Why is this news? Did anyone seriously doubt that most Vatican higher-ups are gay?
10
I am a 70-years-old heterosexual 'raised' in a Brooklyn, NY separate from any awareness or notion of 'non-Catholic' neighborhoods -- where 'life itself' was 'absolutely defined' by one's Catholic parish; a Catholic Schoolboy taught ... and coached in basketball, track and baseball ... by Franciscan brothers; an altar boy from the 2d grade 'on' (who can still 'parrot' the prayers at the foot of the altar -- in Latin).
Today … and for so very many years before … I am an atheist -- but an atheist whose most cherished years were those 'all-is-Catholic' years of school, basketball, baseball, track and 'altar serving.'
So … or in any case … I don't want to see the church that made so much of me, and 'for me,' crash 'like' the Soviet Union did. But, while 'the faith' is a couple of thousand years older than the CCCP ever got to be, it too was regarded, recently and in its time, as all-powerful in its realm. So ... Who knows?
Surely, society 'offers' many more challenges for gays than heterosexuals ... and it seems that gay clergy who are not among the surely-relative-few who are pedophiles have the most awful cross to bear.
For them and especially, I shall pray my godless prayers.
5
Hypocrisy in any form and from any source is shameful; when dressed in religious garb, it is sinful.
8
And the whole shebang is tax exempt! How can our State and Federal governments continue to subsidize what has been repeatedly revealed to be organized sex trafficking???
12
Every single person is called to chastity. How hard is that to understand?
1
I commented on another article in today's Times to say that until something is written about straight priests abusing males and females and gay priests abusing females, gay priests will continue to be vilified. Straight priests have pretty much been ignored in articles about sexual abuse. The focus has been almost exclusively on abuse of males by priests who are of course all male. Is there another way to frame the discourse that doesn't point to gay priests as the guilty parties?
5
Read this fascinating and worthwhile companion piece in today's Times for valuable additional perspective: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/us/it-is-not-a-closet-it-is-a-cage-gay-catholic-priests-speak-out.html
Mr Bruni ... you write that you have apprehensive concern about the book's effect on the public's view of the gay community. Perhaps even express subtle disapproval at the book's publication. Same concern and disapproval expressed at the wave of behind the scenes " tell all " books about the Trump White House?
2
Frank, after many years of reading about the Church's recent history, I have been forced to the conclusion that the Church is an international criminal conspiracy, offering spells (absolution, blessings, quick passage to a Catholic heaven) and potions (holy water, sanctified wine and wafers) in exchange for untold wealth and power. Wealth and power that it continues to abuse and and uses to ruin lives.
Thousands of lives have been ruined through the many sex scandals that the Church tries to cover up.
$65 million was transferred to a cemetery trust, rather than help the 200 victims at St. John's School for the Deaf. After that little bit of prestidigitation, Bishop Nolan became Cardinal Nolan.
Almost 800 little children were killed at Tuam, and their bodies hidden in a septic tank. If such a find had been made in an SS concentration camp, the commandant would have been hanged.
Thousands of innocent children were abused physically and spiritually throughout Ireland, being constantly referred to as the Spawn of Satan. While I am talking about Ireland, let's not forget that those mother and baby homes engaged in a form of slavery and the trade in infants.
In third world countries, the Church appears to have at least condoned the systematic rape of nuns.
Through all of this, the Church continues to excoriate LGBTQ individuals, people who have engaged in sex outside of marriage, and people who get divorced.
I do not see Jesus' teachings in any of this.
18
And yet, that some are "trying, psychologically and emotionally, to survive" is no excuse for not cleaning out the rot in this organization. Speaking as a a liberal-minded observer - I'm sorry, but at this point the rot really does need to be cleaned out, regardless of why and how it developed.
5
I had figured most of this out before I was ten, while barely escaping their clutches. Then transferred to public school, I had to evade a 5th grade teacher who beat me up and the principal, his partner; a gay dentist; the guys who stopped when I was hitchhiking; the president of a Jesuit University and the head of the regional Harvard admissions’ board. Early on I identified homosexual predators and concluded the church used fear to build a lucrative criminal organization — and everybody was just going along.
60 years later it’s coming out.
What about all the other big lies we live with?
I read jon krakauer’s report on Pat Tillman last night. When will we hit critical mass and turn the spotlight on another of our sacred institutions that, I think, is rotten at the core?
I would expect this would be a better country if sex and prostitution were legal between consenting adults.
And our military was halved and the profit motive removed.
But I won’t hold my breath.
Because it seems as if we’ve reached a point where the wheel of reform turns much slower than the forces of extinction.
10
It seems wholly obvious that the Catholic Church will never be normal until women comprise at least half of the Church in terms of power and equal participation — as it was in the early days of the church.
9
Anything that the church does will not be enough. Anything, any measures that the institution takes will fall far short of what is needed.
As a 66-year-old openly gay former Catholic with a Catholic education, I can well understand how in decades past gay men – and lesbians too among the women’s religious orders – sought refuge from a world that demanded their taking a partner of an appropriate (different) gender and procreating.
As a person who is always been seriously interested in my relationship with the divine, for several years I considered the priesthood as an option. Then, when I was 17 years old Stonewall happened and the world was turned upside down.
Many of the men my age and older who sought the refuge afforded by the priesthood were seeking refuge from an absolutely brutal, inhuman environment in the secular world, only to discover that they had sold their souls and had taken out citizenship in another, even more brutal and hypocritical world.
They had no way of knowing that things were about to change.
It is quite understandable, but no less horrifying, to realize that such an environment is necessarily going to produce pathology: the sexual abuse of minors, sexual coercion of any type in fact, delusions of glorification - a cornucopia of dysfunctionality that together brews what I have come to refer to as PAPS – patriarchal authoritarian personality syndrome.
One of his premier symptoms is – ironically – rabid, virulent homophobia and misogyny.
20
I am a gay man, 64 years old, raised Catholic, married a woman at 30, divorced at 37, came out that same year at 37, met a man, married him at 40 (ceremonially at the time as it was not legal), married him a second time in 2011 when it became legal, and have been with him for 24 years. He is my life partner. I am fortunate to have a supportive family, loving friends. I blame no one for the years of turmoil I went through. Everyone has trauma in their lives. The pain of knowing I was gay in the 1960's and 1970's was my trauma. It contributed to my becoming alchoholic but my family fortunately intervened and I have been sober with the help of AA for 37 years.
I left the church decades ago. My bottom line is I do not want to be a member of any club that does not want me as a member. Just leave. We can believe in and love God on our own terms. God loves all people equally. No need to be a member of any certain church.
22
Thank you for your story.
5
Yes they will mine it. So, let's remind them that way back, when some of us were little Catholic kids going to Catholic schools taught by nuns in long black linen habits, our parents used to talk about what a shame it was that a prelate they'd liked was moved from our parish for getting a girl pregnant. She was 13. We didn't know who the eighth graders were. But, their excuse for that pedophile priest was seduction by a girl with 'hot pants'. The 50's. Partiarchal institutions blamed children and women and groups without power.
16
I think of Ann Rice's good, well researched novel CRY TO HEAVEN. Fiction about the famous castrati (priest cut
early in life) Farinelli. The power of the Cardinal involved
with his career. The women who found him safe sex. How priesthood emulates Jesus and his 12 apostles. All men, at dinner, drinking from the same glass. Eating the same body. Figuratively of course. The way that scene has been interpreted down the centuries to serve Vatican conclaves. Are we to think that Jesus and the Apostles were gay? Magdalen an anomaly? Is there a real secret, interpreted as a "mystery" and not to be thought about?
O boy....
6
The Catholic church and its doctrine of celibacy is a refuge for many who are uncomfortable with their sexuality, whether it is homosexuality, pedophilia, or just heterosexuality. Celibacy is not a natural condition; indeed the denial of sex is a kind of perversion itself, so it is no wonder that so many deviates enter the priesthood. The other major Christian religions do not require celibacy and some have openly gay prelates. Isn't it time for the Church to abandon this doctrine, which is not required by the scriptures or generally accepted dogma? Talk about an unforced error!
15
The problem is celibacy. Asking a person to give up the joys of a close relationship for all of life is an impossible burden. Gay or straight or bi or trans, everyone craves connection and celibacy is unnatural. Religions with priests who live more normal lives are also better qualified to counsel and advise.
Stop blaming everything on homosexuality. It is not automatically the route to pedophilia.
15
The right wing arent homophobes. I have a hard time with the weaponizing of the terms of racism, and the various "phobes" to get your way. its very short sighted. If people have beliefs, based on their religion, then your disrespect to them is no way to demand respect from them. Another undisciplined fallacy from the left, that a lack of respect for others who disagree with you justifies your position.
3
You must not know many right-wingers. Where I live almost everybody is right-wing and they all hate "the gays," blaming them for all sorts of child molestation, etc. Only those who lead a sheltered life do not see this.
7
Homosexuality has been exposed by Italian journalists. This is no "bombshell" to those who have been paying attention. There have been videos of parties, etc. where priests engaged in homosexual behavior. All I can say is, the Catholic Church is a mess and has been a mess for centuries. I remember, in high school, questioning the dark history of the church and being told to keep quiet and not ask so many questions! The Church has used spiritual penalties to keep the faithful quiet and compliant. No Pope can clean this up...it's too overwhelming for one man. I wish I had the answer!
14
I’m curious as to when it wasn’t a mess!
2
Bruni finds it uncomfortable to acknowledge the fact that gay men, closeted from the parishioners but in their own secret society, were the lead abusers in the Catholic church scandal. Acknowledging that gays are capable both individually and together of terrible and immoral actions is the first step towards protecting those gays who serve the flock well.
6
"A sensational new book mines the Catholic Church’s sexual secrets. Will right-wing homophobes exploit it?"
Frank, welcome to two steps forward and one step back. After Trump leaves office, Democrats will make two steps forward in progress. Hillary, Nancy and Chuck at the most, maybe one step forward. When they leave, the Democrats will make massive improvements because of the gross incompetence of conservatives.
Also the Catholic Church has always been an organization that needs to go. If you don't believe, ask Bruno, not Bruni.
9
paragons of virtue eventually turn into targets of ridicule
2
When will American Catholic laity seize control by forming an American Catholic Church that is led by married men and women priests and nuns? When will the laity say enough is enough to the secrecy, deceit, coverups, sexual abuse and discrediting of their church by corrupt, sick and probably depressed men?
At this point, it appears that the laity are so brain washed and docile that they won't do anything about their scandalous and abusive church. That is a sad commentary on Catholics and Christianity.
I understand that Catholics are believers in their church and accept and expect that the church is made up of people who sin and are imperfect. The true believers do not want to leave the church, and they believe that it is their savior and performs miracles.
The won't leave the church. (I've just talked to a fallen away Catholic who is from a very Catholic family and understands how the Church holds them and sympathizes with Catholics.)
7
Here's what I know. There is a truth that speaks to you from your loins and you ignore it at your peril. You can listen to the words of a book, or to the words of a preacher, or to the words of your parents, but if you don't listen to what your loins are saying to you, you're going to run into a brick wall eventually and the result will not be pretty.
6
>"It’s celibacy and
the secretive,
rigid,
ancient
all-male hierarchy"
There are five red flares right there, in our faces.
Why have so many "believers" been so blind to systemic issues that, taken together, have for millennia fomented sexual criminality?
Even those not personally guilty of rape, abuse, preying on the weak were/are, in many cases, complicit, no?
Call the police!
7
It will be a real shame if the Vatican's meeting next week fails to explore the question of whether abstinence from sex and marriage was rooted in the teachings of Jesus.
7
The sexual exploitation of women, girls and boys is nothing new. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The church(es) and the government(s) are very similar in this failing. The fact that it has gone on so long and so pervasively indicates the depths of depravity and recommends a future that gives women a turn at the wheel. Not saying it’ll be perfect, but it can’t get much worse.
2
To still cling to celibacy whether it is heterosexual or homosexual puts the Catholic Church out of touch with human behavior and the physical need for intimacy in the well adjusted individual. Not rape not abuse but the passion between consenting adults that is part of a mature healthy relationship.
Time for priests and nuns to be married so they can better understand and counsel their flock. Important to enter the the real world not some hedonistic world making pleasure whether it be sexual, alcohol or drug abuse the goal. Intimacy not exploitation should be the goal.
1
It’s unfortunate that the word “gay” is used to describe self-stigmatizing homosexuals who try to hide the fact of their sexual orientation behind the “cloth” of priesthood. “Gay” is a word that gay men themselves chose for themselves, beginning in the 1930s, as a positive and affirming term to replace the condemning medical terminology and common street terms. Catholic priests (and cardinals) preying on vulnerable boys and men while publicly condemning gay men have absolutely nothing in common with proud, self-affirming, openly gay men—and should not be spoken of as if they do.
3
Gay liberation means that gay men will no longer need to seek the shelter of the church to survive. Like women and convents, men are no longer entering seminaries. Catholic schools are closing. Property is being sold off. The local parishes are increasingly manned by African and south Asian men for whom the church is a job and a way to get residency in the States.
The whole thing is falling apart. But let's not let up.
2
How bizarre that if you are gay you can’t be Catholic,
but you can be a Catholic priest.
I guess it makes sense in a drug dealer way. I sell heterosexual religion but I would never use it myself.
Yeah that helps logic to separate the owners of the Catholicism business from the actual product it is selling and the customers it sells to. They are not the same people.
Catholicism is one club.
The owners, a different club.
Ok, my head no longer hurts.
4
I am perpetually surprised that anyone is surprised by such revelations. James Joyce details the sexual shenanigans going on as a matter of course in Catholic boys' schools well over a hundred years ago, and describes a priest soliciting Stephen Dedalus to become a priest as a Satanic temptation. In the mid-1700s, Voltaire in Candide skewers the Jesuits as attempting to rape boys, girls, each other, and other species. Jesuit pederasty has been a running joke in literature since the order was founded. Ironically, the monastic life has been a haven for those who truly sought to serve God and found out celibacy was the only way their church accepted their sexual identity--but the church also provided the perfect means and temptation to become predatory. How can such corruption and hypocrisy every be cleansed short of dissolution?
5
Hopefully the NYT will also expose the Baptist ministers who are also abusing children. The Media has been very silent about this, why?
Pedophilia should be severely punished. One comment was good, she didn't mind gays but what was reprehensible was rape. The church must clean up its house. It is good it's being so exposed but will it be enough and don't forget the Baptists/Evangelicals as well.
It's also time priests should be able to marry or have partners. At the very beginning they could. Expecting men to be celibate is unreasonable; after all prostitution exists to satisfy men's sexual urges and making it illegal hasn't stopped it.
The church should pay taxes like everyone else.
3
This focuses much more on how people will perceive the Catholic Church after reading the book than it does on the truth or lack therof of the contents. Frankly, that was the Soviet attitude towards facts, too.
Gay or straight, the Church is riddled with hypocrisy about all matters sexual. The Catholics have attracted the most attention, but there is reason to suspect that most other organized religious groups are similarly afflicted. If one must give oneself over to some Higher Being, it might be best to work out a private means of relating to Him or Her, leaving out the intercession of all the shameful sham shamen.
3
were the catholic church (or many other churches) instead non-religious charities or for-profit charities, they'd be shut down.
4
There is no cure for homosexuality, or heterosexuality for that matter, not even requited celibacy.
I really don't care if a priest is gay. Or if they are straight. Or if they are celibate. All our religious leaders have some degree of hypocrisy as all of us, including priests, are sinners.
I care more if they are a good person. If they look after those that need care. If they are compassionate. If they are inspirational.
If they steal from their parish or if they abuse their flock.
The focus on the number or percentage of homosexual men in the Catholic priesthood is a distraction from the main issue of abuse of children, including sexual abuse, which is a problem endemic in society in general.
The church is an easy target for outrage, but purging it of its offensive clergy, while desirable, will not help to alleviate the problem of child sexual abuse in the general society; in fact, it may be a cover for the abusers.
The entire seedy depths of the Catholic abuse scandal must be uncovered. If that means we learn some inconvenient truths about gay clergy preying on children and seminarians, then we must be ready to hear that. We cannot be part of a continued cover-up just to satisfy our pro-gay alliances.
1
The fear of this book fueling the conflation of gayness with homosexuality is understandable but important to disregard.
The truth is the truth. Yes, it will have consequences. Indulging thought processes about obfuscating such a complex situation, because it might somehow be better than the consequences of revealing the truth, is why these situations go unresolved for centuries. Facing the truth head on is the fastest way to unravel this knot of lies, deceit, and pain.
What’s more — and as is exemplified here — people who will choose to use this to conflate homosexuality with pedophilia will likely, like their Catholic counterparts, also be closeted gays struggling to cope with self-hatred. Those who spend time publicly and vehemently condemning gayness almost always do so to try to deny their own gayness to themselves and to others.
It is also important to acknowledge that the societally, mentally, emotionally, and physically abusive causes and conditions that nurture such self-hatred occasionally also lead people to later become abusers themselves. This does not somehow make gayness a cause of pedophilia.
It is a sad, painful, complex situation. But it is the truth, and facing the truth is the fastest route to fixing the problem. Don’t suggest hiding the truth could somehow be a more thoughtful way to deal with this whole mess more thoughtfully, quickly, or less painfully.
And to those who will say the book simply isn’t true: Please join us here in reality.
