New book exposes rampant homosexuality in the Vatican
Kudos to the Associated Press for running the exposé on the Vatican, which is “one of the world’s largest gay communities.”
That’s the charge made by a gay French writer, Frederic Martel, in his explosive new book, “In the Closet of the Vatican.” Martel interviewed “41 cardinals, 52 bishops or monsignors, and 45 Vatican and foreign ambassadors” over a period of four years, “including weeks at a time living inside the Vatican walls.” What he found is enough to make you vomit.
Gay men have always known that a huge percentage of Catholic priests, maybe a majority, were homosexual. We knew because there is, and always has been, a lively gay underground, filled with chatter and gossip; but, as they say, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Then too, it only made sense that a community of men, forced to take vows of celibacy, would be driven to have clandestine sex. Just because a man is a priest doesn’t mean his body isn’t pumping out oceans of testosterone.
As the gay liberation movement picked up steam in the 1970s-1990s, the Catholic Church emerged as one of its leading opponents in this country, alongside Mormons and evangelicals. Many gay Catholics left the church; others who remained claimed to be trying to reform it from within.
To me, a non-Catholic, such efforts seemed as futile as those of moderate Republicans today, who claim they remain in the party of Trump despite the realization that the Republican Party is deformed and doomed. Many LGBTQ Americans resent the Catholic Church (and the Republican Party) because of their inhumane stance on the issue of homosexuality. This is a matter of civil rights, or human rights. It would be bad enough if the Catholic Church condemned homosexuality while its own priests were devout and chaste. But this clearly is not the case. What many of us have suspected all our lives is now proven to be true.
We already know about the thousands upon thousands of priests who sexually abused tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of boys, girls, men and women over the decades. That in itself should be enough to label the Catholic Church a criminal organization, engaged in an active and ongoing coverup.
But with Martel’s new book, the lid is off, or I should say the closet door is flung open. Martel found that “80% of Vatican clerics are gay.” This fact, shocking enough in itself, has led to immeasurable consequences, Martel argues. “It allows us to understand the misogyny of the clergy, the scandals around the Vatican Bank during the time of Archbishop Marcinkus, the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, and the revolt Pope Francis is now facing.”
Benedict was widely perceived to be gay during his 2005-2013 papacy. Msgr. Paul Marcinkus, who died in 2006, ran the Vatican Bank for Pope John Paul II. He was repeatedly tied to the Mafia during his tenure, and may even have played a role in the death of Pope John Paul I. The “revolt Pope Francis is now facing” concerns, of course, the inadequacy of his response to the growing pedophilia scandals. As for “the misogyny of the clergy,” that speaks for itself.
The Catholic Church isn’t going away anytime soon. For two thousand years it has extorted money from the poor, building an empire in the process, and through its enormous power exerted political leverage over world leaders. No institution on Earth is as entrenched as the Catholic Church.
Nor is there any realistic way to punish the Catholic Church—to make it pay the penalty, not only for this oppression of gay men, but for murdering thousands of them during the Inquisition, and for continuing to incite violence against gay men via its incendiary rhetoric: homosexuality is “objectively disordered.” Language like that is a dog whistle to unstable men, who fearing their own sexual inclinations commit acts of violence against gay men, like Matthew Shepard.
This is a religious cult that preaches it is a sin to masturbate; that men and women who have sex outside of marriage are going to hell; that it is even “morally disordered” to have sexual feelings—lust–for another person outside the bounds of marriage.
Who are these people? You have prelates in the Vatican telling everybody whom they are and are not permitted to screw, while at the same time they’re running around their monasteries doing God only knows what kinds of scandalous things with each other, and not only with each other: with nuns (which even Francis admitted earlier this month), and, of course, with the boys and girls whose lives have been traumatized by pedophile criminals.
Why do we tolerate this madness? Why does the Catholic Church retain any credibility? They’ve had their moment in the sun. They have given the world Michaelangelo, and Dante, and Bach; and for those, and all their other contributions to art and culture, we thank them.
But the Catholic Church has nothing more to offer the world. It is as spent as the testicles of a dried-up old pedophile priest. There is nothing Pope Francis can do to restore a semblance of morality. It is morally (and, increasingly, financially) bankrupt. It’s time for the Catholic Church to back away and figure out how to be useful without promoting hatred and stupidity. And by the way, this view of mine has NOTHING to do with Jesus Christ. It has EVERYTHING to do with the monstrous sexocracy the Catholic Church has become, in His name. As for those good Catholics who remain committed to their church even while recognizing its sins, I can say only this: I feel sorry for you.
