In an open letter, Anthony Gonzales, President St. Joseph’s Men Society in San Francisco, California, has challenged the Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco to shut down the homosexual and anti-Catholic activities at Most Holy Redeemer (MHR) parish and remove its pastor, Fr. Steven Meriwether.The letter calls upon Archbishop George Niederauer to sack the pastor and formally excommunicate members of anti-Catholic homosexual activist groups.
“If you are unwilling or unable to take these necessary steps,” Gonzales writes, “then in humility you have the responsibility to offer your resignation to Pope Benedict XVI.”
He also called for the re-consecration of the Church building because of possible “sacrileges”.
Gonzales quotes a 1986 document from then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who wrote, “All support should be withdrawn from any organizations which seek to undermine the teaching of the Church, which are ambiguous about it, or which neglect it entirely”.
“Fr. Stephen Meriwether, as pastor of Most Holy Redeemer parish,” Gonzales writes, “has continually allowed groups that ‘seek to undermine the teaching of the Church…or neglect it entirely,’ to use its facilities.”
He cites the permission given by Meriwether to the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence”, as well as a “drag queen” show and a local homosexual “leather S/M group” to use the parish facilities.
The parish is notorious as San Francisco’s most “gay” Catholic church.
In early October, at a Mass at the parish, Archbishop Niederauer was filmed giving Communion to a member of the ‘Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’ (SPI) an anti-Catholic homosexual activist group, and later was forced to publicly apologise after the video was posted to the internet.
Niederauer claimed that he had not realised that the “strangely dressed person” at the Mass was a member of the homosexual activist group that wears bizarre parodies of nuns’ habits and campaigns against Catholic teaching on marriage, sexuality and chastity.
Photographs posted to the parish website show that an annual group of MHR parishioners takes part in the Gay Pride parade, complete with t-shirts identifying them as well as a parish banner.
The photo gallery includes pictures of a priest, dressed in Mass vestments, blessing the parish’s Gay Pride participants.
Gonzales asks the Archbishop “for the sake of their souls and the souls of those Catholics worldwide who have been scandalized,” that he state formally that membership in SPI, or any similar organisation, is “incompatible with the Catholic Faith”.
Unless its members “repent”, he says, and leave the organisation and the homosexual lifestyle accompanying it, they should “under no circumstances...be admitted to Holy Communion”.
In the Catholic Church, reception of Communion is a sign of the person’s complete and unreserved agreement with all of the Church’s teaching.
The Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law places the final authority for all such matters in the hands of the local bishop.
Gonzales says, “We, the Faithful have the right to demand that you do your Episcopal duty and publicly reiterate the position of the Church that homosexual advocacy groups cannot meet in or use any facility of the Archdiocese.”
In an interview, a spokesman for the Archdiocese said that the parish’s active involvement as a centre of the San Francisco homosexual community is “no secret.”
Indeed, documents available to the public on the parish website make it clear that neither Fr. Meriwether nor parish council members have any qualms about their parish being so closely involved in the homosexual movement’s agenda.
Biographies of council members posted to the website show that at least two of the members of the parish council are active homosexuals.
One parish council member, Catherine Cunningham, is described as being together with “her partner Roz Gallo” as “members of the parish for over 20 years.”
Another parish council member, Les Young is described as having been a “Eucharistic minister” and lector: “He and his partner Michael Amaro, have been active parishioners at MHR for 16 years.”
The bio of council member Matt Dorsey also shows the wide influence of the parish with.
Dorsey is highly placed in the city administration as communications director for San Francisco City attorney Dennis Herrera.
The website says Dorsey “has been among the organizers of MHR's contingent in past years' LGBT Pride Parades... He was among the participants in the LGBT-positive prayer service broadcast by the BBC earlier this year”. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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