1
As Mr. Bruni no doubt knows, celibacy was not always a requirement for the Roman Catholic priesthood. Remove it - and permit women to become priests - and sexual predation of minors will drop to the same percentage it occurs in non-Catholic clergies. It's really quite simple.
4
"Martel’s focus on homosexuality buys into the notion that it’s especially troubling . . . ."
And for good reason. It IS especially troubling.
1
The reason the Vatican City has sovereign status is, and has always been, a matter of providing sanctuary for criminals.
Whatever happened to Joseph Ratzinger?
2
Men run the church. Men cover up for male priests who abuse boys and young men. Boys and young men are a majority of victims according to most studies and reports. Males covering for males who assault males overwhelmingly. Who could doubt that the male-only church has a preponderance of gay leadership? How many Lutheran ministers are accused of abusing boys in the average year? Go look it up.
1
February 16, 2016
Tribalism is systemic in Gay culture - as whatever ones thinks about the new modern acceptance, as if in terms of say gender romances and marriage - but not for Catholics vow of celebrate life for the love of the Holy Mother the Church until death.....
What we have is tri sexuality as to say: heterosexual, Bisexuality, Homosexuality- that for the righteous priest the life doctrine in love is the direct relationship to the eternal order of faith and scripture. This a mono salvation to enjoy the love of serving the order of Catholic Callings for life and with abstaining from the bonds in physical earthly joys that would and does negation of ones truth to live for the spiritual heart an soul lovingly and as long as ones priesthood is the greater love than one can have for Jesus and his Gospel taught by the everlasting Holy Christian Spirit eternal - and that is the greatest path revealed to all.
"Martel’s focus on homosexuality buys into the notion that it’s especially troubling and titillating." And so it is, like it or not. Let's face it, even in this age of pride, people love to read about gay sexual abuse. The stories of Catholic priests harassing boys have sent Catholic-bashers over the rainbow for years. One reads in the NY Post about female math teachers abusing boys but all they draw is a great ho-hum, but let news leak of a male coach reaching for one of the lads on the team and the nation shudders. Frank, you are right to be alert, but your idea that homophobia only exists among the ring-wing is as biased as the premise that sex abusers are only to be found among homosexuals. One day, no doubt, we will have a gay presidential candidate, and believe you me, it won't only be the Republicans who object. As a matter of fact, gay insults are regularly hurled by leftists at senators. The whole gay trope used against Trump and his alleged affair with Putin was invented by and exploited by the left. There are numerous left-wing comedians who love to gay bash for a laugh. Just as in junior high there is no better way to tear down a politician than by accusing him or insinuating that he is not all man. Chief among the bashers are women, often the very same women who on the other side of their mouths scream about sexism.
Sunlight remains the best disinfectant. Bruni fears the effects of the revelations in the book, and not without reason. But far worse would be the effects of withholding the information. There must be a reckoning with the truth. It will not be easy or simple. The homophobes will be on the warpath. But since most of their fiercest generals are by all accounts themselves gay, there is also here an opportunity.
Nobody with eyes to see is shocked to learn that many or most priests are gay. There may have been a time when most people didn’t know, but that time is past. And most of us, including most Catholics, don’t care.
What we care about is the child rape. And what has protected the child rapists has not been a “Gay Mafia” but rather the homophobia that has produced a toxic culture of hypocrisy and self-hatred ripe for exploitation by evil men.
There are undoubtedly many gay priests who have not preyed on children, who have instead had consensual adult relationships of various sorts — with each other, with prostitutes, with parishioners, with strangers. Predictably imperfect, but consensual.
Now is the time for these men to come forward to speak their truth because that is what is neccesary to rescue the church they love from the evil of child rape.
It is a harsh truth, but the time has come when to both remain in the closet and to remain in the priesthood is to be complicit in a conspiracy to protect child rapists.
2
A ridiculous column - and I love Frank. The entire structure of the Catholic Church is corrupt. Frank is trying to put a band-aid on a corpse. Walk away. There are other ways to get aligned with spirituality. The Catholic Church is mired in mortality.
4
All else aside, the book speaks to the enormous and seemingly growing tension between a church that frequently vilifies and marginalizes gay men and a priesthood dense with them.
It's not only gay men who are vilified -- all gay, transgender, queer people are vilified and are not welcome. The hypocrisy of the gay priests is in and of itself profoundly evil.
2
Listen, organized religions are no different from organized crime cartels. "We'll shake you down for your money (a tenth of your income, please) in return for which we will cater to your ignorance by convincing you that when you die you'll go to heaven and see your loved ones again. Being gay or using contraception is sinful because we need people to have lots of babies who will give us--guess what?--a tenth of their income. Don't want to cough up the money or otherwise obey our rules? We'll frighten you with stories about burning alive for ever and ever. Give us a bit more money and we'll absolve you of your sins. Yes, we live in palaces amidst fabulous jewels and works of art, but it's all for the glory of the imaginary old man up in the sky, the one who is going to make everything better for you."
My 80-year old mother still is traumatized by the abuse she suffered as a child at the hands of the violent, raging drunk priest who bellowed incessantly at her about hellfire and damnation--which poor people like her and her family were especially likely to experience, apparently (he really, really despised the poor, as did the nuns at her school). She would literally shake with fear in her bed every night for much of her childhood, thinking of the flames that would one day (he assured her) consume her for all eternity. Disgusting man. Curse his memory.
3
I thimk maybe Mr. Bruni is really worried that there is some connection between the sexual orientation of many priests and the abuse scandal. Many of the victims were teenage boys.
1
Andrew Sullivan in his article in The Intelligencer suggests that three options exist for the Church in the current crisis. A fourth one, guaranteed to work, is not mentioned. Allow women priests and that priests of both genders be allowed to marry either gender. What is the harm? Where in the words of Jesus is this forbidden? The model exists throughout the rest of Christianity. Why the delay?
2
The fact that 80% of Catholic Clery being gay is not news to most priests, feminist theologians and women in the church but it may be news to many devout lay people.
I took a feminist theology class nearly 30 years ago and recall an ex nun professor explaining to us how the Catholic Church, while is blatantly a homoerotic institution, is also pathologically homophobic because of a “fear of exposure” of its true nature.
It goes to show you how people will choose to believe what they are told even when it goes against their instincts.
The Catholic Church is like the Wizard of Oz...a big fraud.
10
Sexual orientation is irrelevant like eye color. This is the teaching of mainline Christian Churches and was the official position of the Roman Church until Ratzinger in 1986 stated homosexuality was an intrinsic disorder. So, moral behavior and good sexual ethics for everyone is the order, not being gay or straight or bi. Out of the closet is freedom though it may cost the individual.
1
Eccentric societies and odd rituals? I’d say that describes the Catholic church today!
Who in their right minds would think life-long celibacy is a good thing for the human organism? To call the church's sex abuse scandal one big gay coverup is ridiculous. This is about what is simply the most powerful and instinctual of adult human needs: corporeal desire. Deprive a person of the ability to satisfy sexual desire and bad stuff happens. Add in the power dynamics inherent to, say, the priest-altar boy relationship and really bad stuff is going to happen. A starving soul is going to reach out, quite literally, for whatever proxy it can.
It's abhorrent and unethical, but part of me can't blame these men. Catholic Church, you have nothing but your myopic and anachronistic mores to blame.
I can't keep track of the abuse and deception by this old white male hierarchy. Only more evidence that the women should be running the show.
1
Bruni tries to paint these men in a holier light than reality will bear. Sure, some gay men joined the Church because being “outsiders” gave them a more “spiritual bent”. But for most it was likely a means of survival. You’re gay in a world that condemns it in 1490, 1790 or 1990. The Church means respectability, income, and presumably other gay men, all within a secret society that protects their own. Why WOULDN’T you join the Church? Gay and straight men who become priests may want to be servants of God, but they surely look at the lifestyle offered too.
.
Oh big news. This vile characterization of gays is as old as the inquisition. And it kills people. And it ignores violence against women in the priesthood and elsewhere too. The abuse of girls and women by clergy is largely ignored - too 'normal.' And not because it does not happen as often as the other way. I don't hear a lot of screaming either about recent disclosures that scores of nuns were raped by their 'holy,' male overlords. Abuse of females is normalized. All those rotting rape kits are just the tip of the iceberg. Rape of girls and women is wildly under-reported, too. Having not reported myself, for good reasons, and knowing so many others like me, I know this from experience. I also know, the idea that all abusing clergy are gay is just more homophobia. What they doubtless all are is abused themselves, most likely by the church - and they are repeating that behavior. Male on male abuse does not automatically mean somebody is gay. It does mean they are a pedophile. As a society, we keep looking for reasons and means to ostracize, demonize, and dehumanize gays ans others who are vulnerable or 'different.' Shame on the profit-grubbing publishers for putting out a toxic book that can result in violence for vulnerable people at the hands of haters - and yet no relief for female or male victims of clergy and other sex abuse. Just more noise. More pain. But hey, hysteria sells, right? Especially gay-bashing hysteria.
Mr. Bruni does not understand why focus attention on the gay priests when the issue is celibacy in general? Really? Does the church condemn homosexuality the same way in which it condemns adultery or heterosexual sex outside marriage? I don’t think so. When was the last time the church said to fornicating straight people that they are intrinsically morally disordered?
2
According to Bruni the reference to those in the Vatican who are gay is "to Catholic officials who have had sex with men". Catholic priests having sex with men in the view of the Catholic religion are in violation of the biblical prohibition on homosexual sex, which calls the act an abomination..
So the point of this shocking revelation is that the overwhelming majority of the religious leaders of the Catholic church in the highest level of authority, the Vatican, are liars, fakers and mock the faith they represent.
What makes it even worse is that unlike every other religion, Catholic clergy members claim they are not simply human, but are vested by God with Godly powers, such as to grant absolution. "Lowly" humans cannot confess their sins directly to God, nor to repent before him. Priests are God's intermediaries here on earth.
What this says to the billion Catholics of the world is that they have as their leaders people who think they are fools to believe that their churches, let alone their cathedrals represent an organization that stands for what their most sacred beliefs. Instead the whole organization is a front for people who are using them for money, power and the opportunity to hold a profession that appears to be respectable, but in truth is a massive fraud on the public.
It is virtually impossible for somebody to rise to any high level in the ranks of the Catholic church without becoming aware that the leadership mocks the very beliefs they preach.
3
Bring it on. Expose the scoundrels. We're all big boys and girls in the LGBTQ-and-more community and there is no need to clutch our pearls over the revelations. Today there are news reports the 74-year-old Papal envoy to France allegedly sexually assaulted a thirty-something male in the office of the Paris mayor assigned to welcome the cleric. You can't make this stuff up!
1
All Male Dominated religious organizations should be abolished as dysfunctional and sexist. Gay dominated church that demonizes gay people, go figure. Makes sense in the age of tRump. Age old superstitious religions need to be deposited into the dustbin of History. Anybody that turns over their faith and life to old men in dresses, need to GET A LIFE.
2
There is nothing irrational about 'homophobia' when the reality is there are thousands or tens of thousands of homosexual predators in the church, as is now clear. Maybe this scandal will finally knock off the pedestal the idea that being a sexual minority is some sort of brave, edgy statement.
1
The Catholic Curch is being destroyed by the most vile criminal behavior imaginable - sexual abuse of children - and the most legitimate investigations of these crimes also reveal that most of these predators are gay men. Does it mean all gay men are pedophiles? Of course not, but the fact remains that gay men gravitated to the priesthood for the last 2000 years because most cultures didn’t accept gay men openly. Fortunately, that isn’t the case anymore - gay people are largely free to live openly, but the damage to the credibility of the church is done b/c of the actions of pedophiles acting contrary to the teachings of Jesus. The solution - allow priests to be married and allow women to be priests. The inevitable problems of divorce are nothing compared to the pedophile rot that is wrecking Catholicism.
2
To even start to understand the problems with Catholicism you have to go back to the Genius of it: Paul!!!
Jesus wasn’t married. Not because it was bad or evil like Paul suggested. Jesus wasn’t married because as a Creator Son of God, He wouldn’t have been able to leave a human child behind for obvious reasons. Therefore, He choose to never marry. Several of His Apostles were married with children, including Peter! Jesus NEVER said or implied that to be a messenger of the Gospel, you had to be either celibate or straight or gay!
If the world had followed Paul’s proclamation NOT to be married, our world would have come to an inglorious end!!!
WAKE up Catholics! Let your clergy teach the gospel with their heart and dedication to God and Jesus, NOT to their sexual preference. Sexuality was given to us by God! It’s HIS plan. Maybe what is happening in the church right now is a good thing. I was born and raised as a Presbyterian, but I never heard anyone say “He or She is a good Presbyterian!” Why do Catholics have to say “I’m a good Catholic???” Maybe it’s time to take your marching orders directly from God! He’ll love and welcome you regardless of your sexual preference.
1
Being a medical care provider, unfortunately, I have had my fair share of male patients (mostly) who had been abused by Catholic priests/Bishops, brothers etc as adolescents and youn children.
This didn't merely destroy their emotional and psychological well being, it ruied their faith. Some of them had PTSD like reactions on just hearing psalms being sung or seeing a black robe. When a middle-aged well educated man, CEO of a company, starts bawling like a child and wants to take off his clothes in front of you while talking about his abuse because he can't stand the feel of his own clothing in that moment and is shouting, they were on me, just on me, I feel them still..... that is a jolt, you donot ever forget it. And forgiveness for such is beyond human capacity.
All these facts about gay percentage, rampant pedophilia, long standing abuse aside, has anyone seriously thought about what has this done and will do. to the future of Catholicism? A lot of Generation Y and Z, have and probably will continue to remove themselves from practise in Christian Catholicism. Last era is a watershed moment continuing to happen, a cutting blow to the roots of Vatican. I wonder if they realise how utterly destructive and crippling these effects are for future. I wonder......
1
Best piece Frank ever wrote.
Pedophila and Homosexuality are unrelated. Pedophiles can be homosexual or heterosexual.
The issue of Catholicism and human sexual behavior stems from a variety of causes. “Mortification of the flesh” stems from the execution of Jesus and from sadomasochism. Celibacy stems from the greed of the hierarchy which wanted to take the property of married priests and prevent it from becoming the property of a priest’s offspring. Abstention from sex is a foreign non-Jewish practice that perverted Christianity, which was started as a Jewish reform movement. Jesus was a Jew, his Apostles and all of his followers and all of his audiences were Jews. Abstinence is not a Jewish practice, and “Christian” sin is not Jewish.
Catholics are deeply compromised. Their beliefs about the inequality of women corresponds with their beliefs about racial inferiority and slavery and is outrageous. The pedophile scandal and the continued subordination of women and refusal to permit marriage of sex is likely to end the Church, because with every reformer like Francis there is a “conservative” like Vigano who wants to preserve tradition and privilege.
1
I am not a professional biologist, but in my readings of evolution, I agree with the majority that homosexuality is not a learned behavior, but rather, an outcome of genetics similar to being born left handed. Therefore no sin in homosexuality. Homosexuals are just people, with all attributes of heterosexuals. A classic example is Alan Turing, who was the key figure in breaking the Nazi secret code, and is considered the father of computer technology. His outing after WW2 likely drove him suicide at age 41. It is unfortunate that religion is often associated with hatred even between differing sects of so-called Christians. I am heterosexual, father of 6 children, and homophobes are disgusting wretches.
3
I would say:
25 % Asexual.
50 % have homosexual tendencies.
25 % are heterosexual.
You have to make the process of becoming a Priest
as open as possible so that straight men are not driven
out by homosexual cliques, be they among the Clergy
administrating the Seminary or by their fellow seminarians.
1
Since the connection between sexual orientation and sexual predation is a proven fallacy, the strategy of outing 80% of Catholic clergy is a clever way of doing damage control regarding the billion dollar sexual abuse scandals. The issue of hypocrisy regarding condemnation of homosexuality is a red herring that distracts from the most glaring truth all: The Catholic Church is the largest most well-organized pedophile ring on the planet, and purging and convicting all these pedophiles would effectively end the church.
It is time to call the Church what it is- corrupt. Over 2 millennia it has waged holy war, impeded scientific progress, sexually abused those it pretends to serve, conducted an inquisition, helped to subjugate indigent people the world over, and remained silent while millions were slaughtered during the holocaust- All while amassing great wealth and power. The pope has no moral authority. The church is morally bankrupt. The pope should not be given media coverage or be welcomed anywhere until he modernizes his organization. The Middle Ages are over
2
And the difference between this church and the one Martin Luther finally called a question to is...? Anybody? Anybody? Beuhler? Beuhler?
This is the “church” that taught my mother to hate her gay son.
1
Mr. Bruni reveals the obvious within a Catholic hierarchy. Although the percentage may be an item of conjecture, the hidden underbelly is not. The historic change by the Catholic clergy from living normal lives and raising families to proclaiming abstinence as granting closer access to God began a crusade of secrecy and ultimately degradation centuries ago, not because of hidden sexuality, but instead deceit.
With this epiphany, unfortunately, Bruni chooses to hide again, behind his leftist agenda and fears an invisible right-wing bogeyman rather than reveal a trail of destruction championed throughout history by a brother and sisterhood of deception and fraud led by abusive gay priests and a wicked Vatican hierarchy.
Hiding behind their belief, it is the current and former predominately gay Priesthood that persecuted all manner of contrarians for millennia in campaigns of torture and excess throughout a tainted history including turning in the Jews to Nazi Germany during WWII and safeguarding the Mafia from prosecution to the present day.
