Dear Friends,

1. On October 17, 1989, in the Loma Prieta Earthquake, the Catholic family of the East Bay lost its common home: the Cathedral of St. Francis de Sales, which had stood, since 1891 on the corner of San Pablo Avenue and 22nd Street. Now, almost two decades later we have, with God’s help, built this new home, and it is a blessing for us to be able to show it to you, our neighbors, today. We are proud of its beauty and majesty, and we take great satisfaction in what it means for the life of our Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland, and for the all other communities – both civic and religious – in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties.

We are very grateful that you have accepted our invitation to be here today. You honor us by your presence, and – even more -- by the interest in this project and regard for us which your presence expresses. On behalf of all the Catholics of the East Bay I offer heartfelt thanks to you, eminent heads and directors of other faith traditions and distinguished leaders and officials of the civil order.

2. In my remarks to you this morning, I would like to consider what I understand to be the significance of this new Cathedral which we dedicated just yesterday afternoon.

This Cathedral, consecrated to Christ the Light, is the mother church of all the some 600,000 members of the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Oakland. All of the congregants of our Diocese have a home in one of the 84 parish churches in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. But this Church is a home for us all. It symbolizes – makes visibly and tangibly present – the Catholic community in the East Bay.

As is the case with every home, this new home for our Diocese reflects the life of our faith family (cf. Pope John Paul II, Message to the Bishop of Nice, 20 April 1999). Just as the home where an ordinary family lives supports and fosters the life which they share there, the Cathedral of Christ the Light has been established to advance the life and mission of the Catholic Community in the East Bay. For us, it is first of all a testimony to our faith that Jesus of Nazareth is the Light of the World. Here we are gathered by him to be filled with his own light, so that we can answer Jesus’s call to us to be light and leaven and salt for the world.

The Cathedral of Christ the Light is a preeminent way for us to confirm the ongoing commitment which Christ calls our Community to make to the city of Oakland and to all the cities and communities which surround it. From the first it was our aim to build an elegant architectural work of the highest quality, and we believe that we have met our goal, with the result that the Cathedral of Christ the Light greatly enriches the fabric of our civic community and is a welcoming place for believers, for all our neighbors and for visitors of all faiths and cultures.

3. To further help us all appreciate the significance of this new Cathedral, I would like to reflect on its character not only as an ecclesial reality but also as a public reality. Yes, we Catholics have built this Cathedral to meet our needs as the People of Christ, but that has never meant, and could never mean for us, that this project was in any real sense “private.” From the first, we have conceived it as a public building, for we do not see these two spheres as separable. To make clearer what I mean I want now first to comment on the beauty of the Cathedral, then on its place in the public realm, and finally on the mission of the congregation for which this church is home.

Just above I mentioned, at least implicitly, how throughout this process, from its inception over fifteen years ago until its completion yesterday, we have set our sights on constructing a beautiful building – one which is worthy of its site on the shore of Lake Merritt and that enriches the city-scape of which it is a part. We think we have achieved our goal, and I hope you agree. For us Catholics this aim of erecting a church which is beautiful is not an option, not a fanciful notion. It is our duty Beauty is an essential aspect of the very being of the Creator whom we adore and serve; beauty is the face he shows to the world, and any symbol constructed to speak of his presence in the world must, like the world he has made, reflect his beauty.

And we have built a beautiful church, not only because that is most worthy of God, but also because a beautiful church best befits the dignity of the people who will live with it in their midst -- all the people, whether they share our faith or not. Building this beautiful Cathedral is first and foremost an act of homage to God, but it is at the same time an act of respect for every man, woman and child in the East Bay. It is a homage to their dignity as persons, human beings who are not only physical but also spiritual, feeling deeply not only hungers of the flesh, but hungers of the soul, hungers which can only be satisfied with beauty.

4. Secondly, to help us grasp the place of the Cathedral in the public realm, I want to invoke a well known text from the Book of Proverbs: “Without vision the people perish” (29:18). Here the Sacred Author is making a point which closely parallels the wisdom of the Ancient Greeks: that if all the concerns of the human community were reduced to the practical and political, and decisions about what to do and what to prohibit were not founded on an understanding of the ultimate purpose of our world and of our place in it, practical and political realities would become debased. The community would be left to be manipulated by the powerful, whether it’s the power of wealth or status or the control of the means of communication.

