This week, the Catholic Church announced it was accepting the resignation of Cardinal Justin Rigali and installing Charles Chaput as Philadelphia’s new Archbishop.
This is likely to be a blow for the local LGBT community.
Chaput, who was most recently Archbishop of Denver, is vocally opposed to same-sex marriage, LGBT rights, abortion and stem-cell research.
Considering that the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, the church’s lobbying arm, has consistently blocked efforts at the state level to pass a nondiscrimination bill and any relationship recognition — not to mention backing an amendment to the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage when the state already has a law banning it — LGBT Philadelphians should brace for the worst.
Under Chaput’s leadership in Colorado, the children of two lesbians were denied enrollment in a Catholic elementary school. In his weekly column in the Denver Catholic Register, he wrote, “If parents don’t respect the beliefs of the church, or live in a manner that openly rejects those beliefs, then partnering with those parents becomes very difficult, if not impossible.”
During his tenure, the Colorado Catholic Conference donated $100,000 to pass the state’s antigay marriage amendment in 2006 and asked the governor to veto a bill allowing adoption by same-sex couples in 2007.
And he doesn’t just oppose LGBT equality. Following the Democratic presidential nomination of Sen. John Kerry, Chaput reportedly told the New York Times that anyone voting for the pro-choice Catholic was “cooperating in evil” and should “go to confession.”
Earlier this year, Chaput traveled to Australia to enact the retirement of a bishop who had advocated for change in the church, including allowing women and married men to become priests, to deal with waning membership numbers.
More recently, Chaput gave a commentary on a U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned a California law that banned the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. He sided with the dissent of Justice Clarence Thomas and wrote, “When we too readily stretch an individual’s right to free speech to include a corporation’s right to sell violence to minors, we collude in poisoning our own future.”
However, Chaput also opposed efforts in Colorado to suspend the statute of limitations for child sex-abuse victims to file suit against their alleged attackers.
With the Philadelphia diocese still in the throes of an abuse scandal that saw the suspension of some 37 priests — including the arrests of four priests and one layperson — and a scathing grand-jury report that alleged the cover up of abuses, Church leadership should be thinking hard about effecting the healing that Chaput alluded to in a press conference this week.
On Tuesday, he promised “to help those hurt by the sins of the past” and “renew the hearts of our people.”
In a diocese that sees only a 30-percent Sunday Mass attendance of some 1.5-million members, his hardline outspoken stance may not be enough to win back the people.