It seems they have more to hide than their Church forbidden sexuality. Go figure, they also control the media and write their own narrative.
1
I need to know. If a large proportion of men in the Catholic Church are homosexuals, say for argument 75%. Then 25% would be straight men. Now how many of those 25% are pedophiles? I want answers.
No friend of the Catholic church or religion in general here.
How is it possible that this guy can say that 80% are gay?
This book reeks of fake news.
The concern is not homosexuality; the concern is pedophilia. Why isn't there a book chronicling that in the higher reaches of the church?
Clean house, hire third party management consultants to fill the gap while you get things in order. End the celibacy laws, which were originally put in place to protect the wealth the Vatican has plundered over the centuries, from lawsuits by children of priests. Accept the gay contingency. Turn the pedophiles over the law enforcement and get our house in order. We are leaving in droves. You suffer the same issues politics in the U.S. suffers. Too many effete, entitled complacent old white men with bad haircuts are running the church into the ground. Your primary goal in to help us find are way went we wander. My God, the Vatican has been wandering for centuries, the gold flake has worn away and the world can clearly see the corroded core!
1
I hope the book becomes a huge bestseller all over the world. It's about time all these secrets came tumbling out. Anything and everything that explodes the self-assumed moral authority of the Catholic Church is an unmitigated good for the future of the world. The whole gay self-hating thing is so last century. That this is so totally pervades the Catholic hierarchy is not surprising at all. Time to throw this relic in the dust bin of history and move on.
Let priests marry. Let women be priests.
1
The problem is not celibacy, or even sexual sin. The problem is the power, as we see with both the Catholic leadership and the Southern Baptists and NY Jewish mini cults of charisma. It takes religion to find people stupid enough to subsume their ego in this life for promises of heaven in the next life. Once religion has pointed them out, the leadership in the religion just abuses the heck out of the fools.
I couldn't care less if a priest is gay. Pedophelia is an entirely different matter.
The Catholic Church and it's leaders clearly meet the definition of a Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization under Federal Law with all the predicate offenses necessary to mount a major prosecution, just as you would with a drug cartel. There are 30 plus different offenses that can be used as predicates...Sexual Assault is just one of them. Plus there statutes called Interstate Travel in Aid of Racketeering and Obstruction of Justice.
What the Trump Administration needs to do is direct DOJ to initiate a nationwide task force to identify and debrief victims in all 50 states. When you have nationwide roundups with the arrested baby-raping priests, bishops, and cardinals paraded before the cameras in handcuffs doing the perp walk, before they're booked, jailed, tried, convicted and imprisoned, you might finally see some cooperation from the Vatican. For decades it's been Pedophile World Headquarters.
Everyone knows all this - we guess at the metics, but know the priesthood is a self perpetuating club of predominately homosexual men. How could it be otherwise?
What is incredible? That catholic parents turn their male children over to this group, expecting good things. Further, that catholics, themselves, seem uninterested in repairing the damage done by the original change to catholic process that mandated celibate priests.
What rubes.
1
Right-wing homophobes probably WON'T exploit this book. These authoritarians depend on an unholy alliance with "seed faith" pastors (who are in it for the money and power, just like today's right-wing politicians) and other "people of faith." Any perceived hypocrisy is a chink in their armor.
Remember, it's just a business. The more the curtains are pulled on these wannabe Wizards of Oz, the better.
These are the same folks who preach that pregnancy is God's inevitable punishment for female sexual pleasure.
As a therapist I have treated former priests who discussed the priesthood as being a predominantly homosexual population, and the seminary as being a place for frequent sex among the seminarians as well as older priests coercing seminarians into involuntary sexual relationships. The priesthood is a dream come true for homosexual Catholic men----you get a job for life in which all your material needs are met, instead of being ostracized and bringing shame to your family for being gay, you are revered and a source of pride. All this while living in a gay culture with access to sex whenever you want it. The Church would benefit from dropping the rule of celibacy and also allowing women to be priests.
3
There is a de facto schism between the Vatican and about 2/3 of American Catholics. 60+% of American Catholics believe in gay marriage--within polling error of being the same as Americans in general. The Vatican position on contraceptives is so routinely ignored by American Catholics it isn't news any more.
Instead of quibbling over the details of clergy malfeasance, perhaps it is time for American Catholics to make the split official and stop giving moral and financial support to an organization that facilitates the rape of children; tells little children their Protestant friends are going to hell; and is pro-overpopulation and pro-AIDS in parts of the world that still listen to them.
Being gay isn't the problem. Belonging to that disgusting organization is. The day that church collapses and ceases to exist will be a beautiful day.
It takes a special kind of stupid not not understand how and why a mandatory policy of celibacy for an all-male clergy will serve as a magnet for homosexual men. Indeed the priestly calling may be the closest thing to heaven on earth for a gay male. And so long as they leave altar boys alone they should be left to enjoy their mass cavorting behind cloistered walls.
1
Sorry, but the grotesque story of Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, if verifiable, is an example of how outing these homosexual priests may protect more gay people than it hurts. And he wasn't just beating up sexual partners. I recall him excommunicating a doctor in Colombia who performed a perfectly legal abortion on an 11 year old girl who had been raped by her stepfather since she was seven.
1
I think we need to be clear that a person who is gay is NOT a sexual deviant. Homosexuality and paedophelia are not one in the same.
I fear that the we will take many steps backwards regarding lgbt rights and social acceptance if articles such as this contain the words gay, church, priests etc. Only because too many hateful idiots in our country wouldn’t read the entire article.
1
Here's a solution: just let priests marry and date for the love of God
Regardless of what we may think or wish, women priests and condoning of homosexual acts or sex of any kind outside of (heterosexual) marriage are impossible without the Church abandoning her claim of infallibility on doctrinal and moral matters. "In order that all doubt may be removed…, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful." --John Paul II, "Ordinatio Sacerdotalis" (1994). “‘Homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law… Under no circumstances can they be approved...” --Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2357-2359. “Christ endowed the Church's shepherds with the charism of infallibility in matters of faith and morals…‘The Roman Pontiff…enjoys this infallibility in virtue of his office, when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful-who confirms his brethren in the faith-he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals...the infallibility promised to the Church is also present in the body of bishops when, together with Peter's successor, they exercise the supreme Magisterium’... When the Church through its supreme Magisterium proposes a doctrine ‘for belief as being divinely revealed,’ and as the teaching of Christ, the definitions ‘must be adhered to with the obedience of faith.’ –Id., 890-891
Papal “ infallibility” was invented by Pius IX in the 19 th century as a response to the loss of the Papal States . He declared that the pope was infallible in matters of faith and morals as a counterbalance to the claims of political sovereignty by a new Italian state . It was used to make dogma the Immaculate Conception claim and the notion that life begins before conception, both physically impossible notions. A religion that fetishizes sexual “ purity” must resort to all sorts of nonsense to continue to extort its followers.
1
The best thing the Catholic Church can do is drop the remnants of the dark ages and allow priests to marry and start ordaining female priests.
Cut me a break.
A secret cabal of homosexuals is running the Vatican and permitting pedophiles to run wild in the ranks of the curia? We're to believe that an institution that has been overtly hostile to the LGBTQ community for decades is populated by the people the church leadership routinely vilifies? And then we're asked to believe the stereotype that the most ardent anti-LGBTQ priests are the gay ones.
This garbage may sell Martel's book, but it defies reason and reality.
The simplest explanation is that the Roman Catholic Church has deployed this lie for years in an effort to shift blame for its pedophile problem from itself to gay men. Martel has either cooperated in pushing this fabrication to sell his book or he got suckered. Either way, Martel and his book don't deserve space on the Times editorial page.
The only newsworthy revelation is that it is not 100% homosexual which is safe to assume of anywhere women are not allowed to go.
They all know exactly what they are committing to--celibacy. The church doctrine calls homosexuality a sin--often referred to as, "sodomy." End of story. It's all based on 2000 years of tradition and an archaic religious belief system based on a monotheistic Bronze Age sky God. When are you going to spell it out and call it what it really is, Frank? A lie.
Mr. Bruni reveals the obvious within a Catholic hierarchy. Although the percentage may be an item of conjecture, the hidden underbelly is not. The historic change from acceptance of normal human copulation to abstinence began a crusade of secrecy and ultimately degradation centuries ago.
With this epiphany, unfortunately, Bruni chooses to hide again, behind his leftist agenda and fears an invisible bogeyman from the hetero sexual community rather than reveal a trail of destruction championed throughout history by a brother and sisterhood of deception and fraud. It is the current and former predominately gay Priesthood that persecuted all contrarians for millennia in crusades of torture and excess including during Twentieth Century wars while turning in the Jews to Nazi Germany throughout Europe.
It seems they have more to hide than their forbidden sexuality. Go figure, they also control the media and write their own narrative.
Religion is superstition. Where is Martin Luther when you need him? I always need to take a long, hot, soapy shower after I read about internal affairs of the Catholic Church. Yuck!
Why would anyone read this column? "Right wing homophobes" This is nothing more than a "trumpism." Can't write anything intelligent so let's use name calling to persuade. Shame on you, Frank Bruni. Sexual abuse either as homosexual or heterosexual is a serious crime that requires more thought than you have given it. Please keep your bigotry to yourself.
1
People are sexual animals. Priests are people.As enjoyable as a good bout of Schadenfreude is, it’s out of place here.
Who cares? Obvopis;uo Frank Bruni and manly catholics who lose some of the delightful mysticism surrounding the calling, but they needn’t. If there is a god, he is surely nlooking down at this representatives on earth and thinking, “Take care of. yourselves, my dears.” and not mluch more about the matter.
Why would an openly gay man want to be so telling on gays within the hierarchy of the Vatican? This certainly is not new news and if anything, draws the wrong attention gays would want cast upon them, given the pedophilia found rampant with the Catholic Church. Perhaps a veiled attempt at masochism?
The real issue is the refusal of our government and governments around the world to actively prosecute bishops and dioceses on racketeering charges for harboring abusive clergy. The Holy See has offered up priests but has shown little interest in going further in acknowledging, unveiling and eradicating these crimes against humanity. The Pope confessed on his return flight from the Middle East that priests have, and apparently continue to, sexually assaulted nuns and lay people. So why hasn't he been indicted? What is America and the world afraid of, that God's going to part the clouds and cast the seekers of the truth directly into the bowels of hell? Fealty to mendacity is not a commandment.
Facts about the Catholic priesthood:
1) Attracts closeted, conflicted gay men
2) Attracts criminal pedophiles
3) Treats nuns like a servant class
4) Treats women like breeding animals
5) Exalts and practices misogyny
3
If far right folks use this but by doing so get the church to finally begin turning rapists over to police, that’s fine me. Until the pope starts turning over these monsters, he is just another enabler, just another criminal himself, and part of a diseased, corrupt, crime organization.
2
Sounds like an intentionally salacious book.
I agree about the dangers Mr Bruni sees.
This will inflame the idiots who conflate homosexuality with child rape.
I also think the Vatican needs to have the roofs removed to let the sunshine in.
1
There is no shame in being gay. There is criminal shame in being a pedophile! The Catholic Church, with its celibacy requirement, is prime turf for gay predators.
I know u love your church Frank...,
But the Roman based form of codified Christianity was chosen in the early 400’s
On the basis of political control over monarchies using fear mongering and threats unto this day and .....;
Hierarchical canons have allowed a pure philosophy of “love thy neighbor” to be turned into judge thy neighbor ;thanks to the church fathers choosing Paulist philosophy ,to overtake an esoteric ,unencumbered original intent.
Those leftover “ true believers “ were burned at the stake as heretics.
Then Hell and Satan personified was used to control large swaths of European collective consciousness.
All organized religion exists this way.
In our 18th century ,we saw attempts to reestablish apostolic liturgical parameters ,in the new sects of Christian Science , Mormonism, Adventism et al.vs. Enlightenment theology as our Vice President Pence converted to ,for his “Mother “Wife.....
Except for a sense of community outreach
to aid the poor ;I see no necessity to damage further generations, with control through fear of hell.
2
The Catholic church is a raging swamp of hypocrisy and perversion. On the upside, so are the Southern Baptists.
2
According to Catholic dogma, sodomy is a sin. People who engage in it should not be priests.
Let priests marry!
When I was 27 I asked a 64 year old man what life was like at 64. He replied "... well he didn't think of sex all the time anymore....." Gawd I thought I'll never make it. Well I did and while we are all different sex seems to resemble ocean waves, there'll be cause to get wet rolling in a little later.
Not half as gay as those catty Episcopalian queens with their robes and assorted high-church paraphernalia. Many a gay Catholic has de-Poped because the church wasn't gay enough for them.
The delusion fuels the Church .... always has, always will. The whacky fantasy created/invented over the many years still seduces the silly. Boys and girls: there is no god and no heaven.
That's it. All the church provides is hell on earth. Cool, huh?
1
The game is almost over as there are hardly any priests anymore, attendance is plummeting and assets dissipated in paying the tab. However to say this is not solely a homosexual problem is laughable. These homosexual priests were almost insatiable and sadly the post ww2 parents like mine were simple people who had no idea what was going on. I had a "bad priest" in my parish as an altar boy and we knew instinctively to stay away. However some parents evidently thought it was OK for the priest to take their boys to the "lake House" as this behavior was almost unheard of 40-50 years ago(98% of cases are pre 1980 and 75% of priests dead and the rest are dotards. The homosexual men want to make this a religious problem when it is statistically not the case.
I just had a thought. I was raised Catholic....grade school, high school, college. A guy friend who hung out with this gang of n'er do wells, myself included.... who I thought was effeminate, possibly gay....and a lovely friend, went to Marquette to study for the priesthood. This was 1977...and it may be true that there were so few outlets back in the day, this may be what happened to him.
So now the raging Frank Bruni becomes an apologist for the homosexual priests who were simply looking for their place in the world, and hoping to survive in this cruel homophobic world. I see that twisted perversity even extends to logical reasoning. Is there no dignity or honor left in the realm of truth and honesty?
2
Another reason for mankind to get over the belief in a higher power and a god. “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” Philip Dick. All these poor closeted priests, their victims and all involved would be better off if they believed in themselves, and humanity, rather than in an imaginary friend in the sky.
1
I usually give credence to Frank Bruni’s writing. This is a confused mishmash of an article and only publicizes a sensationalistic book by a “journalist”. He is basically a political hack in France who has spent years in “acedemia”. The less than helpful 16 to 60 percent incidence of gay Catholic priests is as morally bankrupt as an accusation as it is absurdly ignorant of the author and Bruno. What if on said 16 to 60 percent of all stay at home mothers are alcoholics, of football players are wife beaters, of priests are not gay! Frank, wake up! You are better than this stupid piece.
1
Abuse of Nuns and children and a Gay leadership spewing homophobia.
The only thing to see here is rampant hypocrisy.
The only question is "Why are you still a Catholic???!!!"
3
It is what this establishment is, was, and will continue to be. At least for a little wile longer while God permits it, You know He wrote all about them along time ago. So His children could see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and understand the enemy. And yes it is in the Bible Ezek 8
:8 Then said he unto me, Son of man, dig now in the wall and when I had digged in the wall, behold a door.
9 And he said unto me, Go in, and behold the wicked abominations that they do here.
10 So I went in and saw; and behold every form of creeping things, and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, pourtrayed upon the wall round about.
11 And there stood before them seventy men of the ancients of the house of Israel, and in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan, with every man his censer in his hand; and a thick cloud of incense went up.
12 Then said he unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen what the ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the chambers of his imagery? for they say, the Lord seeth us not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth.
13 He said also unto me, Turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations that they do.
14 Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the Lord's house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz.
15 Then said he unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son of man? turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations than these.
One thing I learned early on as a young adult was that those proclaiming religion were not always pure in thought or action. Religion as pious as it may seem can be sinister and demeaning. It can provide solace or it can be the cause of a life filled with anger and guilt. It can be used as an instrument to make positive changes in society, or as a rallying cry for rebellion where the scapegoat of evil is exposed and punished by 'good religious people'.
Who would know better of that which he spoke than Cardinal Lopez Trujillo himself? Mr. Bruni elides over that.
A belong to the ancient, timeless Christian Church myself-- I'm Eastern Orthodox. My priest is a married man with five children. This is a better way.
3
I'm waiting for yet the next book. It will reveal that the sexual
abuse story was just a sideshow. I suspect that the story
it will tell will be nothing less than a Dan Brownish plot to
revive religion through a century-long secret collaboration with Freemasonry, that famous bete noire of Catholicism. If this notion sounds a little out of left field, well, you read it here first (all three of you, ha ha). Although the book is hypothetical, of course, the general idea is plausible and possibly inevitable (in Western history at least): a group of people who can keep secrets embarks on a secret mission to improve the world.
The Roman Catholic church has a bigger problem: dishonesty. Layers of accreted archaic beliefs and laws enshrined as beyond question and enforced by its CEO (Pope) and layers of bureaucracy. If you cannot question belief, it is meaningless. If you cannot question behaviors, it invites abuse. Pray it away in confession and repeat doesn't work. Actions, reality, openness, and not making endless excuses all have more merit.
Above all Rome needs to stay out of civil and private lives and to stop imposing its beliefs on science, medicine and others. No more tax exemption, religious tests to be professors, hospitals denying care, campaigning for laws, or influence on the U.S. SCOTUS. And it must be subject to civil police and justice.
