is not a political process and the Catechism is not exactly the US Constitution that can be amended by a populace (notwithstanding what an increasingly bizarre C. Baldisseri says).
And, as to C. Baldisseri, and the German Money-men, are we really being guided, and ruled as a Faith by men such as these? Men more interested in growing the Church by pandering to sexual decadence and immorality than in teaching the truth. Why, for one minute, give one dollar to these fools.
The beauty of the truth of the Catholic faith is well presented here to upend the lies that have been fed to Catholics in the last 50 years. So many have learned these falsehoods from both secular and Catholic people. Without the Church’s refutation by our bishops to their priests and lay faithful, by priests and deacons in their homilies, by lay Catholics in catechesis and Catholic schools, by Catholics in the political, social, educational, and other societal arenae, the many are living or promoting the lie claiming they are right and the Church is wrong.
Each false proposition becomes the new truth to the poorly educated unless those responsible for truth clearly and consistently counter the falsehoods as Ecclesia Militans has done so well here.
To my fellow Catholics, please, Never be ashamed of your testimony to the Lord nor deny Him before men, so that He will praise you before the heavenly Father.
Fr. for those exact reasons, people should read a Catholic Bible, and the “Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition” at home.
So they will know the truth of our Faith, and can recognize error – whether that error is accidental or purposeful.
The Bible and CCC are the best gifts for these times.
“Fr. Perozich”: Thank you. However, few, very few, bishops and even fewer priests do much “refuting,” leaving it up to lay faithful. Why is this? In fact, how can it be that our bloated, over-supported episcopacy, does so little for the Faith (except howl at lay faithful that speak the truth, and that use the media and internet to proclaim the True Faith)?
For every Archbishop Cordileone, you have a dozen like Abp. Cupich and B. McElroy. The good is being submerged in an ocean of leftist-pandering, “mercy” screaming clerics that are destroying what little is left of Catholic Faith and worship. Just go into most Catholic churches on any Sunday and you will leave depressed, and feeling like you have not been to Mass.
Father, there has been a true revolution. Unfortunately, and perhaps wrongly stated, it appears as if Pope Francis has assumed the role of mop-up commander, slamming Catholic Tradition whenever he can, and offering, well, nothing in return. Nothing, that is, except genuflection toward the Germans and their version of milking more money out of a dying institutional church there (with side-altars for the veneration of Liberation-Theology, and “honest” sexual expression). It seems that Mathew, Mark, Luke & John are replaced by Marx, Kasper, Daneels, and Maradiaga, as transmitting the Word.
Everyone needs to kick it up a notch to get more and more Catholics to notice that they can still demand the True Faith.
Dear Father Rich—God bless you! For years, we have been listening to solid Catholic teaching, and we thank you for that, Father! You have given us so much insight, and we have heard you speak up on many controversial topics, never afraid to tell us the truth! We appreciate all that you do, and ask Our Dear Lord to continue to give you the strength to preach God’s word, because we so badly need that in our Catholic Church today.
A suggestion-Why not invite wayward Catholics to tune in to the local Catholic Radio Station in San Francisco? A challenge for those who think they were raised to pick and choose church doctrines would be for them to listen to authentic Catholic Radio for a month. Tune in. Turn on. Drop out of the Culture of the World. Since they claim to be Catholics, there should be no problem listening to a Catholic station, eh?
Dear Dennis – In case you didn’t get the email, Matt Barber said it well.
The Gaystapo are targeting Our Church & Bishops because they believe it is the best way they can scatter the flock and pick off many more strays that way – like wolves who have killed the Shepard first – their Agenda Must Not be Pandered To.
SEE
Obama buddy, HRC founder charged with raping boy by J. Matt Barber
https://www.renewamerica.com/columns/mbarber/141124
“It seems to me that in the gay community the people who should be running interference for NAM/BLA are the parents and friends of gays. Because if the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what 13-, 14-, and 15-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world.” –
– Harry Hay, founder of the modern “gay rights” movement
None of it matters: Neither common sense, nor an abundance of victim testimony, peer-reviewed studies, nor their own loathsome admissions and actions. Nothing will move secular-“progressives” to acknowledge the undeniable interplay between homosexuality and childhood sexual abuse.
Whether it’s boy-raping “gay” priests, or boy-raping “gay” activists, the problem is systemic. Homosexual predators are targeting our boys.
“San Francisco’s Gay Icon Larry Brinkin Guilty of Felony Child Porn Possession:
https://cnsnews.com/node/757449
“Church teaching is relevant and applicable throughout all ages, in all places, and for all people, and does not need to be updated.”
I do not agree with this proposition from CCD’s refutation. New technology also creates new ways to sin. Therefore, Catholic theology must be continually updated to address this reality, or else it will become dated and lack relevance. Why else do we have encyclicals, some of which become infallible doctrine?
“Church teaching is relevant and applicable throughout all ages, in all places, and for all people, and does not need to be updated.”
How about a ‘compromise’ – We turn the whole thing over to the types of Anonymous Homosex Trolls who endlessly trash this and similar message boards, including the Sunday collection…
And let the Twysted Systerz of Indulgence throw a Real Big ‘inclusive’ Party – to which we Invite All the Trolls Here…
Where they and their Fellow Trolls can finally Identify Themselves, and what if any affiliation they actually have with the Roman Catholic Church.
Or would that be too much like ‘addressing reality’ for the comfort of the ‘Anonymous’ / Troll Fellowship?
Well Michaei McDermott,
Trust you to answer valid theological discussion with yet more ad hominems and a theory that amounts to: “agree entirely with me or you’re a Nazi fascist”.
This idea that Church teaching has been perfect and needs no updating is a canard that is refuted by the Church’s own practice and by history. The Church has encyclicals, pastoral letters, and other teaching tools. If the premise were true, then what point is there in theological study?
Natural law doctrine holds that “the nature of things” is one of the ways in which God communicates with man. It is undeniable that human knowledge with regard to “the nature of things” has exploded in the last 100 years.
Even presuming the Church has correctly identified, and perfectly conveyed, infallible doctrine over the last 2,000 years, there is still be room for updating because, as mankind learns more, our understanding of doctrine expands.
That means doctrine must be applied to situations unforeseen by prior theological exposition.
I suppose in your obedience freak world that makes me a troll.