just what San Francisco needs

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Feb 13, 2006

The San Francisco Chronicle offers a podcast interview of the city's Archbishop-elect George Niederauer. The questions are asked by "Wyatt Buchanan, who covers gay and lesbian news for The Chronicle."

Right there is your first clue. The paper's natural choice to interview the incoming leader of the Catholic Church is the journalist who covers gay and lesbian affairs.

If you're expecting a confrontation, don't hold your breath.

Among other things, the archbishop-elect sings the familiar refrain that we must not blame the sex-abuse scandal on homosexuality, "because when we're talking about pedophilia, we're talking about a sickness, an illness, an aberration..."

According to the US bishops' statistics, two-thirds of the victims of priestly abuse were adolescent boys. Those incidents can't accurately be classified as pedophilia.

Still, we'll concede that pedophilia is a sickness, an aberration.

Whereas homosexuality...