2
Bruni's nuanced column should inspire many thoughts--hopefully along the spectrum of perspectives he tries to provide.
Still, this is a column essentially defending men--of any kind--against potential criticism.
Bruni hasn't the space or scope, of course, to mention the real horrors the Church and its corrupt and inhuman ideologies have visited upon both believers and non-believers. Still, he might have made an aside.
To say, as Bruni does, that gays sought unique shelter in the Church. . .well, that really says something to everyone--about the Church itself, and about what happens to people who enter it.
How much humanity can any (convicted or otherwise) priest, looking out upon his flock, really say or believe he shares with it?
1
The problem is and always has been: CELIBACY. Nowhere in the New Testament is this mentioned as a requirement. It should be optional. Statistics have shown that in orthodox and Protestant Christian churches the sexual abuse problem is pretty much equal to that of the general population. The fact is that it is boys who are mostly abused by male priests, so, yes, there’s a gay component to this crisis. The only way to address this is to bring it out in the open, discuss it, let gay men and women become priests and allow them to be partnered if they like.
1
I will not buy nor read Mr. Martel's book. I am very tired of reading articles that negatively reflect the Catholic Church in the New York Times. I do not care what the Catholic haters say about my religion. The more than 1.3 billion of us cherish our faith and practice it seriously. It has become a kind of sport to attack the Catholic religion and many of us take these articles with a grain of salt. We have already made up our minds about the Church so nothing reported will affect our attendance. We will still fill the owes on Sunday as will many others around the world. We love our faith.
Continue writing these negative articles if you wish as it pleases those who want to see its demise and destruction. Of course, it will never happen. The Catholic Church as been in existence for over 2000 years and will be for many many more. It makes those of us who practice love and support it even more. I must go now as I am on my way out the door to Mass. I will especially pray for the Church I have attended since childhood and will do so until eternity.
Sounds like the journalist author might be mixing in a little 'fake news' to sell books....I have had no experiences with the Catholic Church having lived all my life in the bible belt south. So I offer the view of one who knows little about Catholicism but more than I wished I knew about being taken advantage of by a homosexual teacher when I was a teenager.
In my humble opinion positions within church leadership are not intended to be a haven for anyone with a particular sexual preference. I have always looked at church leaders as those who were 'called' into the ministry. It is not like a secular position where one weighs the positives and the negatives. However, because of the apparent inability of many Catholic churches to keep their own house in order, it would seem that pedophiles have sought out the Catholic Church as a refuge much as one would make a rational decision to choose a secular profession. I think we both agree it makes no sense that homosexual men joined the church as a haven for their sexuality and a large number of these otherwise ethical men suddenly for the first time in their lives became overwhelmed by their desire to sexually abuse little boys and others in their care.
Will right-wing homophobes exploit the book? Of course they will. But the real problem is not this particular book or even the ignorance of right-wing homophobes. There is clearly something amiss deep within the hierarchy of the modern Catholic Church as a whole.
What the catholic church first and foremost should focus on and change is the perverse culture of celibacy - it is strictly against our biology. Sexual desire and needs are part of who we are and indeed the only reason we exist as a species. Committing to celibacy, including hetero- or homosexual relationships alike, is hypocritical and bound to have dire consequences for many.
aem,
In response to your reply to me. I do not think the Catholic Church would ever want a 100 percent homosexual clergy. Most parishioners would not want it either.
I am a lifelong Catholic who loves my faith but would stop immediately giving one dime if a homosexual clergy were to happen. The laity have power and we would never accept it. Money talks after all. This is not even worth discussing because it will never happen.
You make a lot of excellent points. However, I cannot imagine that there will ever be a good time for a book like this to come out. This month it is pedophiles, next month nuns rape, next month a huge cover-up scandal, in a few years a new pope, then a new scandal, and new accusations, and new councils, new cover-ups. There is no good time to release this bomb-shell. The Catholic Church is need of a total cleanse. Francis has been picking at the scab for years but the internal rot has not been cut out. You gotta pull off the bandaid at some point. It will certainly open up the wound. It might be very disruptive. It might put the bad-guys in a position of power in the short term, but in the long term it must be done.
Is this new book accurate? I have no idea. But it has been a long time coming and no better time than the present to get it over with.
And to be perfectly honest, the Benedict rumors have been floating around for years. The psychological projection interpretation makes for a good Dateline episode. I'm quite curious.
How to fix all this when laws are broken short of doing away with religion altogether:
1. Have the civil authority handle all complaints. That, at least, is being done more and more.
2. Remove the tax exemption for all church property. I marvel at the outcry against Amazon for its tax relief (not exemption) deal and yet huge property like St Patrick’s Cathedral and scores upon scores of other church properties paid not a plug nickel in taxes for centuries! The Amazon deal doesn’t even appear on the radar of tax manipulation in that light.
3. The church and its knowing cover up of “obscene” acts by priests qualifies as an ongoing criminal enterprise and runs directly afoul of the RICO act. In that light, government authorities in the various jurisdictions can CONFISCATE church property! If you want to stop the church’s big stall about doing anything serious about church abuse, how about confiscating St Patrick’s Cathedral and turning it into high rise condominiums! At least they’d pay big time taxes that could actually do some good. I’m sure that would get the church’s attention big time and right now!
2
Alan Turing also had a hidden secret that wasn't so secret before he committed suicide. Gay people have been hounded and vilified throughout human history. As a heterosexual RC Church member, I don't worry about gays in the Church. I am more concerned over the abuse of children by pedophiles masquerading as reverend fathers or princes of the Church. The Church was a safe harbor for Gays who, like Turing, were doing good public works, but nevertheless persecuted throughout history.
The corruption that rampant homosexuality has brought to the Catholic Church is the visible tip of the a much more more serious issue.
That issue is the gradual change in the Church's mission from focus on salvation, repentance and eternal life to the transformation of Catholicism to a One World Religion for a One World Government whose focus is on a utopian vision of this world.
This is what Vatican II was all about--substituting the worship of God for the worship of Man. Compared with this homosexuality is a side issue.
1
Mr. Bruni seems decidedly more concerned about perceived damage to his worldview than the very real damage to victims here. The fact that heterosexual abuse takes place does not excuse the same abuse by homosexuals or refute Martel’s charge that the latter is pervasive among the Church hierarchy.
2
I don't understand why the Catholic Church is permitted to operate in the United States or other countries. It is a front for organized crime that includes the sexual abuse exploitation of children. Whether it is religion or operating a casino, when clear evidence that the business operating is a front for criminal activity, it is closed down and the perpetrators are prosecuted not relocated, or absolved.
1
We must learn to accept that there are good and evil humans in every walk of life-plumbers, lawyers, politicians, priests, parents. Often evil behavior is the result of mental issues or the abuses they themselves were subjected to as children.
The solution is two pronged. Children must be protected, the mentally ill and abused must be provided with treatment.
As it stands now, parishes are collapsing because of increasing scarcity of priests to man the pulpits. Casting out priests because they are gay cannot help this trend, particularly if many of the gay priests have never participated in the repugnant acts suggested of them.
If the Church is to survive, it will need to clean house and preferably open the priesthood to married men and women. Otherwise, St. Whomever's and Our Lady of Whatever's Churches will become interesting tourist attractions with lovely works of art enshrining a long past time of faith.
Everyone eager to believe in these misdeeds, but not so eager to believe Kavanagh accuser.
2
The problem with the Roman Catholic Church is the notion of celibacy. Everyone needs someone else in their life whether gay or straight. Celibacy is similar to solitary confinement. Churches that allow marriage have problems as well, to deny sexual feelings for another human is in humane. The concept of celibacy is a distorted idea and probably creates more mental health issues. It certainly breeds hypocrisy within the Roman Catholic religion. But let’s not confuse the difference between homosexuality and pedophillia. Homosexuality is a natural state of existence while pedophillia is a crime and a distorted mental state.
It is incomprehensible to me that the Church REFUSES to come to terms with practices that are draconian, that serve no good purpose and which fly in the very idea of what Christianity should be.
It seems that all of the desert religions are currupt. But, every dark cloud has a silver lining; tax them. Thereby, rendering to caeser that which belongs to caesar. I feel pretty much the same about most of the non-profit organizations; most of them are fake just ask Trump, he had one.
1
Since the Church's inception the openly sexual behaviour of many priests has been well documented. The reason why celibacy was imposed as a norm for priests has nothing to do with religion but rather as a means of preventing those begotten by priests from claiming church property as a birthright. And the way to delegitimize any claim is to argue the offspring of a priest's picadilos is automatically illegitimate because priests are "celibate". So, the stand of the Church hierarchy has always been any sexual activity is fair game as long as priests claim they have been celibate. Personally, I think there is no greater sexual disfunction, or deviation, than lifetime celibacy.
1
Frank, right-wing homophobes don't need an excuse to discriminate against us or act in the most vile and uncharitable and un-Christian like ways. They've been doing it for years and will continue to do so. Likewise the self-hating gays that hide in the closet and preach the most disgusting slanders, such as the Vatican hierarchy. Can we just admit, once and for all, that the Catholic Church's views on sexuality have done more damage to the self-same institution as anything else. I don't think the "universal and eternal church" will ever be the same again after the revelations of the past 25 years. Just look at a country like Ireland or Spain. These were Catholic pillars and now there's a gay leader in Ireland and Spain was the first Catholic European country to legalize same-sex marriage. So things DO progress after all, slow as that progress might be.
After reading all the comments, many ask “Why celibacy?” Celibacy was adopted to prevent Papal children from inheriting Church property. It is based on economics, not theology.
The fact that large numbers of the Catholic hierarchy may be gay is hardly the biggest problem with the Church. Certainly its history of covered-up pedophilia is at the top of the list. Most people are more concerned about what leaders of the Church did to children, for decades, than whether homophobes will "exploit" a journalist's book. I understand that the latter may be worrisome to Mr. Bruni, as a gay man, but I'd suggest what was done to children is a far, far bigger concern.
2
Interesting that while being homophobic is decried in these comments, and should be, being a catholophobe is alive and well and applauded. So be it, but this proclivity and bias weakens the overall argument Mr Bruni makes.
The heart of this situation is just all-too-common human repression by abuse of power, all the way around. In that sense, the Church is indeed catholic.
Who would have thought that sex would be the undoing of the Church?
Better to marry than to burn.
That has been the problem for the Church from the beginning: How can you love God above all others if you are a hound pursuing sex?
The Church chose (fairly late in the game) to make priests celibate and that presumably was that. They would not think of sex because they were no longer truly human.
Problem solved.
Of course all that did was to attract to the clergy a different kind of human being.
I've been amazed at my Catholic friends who brought up their kids in the Church, lived in it, were indoctrinated in it, now leaving because of pedophile priests or because the Church rejects and condemns their gay children.
They won't even go through the motions of Christmas eve mass any more.
They feel betrayed. They are angry.
I ask them, "But did you not see all this in those priests, in that doctrine?"
No, they loved their priests. They loved the Church.
No more.
"I’m not a Catholic. I don’t have any motive of revenge. My concern is not that the church will be better or worse. I’m outside of the church.”
Come on, man. If you're going to out others, don't try to keep your motives in the closet. These claims are the least believable statements in the article.
All of this confusion and hypocrisy, as well as the evil of pedophiliac abuse, stems from the Catholic church's decision to not allow priests to marry. That decision was motivated largely by the necessity of protecting their power and financial assets, which married priests with children to support threatened. Money truly is the root of all evil.
Sorry Frank. There is no excusing the gays who are serving as priests in the Catholic church. Doing so is a choice they make; a choice that means that they actively contribute to the perpetuation of institutional homophobia, guilt,and self-hatred.
I’m with Bill Maher, when asked by Stephen Colbert why he turned away from Cathocism and religion: To paraphrase, I’m supposed to believe in Bronze Age philosophies.?
Thoughts:
Any consensual adult sexual identity, orientation and activity are part of natural human sexuality. Leviticus is ancient and wrong - even brutal - homophobia, perhaps driven by the contemporaneous admonition to "be fruitful and multiply" to gain population growth for tribal defense (and to add to the power base of tribal and religious leaders, always a motivation to examine in any group or institution).
Even if the population growth motivation justified limiting homosexuality as an open life - I won't use the brutish pejorative "lifestyle" - in favor of more "fruitful" heterosexuality, it disrespected human nature and homosexuality's natural part in it - as well as fundamental human rights and freedoms - and is certainly anachronistic now, where tribal population growth is a quaint, obsolete notion only fostered by fundamentalists: e.g., Orthodox Jews, conservative Catholics and Mormons.
Gay men - non-heterosexual men, more to the point - may gravitate disproportionately toward the church because it is a near-exclusively male culture. Some of those men will be abusers or inclined to be abused or otherwise unable or unwilling to be celibate. Hence the apparent - apparent - high rate of child sex abuse, and abuse by higher position, in the priesthood.
I urge reading the piece just published about the real lives of gay priests in the Church. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/us/it-is-not-a-closet-it-is-a-cage-gay-catholic-priests-speak-out.html
Time for sanity.
There is a problem in any hierarchy where the words of those above you cannot be questioned. It is not just the Catholic Church. It is not just gay men in the priesthood. It’s the culture of unquestioned obedience.
And it’s not just religion. Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the KGB under Stalin, had an appetite for very young girls. Professors at universities have been accused of abusing their research assistants. There have been multiple page scandals in Congress. And, let’s not forget the recent scandals we’ve seen in the entertainment industry. Whenever someone is elevated to a position of power and trust, we see sexual abuse scandals.
The solution is openness, the solution is to have mechanisms in place where abuse can be reported, the charges investigated, and if true, the perpetrators removed from their positions and handled by the law.
Most of all, the solution is to realize that people in positions of power and trust are mere human beings capable of human foibles and can abuse that power. This means those in the organization should speak up and not cover up the abuse of their coworkers. That they need to realize the biggest damage to the reputation of their organization isn’t that someone abused power, but that someone abused power, and it was covered up.
1
@David Weintraub
Wow. Your “champagne wishes and caviar dreams” of “transparency” wouldn’t go over to well in the halls of our own Congress today, much less in the Vatican. Liberal Nirvana = Total Hypocrisy.
The book obviously overlooks the fact that a gay priest does not an abuser make.
The sin within the Catholic Church is not that there are gay priests. The sin is that the Catholic Church did nothing to punish the abusers of children, women, and other priests. That the Hierarchy of the Church believes it is above the lower-archy, if you will, is horrendous. The Cardinals, the Archbishops, Bishops and other personnel believe they are above punishment and worse, above the laws of both the Catholic Church and the civil and criminal laws.
That this Pope is finally opening up the discussion is to be commended. Francis is the first to do so.
I attended 12 years of Catholic school. It was stifling. You were taught not to question the Church's teachings, the Pope was infallible, the Parish Pastor was the last word and could not be questioned. Yet I saw hypocrisy all around me. Nuns meaner than a "junkyard dog" to borrow a Croce description. Priests, who in confession would ask you to describe your "impure thoughts", talk about voyeurism, priests who were forcing immigrant Irish housekeepers in the Parish House into sexual relations. Most religions end up being bastions of propaganda. This includes the Catholic Church.
Critical thinking among the Faithful ends up being non-existent.
I am glad that this book may reveal a lot of what has gone on in the Church. But it should not be used as a cudgel against gay priests. Only a cudgel against the abusers.
5
What a superb commentary on the Bruni essay!
Great piece with a great illustration. Thanks.
Martel's "aim" is to make money with unsourced, scandalous accusations that can't be disproven. To the extent true, and no doubt there are non-celibate, gay and heterosexual priests, so what? Priests are human beings and sin like everyone else. It is not hyppcritical for Church doctrine to continue to require celibacy and discourage sex outside of marriage.
3
I was expecting to form a different opinion on the story, based on the headline of this piece. Thanks for providing this thought-provoking critique, and giving me a different perspective to consider, Mr. Bruni.
2
The problems of reforming the RCC are complicated infinitely.
Conservative/orthodox Catholics IMHO are
apparently adverse to reforming the
complexities, understanding implicitly.
An old codger, I unhappily concur.
The RCC seems to me simply
not adaptive ... enough.
I perceive that probably many if not
most Catholics give up their ideals,
because strictures and traditions are
apparently thought of as too resistant.
The eloquent writers in this forum are
not average minds.
Celibacy imho, for instance, cannot be.
We can thank Vatican II in 1964 for sowing the seeds of the downfall of the Roman Catholic Church. After 55 years, the downfall is nearly complete. The Church has been in error since then.
The good news is this: The faithful are going to, and supporting, smaller more faithful parishes throughout the world. The Vatican is losing the power it should never wield. The Vatican is supposed to lead the flock, not follow the worldly progressive left.
3
It has never made sense to me that priests are required to be celibate. To shut women out of the priesthood also never made sense. The Bible was assembled around 400 when men decided what was in the books and which books to include. priests were permitted to marry until mid 1100s. Now it is time for Church leaders to look at both issues and bring the organization into the modern world--to protect all children and show respect for all people. Without women and married priests there is little hope for a vibrant, healthy Church in the future. I wish the leadership could see this but sadly I seriously doubt they will.
