‘I was homeless, and you chased me away …’

Kaya Oakes beat me to this joke, which would be funnier if it wasn’t a joke.

The link there is to this appalling story from San Francisco, where culture-warrior Salvatore Cordelione sets the tone for right-wing post-Christianity, “Saint Mary’s Cathedral Drenches Homeless With Water To Keep Them Away“:

Saint Mary’s Cathedral, the principal church of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, has installed a watering system to keep the homeless from sleeping in the cathedral’s doorways.

The cathedral, at Geary and Gough, is the home church of the Archbishop. There are four tall side doors, with sheltered alcoves, that attract homeless people at night.

“They actually have signs in there that say, ‘No Trespassing,’” said a homeless man named Robert.

But there are no signs warning the homeless about what happens in these doorways, at various times, all through the night. Water pours from a hole in the ceiling, about 30 feet above, drenching the alcove and anyone in it.

Mark Evanier goes there: “I‘m so glad they’re doing this because all that stuff about priests molesting children and the church covering it up didn’t do quite enough damage to the faith.”

Oakes’ tweet highlights the stark contrast between Cordelione’s awfulness and Pope Francis’ response to the homeless who seek shelter in the Vatican. Francis commissioned showers for the homeless under St. Peter’s colonnades. The notable thing there is not just what the pope is doing, but why. He and his buddy Bishop Krajewski sometimes go out to dinner with their homeless friends, and one of those friends, Franco, said it was embarrassing to meet for dinner when he worried he smelled because he had nowhere to clean up. Francis responded because he knows Franco. Cordelione doesn’t know — or care to know — any of the people he’s been soaking off of his steps.

The auxiliary bishop in charge of St. Mary’s Cathedral, Bill Justice (ahem), has now apologized and says the sprinklers will be removed. “We are sorry that our intentions have been misunderstood and recognize that the method was ill-conceived,” Justice said. 

So apparently it was all just a misunderstanding. I think something crucially important was being misunderstood, but I don’t think it was their intentions.

Seriously, we’ve had 2,000 years to practice this stuff. You’d think we should have figured some of this out by now.

The Rev. Linda Kaufman is an Episcopal priest who runs a ministry based at Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C. Like St. Mary’s and many other big urban churches, Mount Vernon’s porches, doors and archways had also become places where homeless people sought shelter.

But their response was very different from Cordelione’s “ill-conceived” soak-’em-away plan in San Francisco: “No sprinklers required: How one church kept homeless people off church steps.”

Mount Vernon’s first step was far more in line with the approach of Francis and his Almoner — they invited the homeless living there to a meal and got to know them. That changed the nature of the project, and the outcome:

I am convinced that those individuals who were sleeping on the church porches are better off now than they were in January, before we started.

There is a way to keep safe, clean grounds while helping our homeless neighbors — and it’s both easier and harder than installing sprinkler systems or putting up fences. It requires the investment of time and resources to build relationships, listen and help. The community we formed still gathers at 7 a.m. each Tuesday.