Hosing the Homeless: Important Lesson Still Unlearned from the Scandals

By now, you have doubtless heard the story about how the Archdiocese of San Francisco, and particularly Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone are under fire for setting the sprinklers on the homeless in order to discourage loitering around Saint Mary’s Cathedral.

It’s not a nice story, and it is also a rather “neat” bit of timing that it has broken while Cordileone is being pressured to resist clarifying church teaching and developing morality clauses for the purposes of both instruction and hiring. Without a doubt, the story has surfaced in order to diminish the moral authority of the bishop, paint him with a brush of cold arrogance, and further excite the citizenry.

Here’s the thing, though. The story would not exist to be used against the diocese, if the sprinkler system didn’t exist, either. The sprinklers were a bad idea, no matter how you slice it. Yes, yes, there are hygienic and human waste factors that must be dealt with, and needles and drug dealing, probably too. But mostly, there are homeless people seeking a night’s shelter, and sprinkling them just doesn’t square with the gospel. Jesus wouldn’t do it, not even to simply be practical. It is a bureaucrat’s solution, not the gospel’s.

So, now…here is the official response of the Archdiocese:

The Archdiocese of San Francisco is, along with the Catholic St.Vincent de Paul Society, the largest supporter of services for the homeless in San Francisco. Every year, it helps many thousands of people through food, housing, shelter programs for people at risk includinghomeless mothers and families, and in countless other ways.

St. Mary’s Cathedral is a huge partof that program, and does more than any other Catholic church. The Cathedral itself serves hundreds of homeless people giving them food and shelter, as an integral part of the San Francisco Interfaith Council’s efforts in that regard, for example, opening its doors for shelter and food for fiveweeks over the holidays.

This sprinkler system in alcoves near our back doorways was installed approximately two years ago, after learning from city resources that this kind of system was being commonly used in the Financial District, asa safety, security and cleanliness measure to avoid the situation where needles, feces and other dangerous items were regularly being left in these hidden doorways. The problem was particularly dangerous because students and elderly people regularly pass these locations on their way to school and mass every day.

When the system was installed,after other ideas were tried and failed, the people who were regularly sleeping in those doorways were informed in advance that the sprinklers were being installed. The idea was not to remove those persons, but to encourage them to relocate to other areas of the Cathedral,which are protected and safer. The purpose was to make the Cathedral grounds as well as the homeless people who happen to be on those grounds safer.

We are sorry that our intentions have been misunderstood and recognize that the method used was ill-conceived. It actually has had the opposite effect from what it was intended to do, and for this we are very sorry. We have also now learned that the system in the first place required a permit and may violate San Francisco water-use laws, and the work to remove this system has already started, and will be completed by the end of the day.

As statements go, that’s not bad, but there is still a huge problem. Can you see what it is?

It’s here, in this line:

This sprinkler system…was installed approximately two years ago, after learning from city resources that this kind of system was being commonly used in the Financial District…

No, no, no, NO! Have our bishops and leadership learned nothing at all from the sex abuse scandals that have done so much damage to the faith, to the faithful and to the moral authority of the church? When deviant and abusive priests were moved around from parish to parish, leaving trails of victims in their wake, what was the reason? Why hadn’t these priests — upon first discovery — been reported and laicized? Because the hierarchy had listened to the psychological experts of their day, who said, “oh, this is treatable; these priests just need some therapy and they’ll be good to go, no more threat…”

Which of course, was nonsense. The rate of recidivism for pederasts is astronomical and we know now that a bit of therapy doesn’t fix much at all. It was an unconscionable failure on the part of our bishops that they listened to the “experts” and “authorities” of the world, rather than listening to the gospel and her own teachings, which would have informed them to do the right things, the just things, the soul-saving and healing things: report the wolves to the police; get them out of their collars and into handcuffs; heal the wounded sheep upon which they sated their awful hunger.

Among the many lessons that should have come from these dark revelations, one should have been: for the sake of the sheep with whom you’ve been entrusted, do not seek out pragmatic advice from the world, because everything that is worldly is also transient, and unsettled and variable. For the sake of the sheep, seek out wisdom from the gospels, first and foremost.

Or, to put it more succinctly, “For crying out loud, what would Jesus do? How would he address the problem without treating people like pesty rodents?”

I’m glad the Archdiocese recognizes that their efforts were “ill-conceived”, but if they would stop putting their trust in the princes of the world, and all of their dubious expertise and pragmatic-but-inhumane solutions, this unforced error would not now exist to be used against Cordileone.

The sprinklers “worked” in the financial district because they are precisely what we would expect of the financial district. They cannot “work” at a Cathedral, where we worship God, no mammon, and serve those created in his image.

The gospel should be our primary, not our secondary source of consideration when we deal with a problem, not the thing we think about sometime after we’ve been burned by relying on the “experts” of this world. Everything we want to know about the just treatment of human beings is in there. A good place to start.

Related:
Matt Schmitz at First Things defends Cordileone record on service to the poor
Tom McDonald: says let’s choose not to be manipulated by media.
Kathy Schiffer: on how the church serves the poor