Archbishop Levada was a towering rock of strength, a true soldier in the battle against evil.
I guess you didn't hear of the ENORMOUS broo-haha over same-sex partners, the Board of Supervisor Presdient Tom Ammiano, Catholic funds and Levada.
Briefly, the Church does 95% of ALL charity work in San Francisco, including homosexual charity work. It gets 10% of its operating funds from The City. Thus Ammiano believed that HE could tell the Catholic Church how it should operate. Harhar. That pimp hadn't a clue that the Church dealt with the Borgias. How smart did he think HE was.
Anyway, he tried to force the Church to offer same-sex benefits (medical, retirement, dental, etc.) to its employees or ELSE he would cut off the 10% funding to the Church.
1. The Church didn't/doesn't "NEED" no stinkin' 10% because it would do the charity work with or without the extra funding. It did before, since the 1870's.
2. There happen to be NO homosexual employees working for the Chuch at the time, so the whole thing was unnecessary. But it was merely to humiliate the Church and for it to change its very doctrine against homosexuality.
3. The Salvation Army capitulated and Ammiano waited in glee for Levada to give in. Levada DIDN'T.
4. Levada's answer to that threat was to actually pay out MORE money to the Church employees.
***What he did was offer ALL Church employees benefits +1." That meant that all employees could add ONE person to the benefit gravey train. That meant that, true, same-sex partners could be added but so could any family member. THAT is what actually happened. Employees added parents, siblings, elderly family, etc. No same-sex partners were added.
Ammiano was ENRAGED and screamed and raged at Levada for weeks. It was most entertaining. The newspaper editorials DID point out how the Archbishop spiked Ammiano's guns and out-politicked him. Rome was watching, too. You know, Levada now has His Holiness' old job. Our Holy Father saw in Levada the similar qualities of towering intellect and backbone of tempered steel. That is why he is now Cardinal Levada. We are all very proud of him here.
Levada has since, as cardinal, made the SAME ole statements that he made as Archbishop. Two examples:
1. When San Francisco's Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a resolution last week condemning the city's former archbishop, now Cardinal William Levada, for a church policy barring adoptions by same-sex couples, the action drew widespread media attention.
2. Cardinal-designate William J. Levada said a priest who publicly announces he is homosexual makes it difficult for people to see the priest as representing Christ, the bridegroom of his bride, the church.
Our new Archbishop is cut from the same cloth as Levada, very conservative.
That's very heartening news. I visit SF irregularly (I have family there, but none of them goes to mass anymore, unfortunately) so I don't follow it very closely. Some statements I have heard attributed to Levada have been a little ambiguous, but they were probably out of context and cherry-picked by the media to sound as close to the media's agenda as possible.
Thank you for the detailed explanation of his actions in the "partner benefits" case - it was the best I have read.