San francisco most holy redeemer church

Roland Stringfellow, another one of the speakers, was not even planning to speak about gay rights. The Chronicle reported:. Stringfellow, who was a grand marshal for the San Francisco Pride Parade, said he intended to speak on the theme of Christian love and how Christmas can be "incredibly hard" for gays and lesbians estranged from family and friends.

News U. Politics Joe Biden Congress Extremism. Special Projects Highline. Jack as a very open-minded person. A very compassionate person. He wants the church to have wide-open doors. He has strong vision as far as direction in a new situation. He has a natural instinct for leadership. After the San Francisco archdiocese announced its annual clergy appointments Wednesday, some local Catholics expressed concerns that Most Holy Redeemer's pastor, Brian Costello, who came to the parish in , was being pushed out to bring in more conservative priests.

I did the best I could. My best was just not good enough for a lot of people here," he said. Most Holy Redeemer parish, long known for its active gay ministries and rich liturgies, is a relatively small parish with some members, although it draws Catholics each Sunday from around the Bay area. It describes itself as "an inclusive Catholic community -- embracing all people of good faith San Francisco's archbishop, Salvatore Cordileone, chairman of the U.

Conference of Catholic Bishops' Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, has visited the parish, met with staff and served food in its soup kitchen. They say the ministry was developed to foster dialogue, reconciliation and justice with people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. McClure said when Link learned in January that Most Holy Redeemer would be looking for a pastor, he approached McClure and suggested they apply as a team.

Eventually, the men met with Auxiliary Bishop William Justice, who heads pastoral ministry for the archdiocese. We got along fine," McClure said. He said he is eager to work with Link and to live and work in San Francisco.

His email address is nsciarappa ncronline. Thomas C. Fox is NCR publisher. George Woyames, a parishioner going back decades, has seen many priests come and go. He says McClure and Link complement each other, describing the former as a strong man with a clear vision, "a Paul Bunyan with a cross," and Link as a man "filled with the spirit.

The story of Most Holy Redeemer is best understood within the context of the pain and rejection its parishioners and the wider LGBT Catholic community have experienced at the hands of the Catholic church.

It cannot be fully understood without listening to stories heard within the parish of torturous self-reflection, confusion and loneliness, stories of banishment and long searches for a place that could provide comfort and community.

The Gospels reveal Jesus had close relationships with men and women and taught nothing specifically about sexuality. Early Christian communities, influenced by Greek stoicism, infused the church with some of its earliest negative attitudes about sex. So negative were views on sex that concessions were made to sexual intercourse as a necessity to maintain human propagation.

Indeed, the church has taught that original sin was passed down through the sex act. Some of this negativity lifted from Catholic sexual ethics after Thomas Aquinas settled on understandings of nature and natural law theology as a moral guide in matters of sexuality. Insights gathered from 20th-century natural and social sciences in terms of what it means to be fully human have struggled to gain a foothold in official Catholic teachings on moral theology, but with limited success.

The institutional church professes that all expressions of sexual intimacy must be limited to marriage and must always be open to procreation. These teachings eliminate gays and lesbians from having any licit intimate relations. The Catholic hierarchy has routinely rebuffed efforts by Catholic theologians to introduce a more pastoral moral theology. While rigid Catholic teachings that condemn all gay sex acts have held steadfast for centuries, wider public attitudes toward LGBT lifestyles have undergone revolutionary change in just a few decades, especially in the West.

In the s, for example, most Americans said they knew no one who was gay. Today, 60 percent say someone close to them is gay. A majority of Americans now support legally recognizing same-sex marriage.

Official church teachings call for LGBT tolerance and acceptance, but church practice belies this. Countless stories continue to be recorded of lesbian and gay Catholics who are fired from parish or diocesan jobs simply for going public that they live in a same-sex relationship. When applied to religious or clerical life, the virtue of chastity is viewed as a gift given to a relative few -- those who enter religious communities or become priests.

When applied to LGBT people, there is no talk about chastity as a "gift. LGBT people, the church teaches, must refrain from all sexual intimacy. This seemingly impossible demand and concomitant threat of serious sin has sent countless young LGBT Catholics into confusion and self-loathing and even to suicide. Reaffirming official church teachings, a Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith document signed by its head, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger the future Pope Benedict XVI , famously called the gay inclination "objectively disordered.

The next year, San Francisco Archbishop John Quinn, a reform-minded prelate, tried to soften the blow, writing in America magazine that "every person has disordered inclinations. Catholic sexual morality took on a more distinct political form in the last decade. In , responding to a growing call for the legalization of civil same-sex marriage, the Vatican denounced such unions, saying it found "absolutely no grounds" to support them.

Gay rights groups, in turn, denounced the Vatican statement, calling it misdirected and hurtful. The Catholic institutional church standoff against LGBT people and their supporters and, in turn, their views toward Catholicism, held steady for a decade or more -- until July 29, That was the day Pope Francis, not yet four months into his pontificate, answered a reporter's question about gay priests in the Vatican, saying: "If a person is gay and seeks God and has goodwill, who am I to judge?

Francis' words quickly defined his pontificate as one that would be less judgmental and more focused on the mercy of God. His humility and pastoral outreach stirred countless millions of Catholics, but landed perhaps most welcomingly among LGBT Catholics.