If I could have lunch with any religious leader in California, it would be Salvatore Cordileone, the courageous Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco. His last name means “heart of a lion” in Italian, and that attribute is on public display right now as he is pilloried by the morally confused for having the effrontery to require that Catholic educators actually teach Catholic teachings in the four Catholic high schools sponsored by his archdiocese.
Archbishop Cordileone recently added a clause to the handbook for nearly 500 employees of diocesan schools. It requires school employees to "affirm and believe" that adultery, masturbation, fornication, pornography and homosexual relations are "gravely evil." Artificial reproductive technology, birth control and abortion are also condemned. Unsurprisingly, the clause’s language also affirms the definition of marriage “as the union of one man and one woman." Finally, the good archbishop wishes to define teachers as ministers for collective bargaining purposes, which will make it easier to fire them if they don’t abide by the new rules. Given that this is taking place in San Francisco, an immediate backlash was inevitable.
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