In San Francisco, the archdiocese is under fire for teaching according to church doctrine.
San Franciscans are currently debating a simple question: Should the
government respect the right of Catholic schools to be authentically
Catholic?
San Francisco Archbishop
Salvatore Cordileone
thinks so. But eight California senators and assemblymen sent the
archbishop a letter last month, saying that his actions in issuing new
faculty guidelines “foment a discriminatory environment in the
communities we serve.” On Feb. 23, two of the signers even asked the
California Assembly Labor and Employment Committee and the Assembly
Judiciary Committee to investigate the archdiocese’s actions.
Here’s
the back story. During contract renegotiations with nearly 500 staff
members last month, the archdiocese issued an updated faculty guide for
its Catholic high schools. The addendum introduced three new
clauses—which staff members are required to “affirm and
believe”—denouncing masturbation, pornography, same-sex marriage,
contraception and other issues that, in line with Catholic teaching, are
described as “gravely evil.”