12
There's nothing wrong with being gay. But when it is coupled with exploitation, it became lethal in the Catholic Church. I find it is men who are exploitive in general, as the drive for power over is driven by testosterone. In nature, the males must have territory in the animal kingdom. Humans are animals. And the human male is just another animal. Enter the pecking order, and you have the rough outlines of the hierchy of abuse, not so much hidden to those in the know. The Catholic enterprise is a male run entity. It is the ultimate boy's club. It is the power over club of our times, spanning centuries. It is extremely wealthy and has political and financial influence around the world. While little children, boys and girls were abused, the outrage was greater for the little boys. It was somehow more acceptable to abuse females. It is an obvious parallel with the lack of civil and human rights for girls and women everywhere. It is up to men to change this. Women do not nor ever will have, the power to do this on their own. I always reference former President Jimmy Carter's book, "Call to Action" at this point. He explains it beautifully. The powers that be at the Catholic Church should read it if they ever want to reclaim the mantle of spiritual leadership.
4
@Carolyn Egeli
And the women, are they animals as well? The concern for boys stems from the fact that they are the majority of victims.
The Catholic church, to include the Vatican City mothership, too often appears a giant crime scene and it has too often worked "the holy ground" mystique theme into the ground. As a special type of high asset multinational, with special tax and effectively legal exemptions, it has finessed itself into a fortress whose time is well past.
3
Mr. Bruni,
It simply cannot be a surprise to you that a bunch of men who were obviously able to avoid the powerful lure of women and join the priesthood, then, play politics well enough to rise up through the Catholic Church Hierarchy are gay at the Vatican?
When I was about 22, long before it became hip to be gay, (I am not gay), I figured out the whole priest thing with the exception of the little boy abuser part.
At that time large fractions of my attention and time were spent being pulled by the powerful attraction, for me, of women. I used to marvel at how it was possible for anyone to give that up and become a priest.
Then, near my school a "gay bar" opened and it became packed. I was puzzled. My then girlfriend explained that some guys just like other guys. I did not understand that then, and, I don't understand it now, although, I don't judge it either.
But, once I understood the concept of gay, I knew most priests must fall into that category.
Later I found out, sadly, that a huge number actually fell into the "we like little boys", not grown men who can give permission.
All in all, quite the puzzle the Catholic priesthood. Count on my not to set foot in a Catholic church ever.
8
If the book stands on its on, as it appears to do then further discussions might mitigate against marauding homophobes seeking to root out gays. I am not Catholic but sympathize with gays seeking to navigate within religion generally.
2
If your'e a priest, the important question is whether you can manage to honor your vow of celibacy, not whether your occasional detours into fantasy are homosexual or heterosexual. Mental struggles are inevitable and only become fatal when desires become uncontrollable and spill into overt behavior.
Long term, a celibacy vow will be difficult to keep if one cannot develop enough mental control to keep the impulse to fantasize at bay -- no matter what the specific worldly inclination may be. The ultimate point of the exercise is to be able to focus all that scattered mental energy into higher channels.
The original sin of the modern Catholic church has been its unwillingness to screen out candidates for priesthood who were too immature or erratic to successfully accept the discipline. This laxity probably reflects the desperation attendant to declining interest in the priestly vocation, where each personnel loss contributes to further problems of understaffing.
7
By condemning and repressing gay men, the church gives them a choice. Live in sin, or be honored as a (chaste) priest. In real life, however, that second choice does not work.
Let gay men - and gay priests - be open about it, and the need for furtive and manipulative sex disappears. A key way to address this problem is to let go of pretense.
Sexual abuse is not a problem of being gay; it is a problem of self-repression to better "fit" into society, coupled with power over others. It is disgusting - and fairly straightforward to deal with once we recognize its true source.
2
After 1,500 years in its current form, suddenly conservatives have discovered gay clergy in the Catholic Church? I suspect that this is the only tool conservatives feel they have that undermine a progressive Pope like Pope Francis.
9
What gets confusing here is the split between sexual orientation and sexual activity. Orientation has no bearing on abstinence. What seems corrupt is the appearance of powerful men running an organization where women are second class citizens, their supposed gayness adding fuel to that fire.
A Catholic friend of mine put it best when he described gay Catholic males in the 60s and 70s becoming priests because they felt ashamed, and it was the only place they could comfortably be bachelors.
11
The problem is men. Whether rebel or state authorized officers and soldiers have committed an overwhelming scale of rapes and assaults on children and women across the world. Whether TV or film, executives, agents, mainly men, established a pattern of rapes and assaults on women that remained in place for decades, its only resistance the whispered protections women passed among themselves, many finding out too late. Whether TV news, sex seemed to be taken for granted as a perk for famous men. Whether a student or athlete on a college campus, sex takes place in a confused environment of alcohol that men use as an excuse to evade their responsibilities to not commit assaults and rape.
Despite a broad progressive wave, we still see evidence of rape and assaults in our highest government offices, and the longevity of the assaults in the Catholic Church speak to an institutional pipeline that protected the abusers and rapists. For years, we saw the same thing in local police departments, and still, among judges. Our military is still replete with sexual assaults, many still unreported.
The common element: men. It is not the nuns that are out of control, nor women who are too often blamed. Gay, straight or bi matters less than the institutional sanctuaries men have established and maintained, repeatedly using power to as a gateway to perverse pleasures that damage human lives. Nuances distract from the size and scope of the issue.
23
Nope: it’s power, or specifically the abuse of power.
Look at the victims (too much of all this sordid and sorry sage focusses on the perps) and who do you see? Nuns abused by priests and bishops (heterosexual abuse); alter boys and seminarians abused by elders (paedophiles), but all abusing a power relationship.
Men per se are not the problem - look only at the millions and millions of loving husbands, brothers, fathers and sons who honour their partners; wives; daughters and sisters...and all other women - and focus on correcting the power imbalance, in the Catholic Church and in the rest of society.
Blaming all men is simplistic and misplaced, a cheap shot.
1
Until the church starts admitting women to the priesthood, it’s all just talk.
1
Mr. Bruni worries that these latest revelations will be considered as proof that the Catholic Church …”has lost its dignity and its way.” It has been tragically apparent for some time now that the Catholic Church, as an institution, HAS lost it’s way — after decades of these revelations what more proof does one need?
On understands your concern as a gay man, but at the end of the day the bigger concern must be to protect parishioners who worship at these churches from irresponsible and ineffectual decisions by church leaders.
6
I am a lifelong catholic and although I know that the church is deeply flawed, I still believe it has virtues. That said, let’s just do away with the notion of celibacy as a prerequisite for the priesthood. I would take compassion any day. I don’t care if it comes from a man or or a woman, gay or straight, just deliver kindness and understanding. That’s what Jesus did.
37
Thank you once again Frank Bruni. And thank you to Dan Coleman, whose comments about abuse and power are thought-provoking...
From where I am sitting, child rape and abuse evolved because we ignored the rape and abuse of women; so, over time, the perverse need to pursue power through sex - and to defy authority and civilized society - deepened.
What if we lived in a society for the last 50+ years in which the rape, assault, abuse and murder of women...was considered a hate crime? (As it should be.)
Perhaps 50 years of taking these crimes against women seriously, punishing them appropriately, and instituting the help and healing services needed for BOTH victim and perpetrator...would have prevented the increasing numbers of rape and abuse of children? (Of homosexuals, as well.)
We'll never know. Said more simply...disease left untreated continues to deepen, fester, and spread.
5
The larger issue here is the way corrupt political organizations protect their power. If anyone has any doubt that the Roman Catholic church is fundamentally a political organization, a brief rereading of history should refresh your memory. Historically, as well as in modern times, the church has consolidated its power by governing the most powerful force, both individually and collectively, in human beings: sexuality. By placing ludicrous and impossible constraints on human sexuality, where even thought was prohibited, the church has maintained a stranglehold on "morality" through the mechanisms of shame and punishment.
At the same time, we have always seen, just as we are seeing today in our secular governments, those in power attempt to seize a moral high ground by accusing their opponents of the very activities of which they are the most guilty.
We will no doubt see any ensuing purges of the clergy as an attempt to use the issue of sexuality to divert our attention from the deeper corruption which has allowed the church to exercise disproportionate control over whole governments and become the custodians of unimaginable wealth, and the largest owners of untaxed property in the world.
If anything, these revelations are an indication of the utter contempt in which the church holds its parishioners. It's not only in the US that people vote against their ow interests, the faithful have swallowed these lies for centuries.
8
Look we are talking about an organization that had to hold a synod to debate whether or not women have souls. Misogyny and the more fallen, less divine status of women is threaded throughout theological doctrine.
So it would not at all be surprising if many of their religious conclude that if one is to have sex, it is more divine to have it with another man.
Homosexual behavior is a natural choice. But I don't assume that there are relatively more gays in the clergy because these people joined up in order to exercise their sexual choice. One has to assume their commitment to doctrine persuaded most to join.
As an outsider and a woman, I think their doctrine itself should be questioned and they should not be only blaming individuals.
Look at what people do to see what they really believe. Look at the belief system in light of the behavior it is causing.
The harm that has been done by fixating upon and divorcing rational systems from practice, words from deeds, computerized social networks from real-world behavior cries out to be addressed.
4
>>> "Look we are talking about an organization that had to hold a synod to debate whether or not women have souls."
Well, actually, no. That's a longstanding myth and misinterpretation.
Also, the origin of the misunderstanding was the Synod of Mâcon (actually a series of synods) that took place (on only a provincial basis) in the sixth century C.E. -- about 1,440 years ago, for those who are counting.
I suspect that you wouldn't want to be deemed guilty for the imagined deeds of your ancestors, 14 centuries ago, so perhaps you'll be willing to give the Roman Catholics a little slack.
Oh, just by the way, it's not exactly certain that anyone has a "soul."
1
@Christine
BTW when I use the word 'choice' I do not mean it in a deliberative sense but with the meaning that one has preferences in whom one chooses for sexual partners.
@Douglas
Thanks for your comment about the synod; I accept that the interpretation I placed upon it may have originated in religious polemic
Otherwise I don't judge the Church by what it did centuries ago but more for its current doctrines and teachings which are elaborations of traditional theology.
I agree with your point about the "soul." But more to the point is that the Church doesn't.
My larger point is that you don't divorce practice or behavioral consequences from beliefs. And I want to add to my list an additional contemporary case where people become fixated upon rational systems and disregard the results: economic theory and the worship of the bottom line
4
I'm flabbergasted that anyone is so naive as to find this news about the orientation of much of the Catholic clergy a "bombshell" and news to anyone. I assumed this was common knowledge. How come Mr. Bruni is surprised? I learned from an ex priest who was sexually active with his fellow seminarians that back in the bad old days these guilt-racked young men used the rationale that it was okay for them, because as future priests and leaders of the faith they were special and somehow got a pass, and were sophisticated enough to handle it, but it wasn't ok for the laity.
6
@Seattle native This is the basic problem. Men think they are a bit above the rest of humanity when they are ordained to the Priesthood in an institution like the Roman Catholic Church. They make the moral rules rather than following them, because they are God's co-pilots.
Someday, St. Peter will tell them their pass is not valid.
Sure, homophobes and right-wing Catholics could weaponize the book, as Bruni predicts, in support of their agendas
But then again, the Pope could weaponize it to support the recognition that part of the problem is the requirement of celibacy for clerics, which is hard to justify by anything Jesus did or said. We know nothing about Jesus’s sex life, if he had one; but we do know he did not require celibacy of his apostles.
As Bruni argues, the book may diminish attention to the scandal of rampant pedophilia. But it also diminishes attention to the scandal of misogyny implicit in the exclusion of women from the priesthood. The two issues are inseparable.
It is hard to imagine that sins against children would have been concealed and condoned for so long if the hierarchy included women and men, regardless of their marital status or sexual orientation, and parents of both genders.
The Pope has declared that the question of female priests has been settled by JPII. But JPII’s assumption that God shares his misogyny was not only arrogant, but arguably blasphemous.
12
@The Happy Heretic
We actually do know about Jesus non sex life. He was without sin and to be a single man and have sex was by definition to sin - ergo, Jesus had no "sex life".
The Milwaukee priest’s experience in the last paragraphs tells you how far ahead the laity is compared to the hierarchy.
A truly transformative Pope (which Francis is not) would remove the “sin” that Christianity has used to stigmatize sex in general, all flavors. Until then, Christianity’s use of guilt as a motivating force will doom it.
4
Forcing men and women to completely deny their sexuality - whatever their orientation - is the fundamental problem. Until priests and nuns can express their sexuality and sure, marry if they want, the church will always remain an institution for corruption and abuse. And while they're at it, stop preaching to their followers that sex is bad and their own sexuality should be denied.
10
@chrisnyc
How forced?
They join the priesthood/sisterhood as adults. Are persons who join the military as adults forced to do so?
It's always easy to raise angry voices against others; it's more difficult to reflect upon our own sins. I'm a gay pediatrician and I'd offer two observations:
1) the Catholic priesthood seemed like a natural refuge for young gay men looking for a safe haven from a violent society that despises and viciously attacks us. Before we congratulate ourselves on the tiny bit of progress LGBT people have made in the past 10-20 years, perhaps we need to reflect upon and seek forgiveness for each of our contribution to the excruciating choices gay people have been forced to make. It remains a very, very dangerous and unjust world for LGBT youth and their adult lives and choices may reflect that danger.
2) the sex abuse monster is not "out there." You could get rid of all of the Catholic priests, paroled sex offenders and Michael Jacksons of this world and it would not make one whit of difference in the amount of sex abuse I regularly see, because the sex abuse monster is in our homes and the abusers are most often family members or people known to our children. But there are no lawyers or deep pockets near the vast majority of sex abusers.
Cast stones at the powerful hypocrites if you must; they certainly deserve it. But it will help neither gay people nor sex abuse victims unless we bring the discussion home and acknowledge our complicity.
22
Thank you for that post!
2
As someone who is gay I am torn by this. On one hand, as presented in this article, the book does sound like it has potential to wreck lives and cause unhappiness by increasing misconceptions and, as a result, distrust. On the other hand, I have increasingly seen over recent decades what I consider nearly incontrovertible evidence pointing to the conclusion that a massive, perhaps majority, amount of the most vicious and damaging homophobia doesn't come from people who are straight but rather from those trying desperately to convince themselves that they are straight. I don't know what, other than time, can serve as an antidote to the problems of people who can't accept themselves & by extension loath those of us who are not in the closet. But during my life I've seen time work wonders toward fixing that. I do feel compassion, truly, for the pain such closeted people are in; I have felt what they feel and responded in the same terrible way. Fortunately, while I was still a teenager in high school, I met a group of friends - mostly gay - who were a few years older than I and they became my friends, and what could have been a lonely, painful and destructive process of coming out with halting progress over years was happy and happened in a week. Overall, I maintain my belief that the only people it is acceptable to publicly "out" are those who work to make life worse for those of us that do come out as well as all people made to fear the nonexistent threat they are told we pose.
6
@Nicholas Well, exactly Nicholas, but why are there now, and in the past, 'those trying desperately to convince themselves that they are straight'? It is the fault of the institution that decreed that sex is only moral if the purpose is procreation. I think it's clear, from an evolutionary perspective, that while one function of sex is to make babies, another, just as important, is to enable people to form strong bonds and live together happily. I think that is why we have evolved to produce the hormone oxytocin during sex, and to desire sex month round, even though fertile for only a few days.
I grew up Catholic in the UK in the 60s and 70s and went to convent schools. I know what the Catholic church teaches children. I feel sorry for the priests, even the ones in the Vatican, straight or gay. I know how they grew up and what they were taught and how they got trapped in either sexless or 'sinful' lives. Despite my strong religious upbringing and belief, which I shed, fortunately, at 21, I've had a lifetime of happy, loving, wonderful sex and hate to think how many are denied this because of the church's erroneous theological teaching on sex.
Young, gay, Catholic boys were taught that they were unacceptable, so of course they couldn't accept themselves. The Catholic church is a pathogenic organization. It needs to let the light in. And governments around the world should stop providing financial support and letting them run schools and hospitals with taxpayer funds.
This emphasis on who is gay and who is straight in the Catholic Church seems to miss the point that Catholicism has insisted on celibacy for many centuries. Yet nowhere in the Bible is celibacy required of priests.
It also misses the issue of sexual abuse of minors and seminarians. Those who commit the former act are not necessarily gay, but pedophies. And all are violating their oath of celibacy.
Perhaps it is time that the church modernize its priesthood. I suspect that would result in a higher quality priesthood with less abuse of power in the sexual arena.
10
@Barbara -- It is really rather ironic to criticize Catholic priests for violating an oath, considering the Church worships one who said:
"Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.
Matthew 5:33-37
Gay men who become priests know that they are entering a situation where they will find hypocrisy, dishonesty, and self-deception, and that they may be sucked into these themselves. Now the situation is unraveling, so that whatever accommodations they have made with it may have to change.
They can join those who tell as much truth as they dare, or those who preserve image and authority by keeping secrets. This choice involves a choice of who or what God is and what God wants from us. The choice to preserve image and authority is much easier.
5
I see a lot of comments arguing either side of this information. If true, imagine what good could come from this. If gay men are really in the majority (and have the pope as a friend), they could transform the churches position on sexuality and lead the us into a new world. Of course that would go against centuries of “tradition” and would be fought by those currently in power, no matter what their orientation. They have too much power to lose.
4
As much as I appreciate and enjoy Mr. Bruni's always cogent writing and ideas, I have to disagree with a point he makes in this column, the part about priests having sex with women. Mr. Bruni is concerned that the book he's commenting on does not address this issue.
The book does not have to comment on or go into detail about this aspect of priestly sexuality. Why? Because that's not the subject of the book. It could, and should be, the subject of a different book. A book that hopefully, one day, somebody will write.
