A new book by local historian William Issel explains the key role the Catholic Church played in funding and supporting progressive causes in 20th Century San Francisco, and Randy Shaw's take on it is accurate: For a while, in the 1970s and 1980s, the Church funded a lot of the tenant advocacy and poverty work in this city. The other side of that is a piece of the debate over the new Pope that we're not hearing much.Read more »

As they say ... Jesus!

The new archbishop of San Francisco isn't just a conservative. All the bishops appointed by this pope are conservatives. The new guy overseeing the Catholic Church in one of the most socially liberal parts of the world is a genuine culture-warrior, someone who (literally) says that same-sex marriage is the work of the devil and who wanted to make the use of contraception a mortal sin.Read more »