In the course of the history of our culture, there have emerged voices – often very powerful and persuasive voices -- which claim it is expedient to blind our eyes to the vision of the first things, to ultimate truths, to the things that claimed to be higher than practical affairs and political matters, in order to attend to the pressing challenges of our communities. To put it succinctly, they said that those who concerned themselves with a comprehensive understanding of what exists were wasting their time and,worse yet, obstructing our progress to a better tomorrow. Over the course of time the names of those who make this claim have changed. Today we find their rejection of the possibility of an ultimate and orienting vision very often couched in terms of a denial of truth, in the espousal of a radical relativism about moral and human matters. In effect, they contradict the author of Proverbs; they say that not only is having a vision unnecessary for the survival of the people, but, indeed, any such vision, any focus on the things that claim to be higher and deeper than politics is a dangerous illusion which is ultimately destructive of a free people.

This Cathedral of Christ the Light is an expression of the Catholic Church’s claim that the proverb’s insight remains valid; it is true and will always be true that “without vision the people perish.” It is to prevent the perishing of the people that we hold up the vision given us by Jesus our Light. This building is a most prominent and public testimony to our conviction that relativism is a dead end, destructive of society and culture.

We Catholics know, of course, that there are views other than our own about human life and happiness, about good and bad, about right and wrong, which we offer to our community. And we have no intention of imposing the truth by coercion. We are committed to using the means of persuasion which are available to all Americans through our democratic system, and which good citizens are duty-bound to take up in order to serve their country and the many communities which it encompasses. The Catholic Church forms her members to be patriots, authentic patriots, who could not imagine withholding from our community what we judge will contribute most effectively toward the building up the common good.

In claiming our legitimate place on the public square through erecting this Cathedral, we Catholics are endorsing that same claim for all the other faith-communities and institutions who hope to build up the good of the nation. Not only does a Catholic Cathedral belong on the public square but so also do all churches, synagogues, temples, meeting houses, mosques, and the other homes of faith communities found here in the East Bay. In proclaiming the elements of the vision which we hold in common, and they are many, we are one in offering our community a strong foundation for our life together. And we are confident that making disparate claims about what is conducive to the common good will not threaten our community, as long as these are dealt with honestly in a respectful dialogue that is normed by the light of the reason and the natural moral law.

5. Thirdly, about the mission of the Catholics of the Oakland Diocese, who call this new Cathedral our home. The tasks Jesus has entrusted to us are manifold. We hear from him a call to preach his Good News to all creation, to worship him in the Sacred Liturgy and in our daily lives, and to serve him in his brothers and sisters, especially the least of these. In connection with this last named work, I am glad to be able to acknowledge the Knights and Dames of Malta for the health office they will operate in the Cathedral Center for the benefit of the poor.

To speak now of the mission of Catholic citizens to serve our neighbors, just after we have considered the legitimate place which we have in the public square in order to offer our vision for the advancement of the people, leads, quite logically to speak for a while about some of the naturally knowable truths which make up that vision, and to which this Cathedral is a witness.

We affirm that the world takes its origin and meaning from being freely created by God Almighty, who judges his work to be good. We affirm that the course of the history of our world is guided by his loving Providence, and that each of us is answerable to him for the choices we make as part of that history. We affirm that our Creator did not make death and evil, but these have come into the world through human choice, and that we look to him for deliverance from these evils. We affirm that we that we will not slip into non-existence at our death, but that he will judge us and assign to us the reward or punishment that is appropriate.

Part of the light we bear to our community is the unshakable conviction that every human being possesses an inviolable dignity with the destiny of living in freedom. For all of them the right to life must be protected from conception to natural death. We affirm that marriage and family life, according to the plan of our Creator, is the essential foundation of all social existence. We affirm that our society will be judged by how we respond in solidarity to the needs of the weakest and most vulnerable in order to include them within our community. We affirm that the economy exists for the good of the human person and not the person for the market. We affirm that the peace which grows out of justice is our true destiny and working for it our great calling. We affirm that we must exercise proper stewardship of the earth which God has given us as our home and has entrusted to our care. It is to these luminous truths that we Catholics of the East Bay bear witness, here in this Cathedral, in all our churches, in our homes, our schools, where we work and where we rest, and wherever else you find us.

6. And finally, I conclude by promising that in this Cathedral we, your Catholic neighbors, will pray that God would by his strength and grace sustain our community and those who lead it. The Apostle Paul in the first generation of the Church wrote to urge that Christ’s disciples offer “petitions, prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving… especially for … those who govern and those in authority” (1 Tm 2:2). Here we will continue to do what St. Paul has directed. You can count on this prayerful support, so that all of us “may be able to lead undisturbed and tranquil lives in perfect piety and dignity” (ibid.)
Again, for myself and for all the members of the Diocese of Oakland, thank you so much for coming here today to share our joy in moving into our new home.