3
It seems to me that the key issue around sexuality and the priesthood, in fact sexuality and religion in general, is the denial that religion promulgates in general, not any of the particular issues mentioned here. Religion asks people to deny a fundamental truth about themselves, their sexuality, because of a make-believe sense that sex is somehow, in its essential nature, immoral.
Religion has, it seems to me, traditionally defined sex as immoral in an effort to achieve what used to be a social good: restricting procreation to couples who were in a position to successfully provide the environment needed to raise a baby to maturity. In a time when pregnancy couldn’t reliably be prevented with anything other than abstinence, this was a socially beneficial endeavor.
Prescriptive chastity has negative consequences, however, because it denies a part of what makes humans human. Certainly there is something to be admired in the self-discipline needed to voluntarily engage in denial of needs. It, perhaps, provides a meaningful commitment for those who choose it.
I’m just not convinced that denial is of such benefit that it should be widely used.
1
So, what’s the point? Maybe it’s time for the church to allow priests to marry. That way they’ll guaranteed to be celibate. Plus, they’ll be far more sympathetic to divorce. A win-win for everyone.
12
Sexual orientation is not, and should not be, the issue. Sexual behavior is the problem, especially when it is criminal (against the vulnerable of any age or gender) or hypocritical (a violation of professed celibacy).
8
Thank you, Mr. Bruni, not only for the points you make, but also for getting them out there before the official "outing" of the book. I too am concerned about the timing and its possible consequences, given the many who equate homosexuality with pedophilia. Interesting that the book's author says he isn't Catholic and has no agenda in terms of revenge. Then why write it? Why name names? More importantly, to me, why is it about gay priests in the Catholic world? Why is it that when anything about sex and the church comes up, all we hear about is Catholic priests? Wouldn't it be better to focus on sexual abuse in all churches and religions rather than homosexuality at all? Please, someone, do some research and write a book on this subject. There was a two-day dustup about what's been going on within churches of the Southern Baptist Convention, but that seems to have disappeared from the headlines. Sexual abuse goes on in churches of all denominations as well as, I am sure, all religions, but the ones who get beat up on are the Catholics. I'm not Catholic, never have been, but I am realistic: this is not just a Catholic issue. For clergy or leadership of ANY religion to sexually abuse anyone - child or adult - in the name of the God they claim to worship is despicable and destroys lives.
2
@Rev. Mom -- It is important to note that, while all denominations have had to deal with sexually abusive clergy, all denominations have NOT been afflicted to the same extent, and some have been much more proactive in responding to such abuse than others.
It is also dicey to draw too many direct parallels between the Roman Catholic Church, and the Southern Baptist Convention. The two entities have entirely different polities and structures. The SBC recognizes individual congregations as "cooperating members." Those member congregations are expected to adhere to the Convention's core beliefs, but the SBC, whose member churches operate primarily under a congregational piety, has no direct authority over individual congregations and their pastors other than the threat to expel them from the Convention. It cannot reassign or fire clergy -- hiring decisions are entirely the purview of the local congregation, and there is no denominational clearinghouse for prospective clergy.
Rome, however, has no such excuse. It is a rigidly hierarchical organization, whose hierarchy made deliberate decisions to conceal abuse they knew was occurring by reassigning abusive priests to different posts, time and time again. So the RCC is deserving of special opprobrium here.
4
Well, maybe. Certainly there have been instances of paedophilia and adult heterosexual rape in other Christian churches and other religions, but NONE asks their “representatives” (aka priests; rabbis; imams; monks) to be lifelong celibates as does the Catholic Church.
Does that tell you anything?
80%, 70%, 85%, whatever. The fact remains that in one of the largest religious institutions in the world, hypocrisy the root of those in charge. The Vatican is just the top floor of this hypocrisy chain. It's tentacles spread out worldwide to every corner. And yet, billions of people have followed and will continue to follow in lock-step, the Catholic church. Religion can be a powerful dangerous thing.
5
@Magan: According to the Roman Catholic Church, its Pope is the ultimate authority on what God thinks.
Every book, every TV show, every article that exposes the sham that is religion is fine by me. I cheer this book. I cheer Leah Rimini. I cheer them all.
5
When will we begin to realize that men have more extreme hormone problems than women?
7
@Bh
Never.
Cause they don't.
Maybe Frédéric Martel's book won't help. Silence has done worst for decades, for centuries.
"Those same Catholics oppose sensible and necessary reforms, and will point to the book’s revelations as proof that the church is already too permissive and has lost its dignity and its way."
It amazes me that anyone would say the RCC has not lost its dignity and way. How hasn't it? Please, Mr Bruni, show me/us how the RCC hasn't lost its dignity, way and as such its credibility? Exempting all the old women dressed in black in various ethnic neighborhoods who still trudge to church every day and light candles, and the apathetic and/or clueless.
As a former RC, I'll always side with the Church's doctrine and theology over the various forms of decrepit American Evangelicalism. I still love the Pomp and such - and can appreciate a high holy mass on a Holy day. But the RCC as an institution and a Government unto itself (lets not forget that!) its been a deplorable institution since its inception!
Its always run against basic human principles of doing the right and moral thing over protecting its behind! Its history is so sinful - as even they would measure it! - it far out weighs its charity!
If doing the right and the wrong tings could be made into two foot cubed objects - the mountain of done the wrong thing would be Everest size! While done the right...maybe Empire State building sized...
Every Roman Catholic priest of all ranks, should be seriously flagellating themselves on daily basis! If only for being a member of such a deplorable Organization!
4
Let’s just admit that almost all of the Catholic Church’s problems are about sex – whether gay, heterosexual or child abuse. Even the problem of not enough priests. And all its problems could be solved, especially the problem of the bad decisions made when old white guys get together, by adding women and transparency to the mix.
Women priests, women in the Vatican in positions of authority – none of these cover-ups and let’s face it, flat out lying for years – would happen if women were running that show. Not just a woman pope, but women at all levels, women who are mothers as well as nuns and priests.
Makes me smile just to think about it!
12
@Patricia
While there is some truth to what yousay...its nota cure all. Itsno more a cure all then women n the banking industry. Did the predatory practices go away because more women entered their ranks and even made it to the top? No! Far from it. There are plenty of examples where they were as bad, if not worse, as their male counterparts.
Look to any business, any industry where women are in the majority - does the corruption and the self-protect at all costs go away? No! Women are as susceptible to being corrupt, or promulgating it as much as men. Why? They're human and too often side with the "system"over doing the right thing by the individuals.
The RCC has been infested with corruption since its inception. Inserting females into it wont flush that out! In fact, it might make it worse...as the ticks dig-in.
Time after time we hear about priests who raped children for decades and were "caught" after they were old and much damage was done. It is a shame that the Church allowed them impunity for so long, with so many kids' psyches damaged. The Catholic Church needs to pay a bigger price, but I don't see how it can ever compensate its victims.
2
Is there no vulnerable group over which these clerics have power and yet abstain 100% from abusing them? Next we'll hear of the dark truths and abusive behaviors behind the Blessing of the Animals. How can this Church survive?
3
In the early 80s, as a young lesbian, I was friends with a gay man who played the organ at a Catholic church in New England. Through him, I learned that all the priests and all the men hired to fill various administrative functions in that church were gay. This included a priest and his partner who lived together in the rectory. Visits to out-of-town gay bars, and parties at the posh homes of upper-level priests in New York City, were common. Because my friend was an urbane, good looking man, he was often invited to join in their opulent fun. He never alluded to anything related to under-age boys. If this sort of thing was going on, it was done quite in secret. What shocked me was that supposedly celibate men had active sex lives in a sheltered and subsidized environment that protected them from the homophobia of the real world, and that this had been going on for decades.
As a patriarchal, sex-segregated institution with tremendous wealth and power, the Catholic Church is a haven for gay men in particular, since they don't miss the attention of women that celibacy requires. Most gay men are not pedophiles, but the structure of the church provides a perfect cover for those who are. And bear in mind: plenty of heterosexual and bisexual pedophile priests rape girls.
Get rid of the celibacy requirement, elevate women to positions of authority and equality, and for the love of God, drain this swamp already.
13
"Independent studies put the percentage of gay men among Catholic priests in the United States at 15 percent to 60 percent."
15 to 60% means they have no idea. Not credible.
8
Does anyone truly understand how unsettling all of this is for a straight-life-long Catholic, who is neither a homophobe nor a radical Liberal. Simply trying to nurture our Jesus Christ inspired faith, founded On Peter’s Rock is becoming the challenge of immense difficulty. Paul told us in Romans 12:12, “REJOICE IN HOPE, BE PATIENT IN TRIBULATION, BE CONSTANT IN PRAYER.” We are trying. Bless us with PEACE OF MIND as we pursue that lofty goal in a very confusing world.
3
@Jack Bennett
Uh...Jack...the RCC was never the dream of the man allegedly named Jesus. That Jewish apocalyptic, itinerant preacher never dreamed of the RCC. Especially not a Church that would last 2K+ years long...
"They weren’t pulling off some elaborate ruse or looking for the clerical equivalent of a bathhouse. They were trying, psychologically and emotionally, to survive. Many still are, and I fear that “In the Closet of the Vatican” won’t help."
I think Frank is overlooking two powerful incentives that attracted gay men and boys to seminaries in the past: mothers and the deference paid them by parishioners, including straight men.
And in recent decades since the exodus from the priesthood,I think Frank and various sociologists of religion overlook the appeal of a life that doesn't require a man to have a job.
Priests are supported by the Church. They feel no obligation to earn money for current or future needs. Indolence is the besetting fault of many of them.
4
I agree with you Mr. Bruni. God forbid this book is used to vilify those in the church who don’t deserve it. Including gay priests. What consenting adults do in the bedroom is not a concern. Of course pedophilia is.
The church must wake up. Major reforms are desperately required. But I've followed this sad tale for quite awhile and the only disinfectant for this stubborn institution appears to be transparency and sunshine.
1
You can check for yourself. In a review approaching 1500 words the name "Jesus" does not appear; nor do his teachings. In contrast the focus is on “church teaching” and the machinations of those factions seeking power and the control of human lives and vast wealth. The review’s caution about projected future victimization of gays by the church is per se a strong indictment of the church and its anti-spiritual and anti-humanistic history.
3
This piece avoids and elides the sexual abuse data: The overwhelming number of sexual predations have been homosexual in nature. Simply reviewing court records from any country, city, county, etc. would confirm this.
Gay, celibate priests should be allowed to remain...But, somehow, some way, the Church is going to have to deal with the predators. Based on the book, that's not going to happen...The potential saviors are simply and overwhelmingly outnumbered.
3
How can anybody have the least confidence in "independent studies" estimating the incidence of homosexuality in Catholic priests at from "16 to 60 per cent?" The Catholic Church is not unique in finding all kinds of sexuality in its midst. The whole wealthy materialistic West is in jeopardy of utterly ignoring Christ's explicit injunction to self-denial and personal discipline--and Paul's warning in Timothy II that Christians must avoid those who make "pleasure their God." Of course, in such a culture none of us is exempt from slavery to its temptations which we confront as much in media-borne celebrations of greed and idylls of self-promotion and self-expression as we do in sexual wrong.
47
@David A. Lee Yes, the West in unhealthily materialistic, self-grandiose and greedy but I do not agree that all pleasure falls within that container. There is plenty of healthy pleasure and human joy in non-compulsive sensuality that is in good alignment with healthy spirituality and altruism. Paul was the type of scold of whom it can be stated that the highest indulgence is compulsive and/or repressive abstinence. Discipline only works if if it is self-directed, i.e., chosen with personal agency - if it is imposed from without it is repressive power abuse.
23
@David A. Lee Paul was a Pharisee, a Helenized Jew who overturned the Jewish backbone of the Church and injected his Greek myths about hell, heaven, immortality, and the immanent second coming. Paul rejected the need for Christians to first become Jews and prevailed over Peter in that matter. Paul also introduced sexual continence, a fundamentally non Jewish belief and practice that is now the scourge of Catholicism. Read Elaine Pagels and learn about the early church and how Paul and Rome stole it from the 13 Jews who started it.
15
Because of the deteriorating condition of the public schools in our small eastern Oregon town, when we lived in that part of the state years ago, we choose to enroll our then 6 yr old daughter in the town's parochial middle school. We became aware that the presiding Priest who had been assigned that hardship rural parish there only about 6 years earlier, though celibate, was gay. And although he never publicly came out about his gayness in public to his parishioners, it was well known among the younger, struggling Catholic gay and lesbian adults of the Church and their straight friends and family in the the area that they could go to him for counseling re: their own personal struggles over squaring their religious beliefs with their sexual orientation.
During the years our daughter attended that middle school, because of this Priest's refreshing open mindedness and fierce insistence that his Parish accept any and all worshipers of good faith, we attend services and actively supported Parish events and celebration. Later however, after moving to western Oregon, we found out that the more conservative elements of the Parish had discovered our Priest's support for the area's gay community. And that by using threats of withdrawing their substantial material support to the Church, a few wealthy conservative parishioners succeeded in pressuring the Bishopric to have our Priest recalled, and retired back to his home in Michigan.
7
The real issue in the Catholic church is its longstanding and mistaken theology of human sexuality. The focus on childbearing as the justification for sex leads to rigid views on contraception and promotes the idea of sex as a "dirty necessity". It also adds fuel to the fires of prejudice toward homosexuals and homosexual unions, making gays less than human. The rigid interpretation on divorce leads to the oppression and abuse of women, and the hypocrisy of "annulments". The doctrine of priestly celibacy/singleness implies that true spirituality can only achieved by renouncing something so inherent to humanity. Is it any wonder that the Catholic church is so full of hypocrisy and contradictions? And the saddest observation is that their skewed theology of human sexuality owes more to Aristotle and Greek philosophy than it does to the Bible.
12
Are the contents of this book supposed to surprise anyone? I worked at the Los Angeles Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, interacting with then-Cardinal Mahony and top priest leadership on a regular basis. And yes, I would say Martel's book is spot on. The fundamental point however is not that homosexual priests rule the Catholic Church (I don't refer to most of them as "gay" because that word inherently implies a respect for one's sexuality; most do not fall in that category.), but that this book is a necessity and perhaps part of a global catalyst to helping this institution understand its gay self. Sexuality and sex is a basic core of being human. The Catholic Church has vilified that. The result in the priesthood has been the creation of thousands of deeply tortured souls among them. I've met and gotten to know them. It's truly heartbreaking. My hope is that this books helps move the institutional needle toward its gay self-acceptance.
5
Sexual abuse by catholic priests was no secret. For some unknown reason people who support the church refused to accept that their beloved "men of god" were actually criminals and crooks.
Any person who still supports the corrupt, predatory catholic church is delusional.
One does not need a middle person to connect with their higher power. All most middle people try to do is gain power over others to get money and feed their corrupt egos.
Religious organizations are simply groups of people who form a community. Unfortunately many of the supposed "leaders", especially the wealthiest who jet and/or helicopter around on the "donations" they squeeze out of people, are really con artists. And, in the case of the catholic, southern baptist and many other churches, sexual predators.
13
The Catholic Church, and to an extent most other churches, is about "power over."
Religious men have invoked the mystery of theism to assume and maintain social control. The idea of a "calling" is a particularly manipulative aspect of this phenomenon, as it turns the ascension to a position of power into something beyond the anointed one's control. "I was called," is most often uttered as an apologetic phrase - abdicating responsibility for the choice by attributing it to a mysterious force that had to be obeyed.
These men seek and then abuse "power over." Sexual abuse is just one aspect. The power is over women, over innocent children and over all members of the parish or congregation.
The unctuous, well-practiced speech of the priesthood or the ministry masks the essential truth of most, perhaps not all, who seek the authority to have "power over." The scandals are inevitable when men have unquestioned power over others and believe they enjoy divine impunity.
7
Superb, Mr. Bruni. The last paragraph, in particular, is enlightening in understanding why young men who were gay went into the priesthood.
8
I don't think the problem is timing, framing or failure to grasp nuance. There is a fundamental corruption at the heart of this institution from the repression of sexuality that provides cover for deep, crippling, destructive hypocrisy in espousing teachings that are not truly livable. The sheer level of routine child sexual abuse should have been enough for a fundamental reordering. Now the routine sexual violation of the nuns. And now the revelation of the pervasive presence of closeted gay men in a homophobic institution. That's crazy making. There's no way for that to roll out in a fair, even-handed way without causing an earthquake.
Time for some fundamental reordering here.
4
A group of closeted gays condemning homosexuality; nothing new there.
14
just one more piece of evidence that the criminal enterprise known as the catholic church should be abandoned, condemned, and torn down.
7
Sounds like a book produced by a cross of David Pecker and Dan Brown.
7
Gayness in the Vatican? Old news, Frank. Very old news.
5
Open the doors to all who are called. Leave celibacy out of it. End this misogonistic patriarchal long dead farce and open your coffers and hearts to the world.
Take those silly outfits off and join the real world.
14
@Donnie
Agree. Seminary training is worthless. The notion of being "called" is fatuous. The outfits are embarrassing. Etc.
It's past time to do away with the priesthood altogether and return to the early practices of meeting in private houses where the women and men who live there preside over a meal that includes reading scripture, eating, drinking, singing, and giving thanks.
Here's a youtube of Sr. Katarina Schuth, a noted sociologist of religion who has studied and written about seminaries and theologates for decades.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3VlQEkoIo8
1
Martin was more subtle. In “Building a Bridge” he says that however tempting, it’s not nice to point out that the fellows who holler the loudest about gays happen to be the ones with the laciest vestments.
4
The Catholic Church that exists could not have been what Jesus had in mind. Blow it up.
8
I wish our religious leaders would focus more on what is going on in our hearts rather than what is going on between our legs. The Catholic Church, in its obsession with virginity, celibacy, birth control, etc. perpetuates judgment, hate and divisiveness. It has shamefully corrupted the teachings of the Christ it supposedly follows.
23
I do not believe in God and think that the church is just an excuse to take advantage of people but what strikes me about this piece that there is no mention of God who surely is behind (no pun intended....) all this.....
The majority of cases was not the rape of prepubescent children, so calling this pedophilia is careless and conflating. This is not about homosexuality directly or some misguided attempt to link it to pedophilia. If we use the term exactly, little of it was pedophilia, so even saying that this is about gays and pedophilia is wrong for many reasons. Here is the rub. I attended a minor seminary in the 70's. I was not abused, but the fullness of time has allowed the 14 year old me to connect the dots four decades later. Most cases documented are hebephilia and ephebophilia. They mostly involved males, and occurred because of opportunity and access, and a subset of insiders playing an insiders' game. They approached young and middle adolescents who had reached puberty. They abused position and trust, not to mention laws. What this issue lacks and needs is a discussion of how this subculture took root and grew, what its aims were, and who protected whom and why. The misnomer of pedophilia is not only inaccurate, but raises wrong questions and invites misdirected and unfounded speculation in the general public. I have left the institutional Church, not because they protected pedophiles, but because they countenanced protecting those who kept a an eye on my friends and me to see which ones of us they could groom and recruit once we had reached a certain age but were still quite impressionable. Why was there a recurrence of ephebic behavior, from parish to chancellery?
5
I agree with Bruni that gay men considering the priesthood weren't "… looking for the clerical equivalent of a bathhouse." In the not-so-distant past, a young man with the self awareness to understand that he is gay obviously struggled with figuring his place in a society and a world where he would not be accepted, and where marrying and having kids would require deception and betrayal. If he already had a strong sense of morality, that forced him to consider more spiritual options for finding his life's purpose and meaning. It is not mere cruel coincidence that so many gay men gravitate toward the spiritual.
12
Atheism looks better everyday. The primary rationale for atheism is not immorality, but a preference for critical thinking. Religion does have some positive features like charity and compassion, but it needs to rid itself of magical hocus-locus, and of course, criminal behavior.
15
I don’t get it. How is anyone still a Catholic? How could any parent allow their child anywhere near a Catholic priest knowing what we know now about the pervasiveness of abuse in the Church? The Church is an elaborate ruse... as far as I can tell, it exists to facilitate contact between desperate sexually repressed men and vulnerable parishioners. It’s so shady, so evil, so... sickeningly calculated. Doesn’t matter whether priests are gay or straight - what matters is the systematic abuse. Why is the government not shutting this whole twisted thing down?
7
Because the government cannot touch religion. They can arrest and convict individual pedophiles, if the Church doesn't find a way to hide them, i.e., in the Vatican, itself a sovereign state. I doubt they have an extradition treaty.....
As a teenage Catholic exploring the priesthood as a calling; I met many homosexuals that were in the minor and major seminaries. I was being actively recruited for the priesthood by friends that were already in the major seminary or whom had already taken their vows for the priesthood.
Some of these men were gay, I was able to distinguish between gay and straight friends that I had at that time. I also met many men in church that were not openly gay, but who were 'in the closet,' as it were, at that time. The Church at that time was not so forgiving of gay and lesbians. They took a very dim view of gays and lesbians at that time, this was in the mid 1970's.
Since then, the Church has become more forgiving of gays and lesbians as parishioners. Though the Church has reformed their attitudes towards LGBT parishioners, they have yet to make strides in their position on LGBT Clergy and Sisters, and Brothers.
Going forward, the Church is going to have to tread carefully 1) because they are not recruiting enough men who are willing to live a celibate life, 2) there's going to have to be changes made to the recruitment of priests. The priesthood is going to have to be opened up to married priests, in the way that the Eastern Orthodox community of Churches do. Many parish priests are married, it is only if the individual wishes to advance in the clergy that they remain celibate.
2
Any discussion about sexuality and the Roman Catholic Church is valuable for bringing secrets out into the open.
I was raised Catholic in the Sixties, a devout altar boy and parochial school attendee. When I turned seventeen, I walked away. No regrets to this day.
While the many priests I knew never inappropriate with me at any time, nor were there ever whispered discussions about the 'secret' sexuality of Father So-and-so, the revelations about sexual abuse of children, women, nuns, et al, has never surprised me. The defect has been long hard-baked into the rituals of the church.
It's called the rite of Confession. Where one goes to admit to a priest the worst within, the darkest secrets, the forbidden fantasies, all of it, to obtain spiritual absolution through admission and subsequent penance.
For a predatory priest, what a smorgasbord of potential victims! No grooming required. Being privy to the deepest human flaws makes choosing victims as easy as grocery shopping. Sadly.
The RCC is fatally flawed for that reason alone.
24
@Mensabutt
An excellent point. The authorities should define confession as a form of psychological terrorism, inculcating life-debilitating symptoms of guilt and low self-esteem exacerbated by threats of eternal damnation for 'sinners' who fail to 'repent'. I can't understand it -- the United States and the European Union are scientifically advanced societies where psychiatriy and the neurosciences have taken our knowledge of human sexuality MILLENIA beyond the nonsense the Vatican preaches in its archaic catechism. And we have the nerve to believe we can rein in the influence of Islamist radicals when the West itself possesses a dangerous mind cult in the guise of the Roman Catholic Church ? Ladies and gentlemen, a bit of lucidity, please.
8
I went to confession only once, I think, when I was in parochial school. Maybe we kids were forced to, that time. The rest of my family never did.
Our Greek priests are married men.
I told our priest, "Father, I am sure I must be a sinner, but I cannot think of anything I have ever done that's been too bad."
I was about eight or nine years old.
7
Sexual abuse is common in every organization in which there is male dominance. Sexual abuse is not caused by the celibacy of the Catholic Church, but by the Church’s power structure.
But the Church lost its claim to moral authority over a millennium and a half ago, when it opted for political power and wealth over renunciation of the world, which is the essence of all religion since the Axial Age, and particularly the essence of Christ’s message. The desert fathers had Christianity right: the main focus of our minds should be inward. The exhortations to convert the world are corrupt, and I do not believe Christ said any such thing. Neither do the large majority of religious scholars. Conversion is about power, money and dominance. Such things often cause men to become abusive.
13
In today's Canada and USA, it is only the ideologues who care about homosexuality or heterosexuality. What most people care about is criminal sexual activity, and sexual hypocrisy.
The Roman Catholic Church is infamous for two things (at least). One is the very strange rules that priests be celibate. Its fundamental teaching is that sex is only for procreation and the making of new souls to goto heaven. The second is that woman is the source of "original sin" which condemned humanity labor and suffering. Hence women cannot be priests.
No amount of theological twisting and turning can get around these fundamental distortions of what human beings really are.
It's a given that some priests are going to abandon their vows of celibacy and engage in sexual activity.
I say all these things as a man who was taught by Jesuits for 7 years and Sisters of Mercy for 6 years. The ones I knew well were fantastic teachers, lovely and caring people. But I also suspected a few of them of having a dark side.
The idea of celibacy of the Roman Catholic clergy is ridiculous and a relic of the feudalistic thinking.
11
The book might be bad.
Bad people might exploit the book.
But if it's the truth, nothing bad will come of it.
If fear of exposure of their own gayness is even partly behind the unwillingness which Vatican officials have shown toward exposing and punishing the pedophiles in the church then, well, being out of the closet will take that pressure off and help them become part of the solution and not the problem.
Secrets always generate shame. Shame always motivates bad decisions. Concerning men and women in the church who happen to be gay, they should end their secrecy, let go of the shame and all their decisions will be better enforced by the open pursuit of truth.
I'm not afraid of a gay church. I'm afraid of people with something to hide. They can be manipulated or simply stay quiet when they should speak up.
This scandal isn't especially catholic. The Baptists just broke a big scandal and there have already been plenty of homophobes revealed as closet cases among protestant leaders. This is a thing. Gay people in the closet do bad things to stay there. Let them all come out and let the whole issue of human sexuality be reinterpreted for what it really is: the human condition.
11
Bruni wrote: "...It explains why so many gay men entered the priesthood, especially decades ago: They didn’t feel safe or comfortable in a society that ostracized them. Their sense of being outsiders gave them a more spiritual bent and greater desire to help others in need."
Sounds reasonable and valid even in 2019. While this may no longer be true in the west where homosexuals are less ostracized, it is still the case elsewhere. The Catholic church is in rapid decline in many western developed nations, with few young men choosing to enter priesthood (thus many seminaries are closed or sold off), the Catholic church still have hold power in many third world countries, such as those in Africa, South America and the Philippines. Recruits from these places are often sent to serve in under-staffed places such as USA & Canada.
Bruni should also worry if any of these priests are closeted gay fugitives from their intolerant homeland, and whether the parents of young children in their churches should be better educated by Frédéric Matel's book.
1
Basically, the Church has overlooked, for centuries, an easy fix - open the priesthood to married men AND women.
About 1000 years ago the priesthood consisted of married priests however the church did not appreciate that when a priest died, his inheritance, including property, followed the common law at that time which left the deceased's property to his eldest son. Thus property was lost in the eyes of Rome and they initiated the chastity rule for the on-going priesthood to retain control of whatever property the deceased owned, which included his house and the physical church property that the deceased had built. Again, greed enters the picture. And, women were still relegated to a second class citizenship.
The church routinely tortured the wise women who helped heal with herbs and called them witches. Any one not practicing Catholic regimens, such as Jews, Muslims, and even their own scientists were tortured - just look at the history of how Gallileo was treated, and he was only one of many.
And as far as preaching to serve the poor, they have amassed more wealth than most countries, buried within the coffers of Rome.
The Church has a sordid history and a long way to go to improve its philosophy and practice to truly walk in the path of Jesus.
8
@Gillian
Foreshadowing Gallileo and his "crimes" against the church, Geordano Bruno was burned at the stake with the complicity of the Vatican for publicly espousing an idea: heliocentrism or the simple fact that the earth revolved around the sun.
6
@Gillian
And consider another aspect of the twisted sexual 'morality' of Catholicism. Augustine felt that masturbation was a graver sin than rape, for at least the latter act has the potential to lead to conception ! Just a cynical twist on 'be fruitful and multiply' in order to boost the numbers of 'believers' at any cost.
"At the Evening of life, we shall be judged on our love"
-Saint John of the Cross, Doctor of Mystical Theology
"Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone" (Jesus Christ, Gospel of John)
Do you think God will be asking what your sexual orientation is when you ask for kind admittance to the Holy Kingdom of Eternal Rest and Beatitude: Heaven?
This is a world increasingly without basic decency and compassion. A world without, a Pope Francis says, tenderness. A world of materialism, of rushing, of using people. A world without reflection, without prayer. A world with much knowledge but little wisdom.
Who am I to judge someone who seeks to life a life of service to Christ and neighbor with an earnest heart, and yet, is still a sinner like us all?
As long as one's actions are not the least bit criminal, one's acts of impurity and sin are between them and God.
If we truly knew God, we would be amazed at God's Tenderness and Compassion. This is a God always extending Grace and Mercy, inviting us to a deeper life of integrity and personal integration despite our internal clamor and struggles, so we may enjoy an increasingly rich life in God: The One who Is Goodness, Grace, Forgiveness, Light, Love, Tenderness.
A God of Gentleness, who while aware of our faults and sins, invites us not to look at ourselves, but upwards to Goodness.
A life of "Looking to the Mercy, Living in the Mercy, Extending the Mercy".
That is the beauty and dignity of the Christian life.
6
Isn't it fascinating that as soon as the Church gets a Jesuit pope the scandal that's been brewing practically forever is his fault? Is he less clueless than his predecessors?
Now we have a book about the situation. I hope that this won’t give the believers who blame the Catholic Church for every evil thought up by man to avoid trying to fix it.
As can be seen in other religions and religious sects this problem is not unique to Catholicism.
The Catholic hierarchy can do a partial fix by allowing priests to marry. It probably won’t at this time be any help to gay priests. However the church should be able to differentiate between old fashioned sinful sex and criminally punishable behavior.
As to being gay, it shouldn’t stop people from being good priests. The theater is full of good actors, and being gay hasn’t really prevented them from being successful good actors.
2
(Martel devotes) "his inquiry to Catholic officials who have had sex with men, not ones who have had sex with women".
That's a very good point. Don't forget that these same officials forbid priests to get married, demanding celibacy of them (at least in the Western Church). So those ordained officials who engage in sexual relations with females, or condone it in others (such as the case of disgraced late Marciel Maciel), are just as guilty of gross hypocrisy.
Really the Catholic church just needs to join the present or disband. Just like Orthodox Judaism and fundamentalist Islam, these sexually repressed faiths are antiquated relics of an ignorant past, and they have no future.
So I'm not too concerned about what happens to the Catholic church over this book, as long as in the end, it ceases to exist as it currently does.
3
The majority of cases was not the rape of prepubescent children, so the use of pedophilia is careless and conflating. This is not about homosexuality directly or some misguided attempt to link it to pedophilia. If we use the term exactly, little of it was pedophilia, so even saying that this is about gays and pedophilia is wrong for many reasons. Here is the rub. I attended a minor seminary in the 70's. I was not abused, but the fullness of time has allowed the 14 year old me to connectdots four decades later. Most of the cases documented are hebephilia and ephebophilia. They mostly involved males, and occurred both because of opportunity and access, and a subset of insiders playing an insiders' game. They approached young and middle adolescents who had reached puberty. They abused position and trust, not to mention laws. What this issue lacks and needs is a discussion of how this subculture took root and grew, what its aims were, and who protected whom and why. Throwing it under the misnomer of pedophilia is not only inaccurate, but raises the wrong questions and invites misdirected and unfounded speculation in the general public. For me, I have left the institutional Church, not because they protected pedophiles, but because they countenanced keeping an eye on my friends and me to see which ones of us they could groom and recruit once we had reached a certain age but were still quite impressionable. We need to study the recurrence of ephebic systems.
1
This is not a religious issue. Its about dominance, in every form it takes in the human culture. Note that even if male and female clergy are largely same-sex oriented , it is the exalted priesthood that bears the greatest accusation of child predation and rape.
The overarching truth we need to address is that high levels of unfettered power feed high levels of pride and entitlement which can manifest as sexual aggression those who are vulnerable and accessible, of any gender, or age.
To make this about the RC church or any church is to dilute the magnitude of the problem that exists in every level of society - we are too deferential to people with money, power and influence because we are afraid to speak the truth and be persecuted for pointing the finger at an icon or self-proclaimed paragon. So to the extent that this column is one more reason for people to spit on the construct of God, faith or political conservatism, it will never properly account for, or prevent, the Harvey Weinsteins or Michael Jacksons of this world who were well-protected gods of the progressive elite.
4
Nothing in this book is news no less "a bombshell." And the fact that Bruni didn't expose it when he had the Vatican beat for two years amounts to journalistic malpractice.
Until a lesbian can be Pope, the Catholic Church is a hopelessly bigoted institution. Those who serve it--gay or not--are the enablers of an organizations that degrades women and LGBT people. I'm a 65-year old gay man who gave up on any hope for reforming the church almost forty years ago. It is not just the horrible sexual abuse within the church that is a scandal, it is the worship of a god that condemns gay love and the equality of women. How is this socially acceptable in 2019? Catholics need to take control of their church and reform it or leave it.
20
The Sullins Report published by the Ruth Institute released on Nov 1, 2018 showed that there is a direct correlation between the percentage of gays in the clergy and sexual abuse rates which in over 80% of abuse cases involves teenage boys (unlike in US society were 80% of the victims of sexual abuse are teenage women). This book based on numerous interviews supports what researchers like Sullins have already published only to be covered-up by Church officials just as Church leaders covered-up the 1985 abuse report co-authored by Dominican Father Tom Doyle.
So who is surprised? With their unnatural requirement to be celibate, I have been suspicious for decades. And these are the intermediaries between the people and God. Fortunately God loves us all introspectively of the priests who are sinning in their own eyes.
My best friend back in the '70s was a Catholic gay man who once asked whether I thought "celibate" referred to same-sex activity as well as opposite-sex, as he knew that some priests were gay. I told him that if one is celibate, one isn't having sex, period, as I'd always understood it. In those days nobody knew about predatory priests; I suspect, now, that he had been abused by one. But I can't ask him, because when we became close enough that he proposed marriage, he added that he wanted me to make him "straight"--and I told him that it wouldn't work, and that he was just fine the way he was. And he never spoke to me again. I hope he's still alive, and maybe he found the Right Woman, but I doubt it.
3
I do worry that the church will once again focus on homosexuality and not on pedophilia and sexual abuse.
263
@AV Actually the church needs to focus on both if it's really serious about reform.
18
@souliers7
All three foci are subordinate to the massive murders of those of us living in the womb.
1
@souliers7
Both what? Homosexuality? Pedophilia? Sexual Abuse?
I count three things there, but I agree only the latter two should be in focus.
5
With the advent of Catholic School tuition shooting up, people becoming less religious, and the rampant child sex abuse in the church, the diocese draws on in the closet gays, and until recently child molesters as a place of hiding for them.
Hint to the Catholic Church, if you want to stay in business, do what more progress protestant sects do, be more open, don't treat ministers as Gods and most of all vet your leaders for horror stories like child molesters.
4
What you really mean is will those faithful Catholics who care about protecting children and preserving the Faith work together to expel the homosexuals who are responsible for both the abuse crisis and the rampant heresy in the Catholic Church.
1
"Religion is a dead telephone. Even though people know better, they pick up and listen." ---Martin Cruz Smith
6
Amen!
1
Frank Bruni seems more concerned that the gays are going to take the blame for the rape of Catholic children than that Catholic children are being raped all around the world. He's "bothered and even a little scared about it." Not the rape of the children, mind you, but the portrayal of the rapists as being gay. I wish he had put something in his column, even if just obligatory, empathizing with the plight of the raped Catholic children. For my part, I have no problem condemning everyone in the Catholic Church, straight or gay, who remains silent while its members use Catholic children for sexual gratification. It's deviant, it's heartless, and it's absolute proof that these people do not believe in God. Doesn't matter if they're gay or straight.
10
Thank you for this column. I appreciate that you wrote it, and I agree. You're right to be concerned.
I have a social media friend who was a young priest in my diocese when I was a teenager. I was shocked and deeply disheartened a few years ago when he professed the right-wing belief that priestly sexual abuse of children is a problem caused by homosexuality, and furthermore and most nauseatingly, that most abuses are not so bad because they are actually consensual liaisons with "post-pubescent" partners.
I had heard the talking point, but I had thought no one would take it seriously because it's so ridiculous and perverse. (To be clear, it's the right-wing talking point excusing statutory rape after puberty that is perverse; not homosexuality.)
2
These revelations of the Vatican's hypocrisy and duplicity do nothing but reinforce my relief of having severed all ties with such a twisted organisation.
How can modern countries like the United States of America and France still maintain diplomatic relations with the irrational and evil bunch who try to tell the rest of us how to treat our genitals ? May this Mr Martel's book be the start of death knoll of the Roman Catholic Church, for the sake of future generations .
6
What would Jesus do? Sell the palaces, artworks, real estate and jewels and donate the proceeds to the teeming hordes of pitifully poor children and women in the world who lack basic life necessities including birth control because the church forbids it. The male-dominated church has acted reprehensibly for centuries.
28
The biggest mystery about the Catholic Church is not the sexual orientation of its priests, but why it is allowed to continue to exist. Why has the FBI not yet swooped in, seized evidence, and prosecuted the legions of church officials and employees who participated in, or had knowledge of, its systematic, organized raping of children, and shut the whole thing down under RICO statutes? And now we find out nuns are being subjected to sexual slavery. Good God, enough!
591
@MRod Yes, agreed. RICO laws should be used. Hard to understand except for the mob like power the church holds over politicians.
38
@MRod Because the Catholic Church is its own entity. A closed system for dealing with its own problems. A perfect set up for never holding people accountable. It has its own legal system, etc.
19
Exactly. It is its own monolith in which accountability is tossed out if holding its clergy responsible for their transgressions would sully its image of holiness. Independent schools are no different.
6
Of course the Vatican is rife with gay men. I doubt this will come as a surprise to anyone who is not naïve.
Historically, being gay was a death sentence and still is in some countries to this day.
The so called celibacy of Catholic clergy was and is a perfect cover for gay men (and women).
I do not condemn gay people who are drawn to the Catholic church for their own reasons.
What I do condemn is the condemnation the Catholic church has for gay people to this day.
It's ironic and hypocritical beyond belief.
What I will add is that the Vatican feels compelled to keep women out of power. I don't know if the celibacy thing contributes to this- but gay or straight- men historically wanted to suppress the power of women and still do.
The Catholic church remains rooted in medieval practices when it comes to the power of women.
It's so sad because, in fact, the Catholic church does do a lot of good and charitable work throughout the world and I fear these good works will lose financial support. ( Catholic Relief Services- not the Vatican)
I am not in support of any religion because all religious organizations have a certain level of corruption because religion is based on human beings and cultural beliefs.
Who knows how many Popes were gay? Who knows if the current Pope is gay?
Who knows if Jesus himself was gay?
No one knows and in the end- it doesn't matter.
The main message from Jesus was to love your neighbor, be truthful, do good and be charitable. That's all.
13
While it is an unknown how many priests are gay, it surely is a substantial number. And certainly, while gay men are not universally misogynist, a good proportion chauvinistically are, and some are vocal and in positions at the Vatican of setting policy that is highly discriminatory against women. As in most religions run by men, women are made to feel the sing of perceived inferiority. In restrictive rules promulgated by the hierarchy, women are disallowed full participation in the religion, to the diminution of all involved. Only when the leadership of the church, both gay AND straight, proclaims equality of the genders and respect for others, including women who continue to faithfully serve and children who trust their priests, will the church be free to confront the fact that many of their ordained members have feet of clay.
6
I had a college friend, a fellow physics major, who invited me to a 'physics' lecture at the group house in which he lived. It turned out that he, and this house, was part of Opus Dei; the lecture was just another variation on the theme of proving God's existence. Not very interesting.
But as soon as I walked in I was overwhelmed by the repressed sexuality of this group of men, all of whom seemed to be gay.
Now, by this point in my life I'd spent a lot of time in the ballet world, had shared dressing rooms and bathrooms and hotel rooms with lots of gay men--all very open--and sexuality per se was not the issue. It was the repression: tangible and palpable. And very pathologic, it seemed to me. I felt ill.
Sometime later, as my friend and I were engaged in a discussion of morality and the role religion plays in leading a moral life, I told my friend that he'd most likely be a very moral and ethical person with out without religion. He blushed and his face grew taut, as if steeling himself for recrimination, and said, "Oh! You've no idea the sins I've committed!"
Such a tragedy. I might have said, It's fine to be gay! Find yourself a nice guy and live a happy life. But I remained quiet, knowing somehow that any words on the matter would be infinitely worse than the silence hanging between us.
He dropped out of physics and went to seminary.
11
I will buy five copies of this book and give them out to friends who might read them. Let the light shine in.
2
I used to believe that getting rid of the celibacy requirement for priests would solve the problem of of priests sexually abusing children. But reading about the Southern Baptist Churches' sexual abuse problems made me realize that the problem is not that priests are supposed to live celibate lives. The offending Baptist church leaders were often married with families.
In my opinion, the problem is not celibacy, it's not homosexuality (otherwise why so have so many nuns been sexually abused by priests and bishops?)--it's having power.
Think about rapists. When you read the studies, we find that most rape is not for want of sex, but to demonstrate power and control. Give the parishioners more power to decide on the punishment for offending priests, ministers and pastors, then perhaps this abuse can be stopped.
12
The abnormality of the Catholic Church's celibacy mandate is clear. Neither priests nor nuns have any experience with normal family life. The original reason for celibacy, to prevent the formation of priest-based dynasties and to prevent priests from passing church property to their children, is not relevant in today's world. End celibacy. Allow priests to marry. Allow nuns to marry if they wish. This will not end the abuse of children, but it will considerably reduce it.
5
Will people of evil intentions cite this book as an excuse for their hateful behavior? Yes. Does that mean the truth about the Roman Catholic hierarchy should remain hidden from view? No. What needs to be stressed is not the large percentage of homosexual males in the Church, but that it attracts men looking to either suppress their sexuality, or to use a position of power to prey on others. The raw, corrupting power these men, from the Pope down to the priests, wield over the lives of Catholics is one problem. The other is that they are almost never held to account for their actions by Church or secular authorities. The hypocrisy of Church leaders needs to be brought to light.
7
I believe there has always been a good percentage of Catholic priests, bishops, cardinals and popes who were gay. It has contributed to the church's misogyny. But they take the same vow of chastity as heterosexual priests so it should make no difference to their status as priests.
3
As many observe, sexual orientation is not an issue if the mandate of celibacy is enforced. Most are not particularly interested.
The majority of people are more invested in an individual's intelligence, conversation, and decency than sexual orientation.
Behaviors that some would consider perverse are part of a range of normative human sexuality, as long as it is enacted between consenting adults.
Martel's "study" confirms decades-old rumors that the Catholic Church is a sanctuary for gay men. Centuries-old writings by monks attest to the proliferation of gay subcultures.
How can Catholics now go to confession and receive the Eucharist in good faith?
1
So, the Catholic Church is 60% or 80% gay and it remains the largest institution to absolutely bar women from any effective role while being told their only real role is to breed for the church. Yes, gays were treated badly by society and by religion, but women were and are treated worse. Much worse. By the gays apparently in this case. Whatever.
Next week this dreadful organization convenes its worldwide summit on sexual abuse of children, thereby conceding that their organization effectively runs a worldwide pedophile ring. Maybe it's just coincidence that the ring is run by closeted gays who exclude women. Maybe not. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Pope Francis were to resign next week. It's all pretty hopeless to keep this scheme going in the age of information. A conclave will be in place to elect a new Pope. Three Popes in Rome will pretty much sum up the current downfall and growing irrelevance of the Catholic Church.
7
According to the Jay report, about 4 out of 5 victims were 12 yrs or older, about half between the age of 11 and 14, and a little over a quarter were between 15 and 17. Over 80 percent were male, and the older the victim, the more likely to be male, but even in the youngest group, 64% were male. About 4% of priests were accused. These numbers indicate a problem with pederasty. This report was done in 2004.
4
@TD
"This report" is worthless. The bishops decided what information was to be provided to the investigators. (Like the pretend investigation of Brett Kavanaugh.)
I am going to put this out there. Just about 56 years ago, the First Communion sacraments and ceremony were held, in the rain, at St. Bartholemew’s Church on Whitney Avenue in Elmhurst Queens. A very large congregation of working and middle class families - firemen, cops, civil servants, office workers - in fact the Codd family, he the NYC Police Commissioner at one time, lived adjacent to the Girls’ School. Imagine. One day a father rang the rectory bell and the place was never the same again. His son had been raped. In the sacristy. By a priest. Needless to say, the 110th precinct was summoned, a father was arrested, a priest was hospitalized, and then transferred to the Manhattan Diocese, silently. They dropped the charges against my father despite his refusing to sign their false document. The man was incandescent with rage, knuckles bleeding and one of his his brothers worked at the Daily News - when that paper had muscle. Not before nor ever after did I see my father like that. Never. I went thereafter to public school. This was an incident repeated THOUSANDS of times by these...creatures. And defending them, their “lifestyle” or ANY aspect of their church, their ministries, or their antichrist in Rome, is complicity in their crimes. Talking to YOU here, Mr. Bruni.
23
Even though I myself am an atheist, I disagree with those who call for the obliteration of all religion from our world. There are still going to be be people who need spiritual comraderie and maybe even fantasy dogma. What needs to be completely obliterated is the power, or will, of those churches to hurt people through misogyny, sexual abuse and racism.
5
Practicing Catholics should continue doing what they have done for over 2000 years. Go to Mass and pray to Jesus. Isn't this really what our faith is all about. Receiving the body and blood of Christ is the most important part of the liturgy. That will never change.
5
No. Practising Catholics should abandon their myth-spouting church. Maybe the Vatican will wake up if donations cease.
8
The book will probably be used and perversely exploited by the religious right and other segments of the conservative movement in an effort to advance their draconian agenda.
1
I hate that we have become a society too stupid for nuance.
Of course the relative prevalence of homosexuality in the priesthood and the incidence of depravity in the church will be conflated. Of course we gays will be blamed for the corruption of human nature by the church's devotion to the inhuman concept of celibacy. Of course we gays will be blamed for the lack of oversight that allowed rampant abuse to go unchecked and unpunished. Of course the same Conservatives who resist any check on churches will also try to pin the blame for the real problem (abuse within the church) on a characteristic (homosexuality) not causally related to it. Of course this proof of unspeakable behavior within the church will be weaponized against my community (LGBTQ), the majority of which has nothing to do with the church whatsoever.
Of course.
Why am I even surprised anymore by how incredibly unintelligent we are proving to be as a species. Having risen from swamps to space and from superstition to smartphones, we are now determined to regress back to the unthinking animals we were before. Back to tribalism. Back to snap judgments. Instincts over intelligence. This conviction in reflexive judgments that are so easily debunked is simply unreal.
Since we recognize just how dumb most of us are, maybe authors need to be smart enough to stop making such damaging and false associations so easy. Stop making it so easy for them to conflate my lifestyle with their sins.
5
Catholics did not need a book to know that the Vatican has had many homosexuals in its presence. This is not news and it has even been reported on EWTN. This has concerned the Church for some time but nothing had been done. Maybe they thought it would not be made public. Possibly with the publication of the book they will start to deal with the problem.
1
@WPLMMT
What problem? It is not against Church rules for priests to be gay. It is against Church rules for priests to have sex. The Catholic Church could have 100% gay men in the priesthood; and as long as they remained celibate they would be virtuous. It is men, both heterosexual and homosexual, who break their vows of chastity who are the problem.
5
@aem
It is the institution that requires them to make vows of chastity that is the problem.
1
The percent of church leaders who are gay is irrelevant (though obviously the sexual repression of the priesthood isn’t).
What is important is that too often the leaders are morally, well, Trumpian, meaning they live in an intellectually made-up world based on no stable reality. So it’s hardly surprising when they ignore or distort truth and rules to serve themselves. They’re just a little more discrete about it than our grifter-in-chief.
You don’t have to be right-wing to find it repellant.
207
@DC-Agreed. Investigations have collectively turned up thousands of priests now across the U.S. who have committed acts of sexual abuse; more than 300 recently in New Mexico. The total is shocking. More and more, the Church looks like a child procurement and predator- protection racket.
34
@DC The Roman Catholic Church is a long con - 2000 years and counting. The RC Church makes DJ Trump look like a small con in comparison.
I love the message of Jesus to love your neighbor etc. but the Church that his followers established is a decrepit, white supremacist, misogynistic and child-abusing institution.
28
@DC
"Trumpian, meaning they live in an intellectually made up world based on no stable reality." That really reminds me of many of the pieces I've run across in the National Catholic Register, the conservative Catholic newspaper in the U.S. Their columnists tend to come with really abstract, esoteric, and convoluted arguments regarding, for example, why we shouldn't be kind to immigrants, or why we should overlook Trump's criminality. They also espouse the belief that the child abuse crisis is all due to tolerance of gay men in the priesthood.
27
Watching the Kavanaugh hearings, I wondered about his Catholic instruction about sex. Did the Jesuits look the other way at teen (mis)behavior? As the Jesuits needed wealthy donors, did they send the message to boys that only sexual intercourse qualified as having sex? So other behavior: groping, foreplay, genital exposure, anal sex, fellatio would not technically be defined as "having sex"-- because only vaginal penetration removes virginity and these behaviors couldn't lead to pregnancy? Was Kavanaugh attacking Ms. Ford (and likely others) a projection of his own shame, guilt -- sins? Much easier and less painful than being confronted with the split between the good-guy-image cultivated in public and the shame-based abuser. I suspect Kavanaugh, the porn-addicted Clarence Thomas, and even the Jesuits would have a lot to say if they were moral enough men--to admit the truth.
6
We were reminded in the recent trial of druglord El Chapo that he considered child-rape his "vitamins". We're aware of the deadly belief in some countries that child-rape can cure AIDS. Over and over we hear of powerful men addicted to this vice and the powerful institutions that enable them.
It seems pretty clear that this most despicable of crimes has a long history and tradition in the world's cultures.
What if the association of child-rape and power is no coincidence? What if powerful institutions actively seek out child-rapers like Dennis Hastert, precisely because they can be blackmailed and manipulated? How old and how extensive might this tradition be? Who else might be such a puppet?
118
@Dan Coleman Anyone who's read the Old Testament's description of the Sodom & Gomorrah story knows that "good man" Lot offered his young "virgin daughter" to the men who wanted to "know" his angelic visitors, but they weren't interested. (Whether homosexuality was actually a motive is still debated.) Women and girls were seldom considered anything but bargaining chips in the old old days, and a lot of men haven't evolved much since then.
19
@Dan Coleman
There's also the possibility that child rape is such an abhorrent sensational crime that we easily remember it in connection with powerful men. We don't remember, the powerful men who are common criminals, innocuous or forces for good.
Power certainly leads to the ability for greater exploitation, but is there any statistical evidence that power leads to pedophilia. If we tallied up all the powerful men and counted the abusers, would they be of greater number than the general population?
@Sharon YES. Obviously they have more means than the rest, so if motives and opportunity are similar, the greater means shifts the equation to greater numbers amongst the privileged.
5
After 2,000 years with all men in charge this is the best the Catholic Church got to be. Shame full. They need to fire all the men now I can never trust any priest again and if they regroup investigate everyone and let women become priests to still keep an eye on the new people . To do nothing nothing will change.
3
" It contends that the more showily homophobic a Vatican official is, the more likely he belongs to that crowd, and that the higher up the chain of command you go, the more gays you find.”
Perhaps the minorities who hold positions within a faith group are more likely to promote the faith group’s “established"positions in order to fit in, and to deflect attention from their own personal minority status.
In the case of the Catholic Church, gay clergy may be more likely to take a staunch position against the possibility that homosexuality is innate, and that a homosexual lifestyle could be acceptable. They know that to do otherwise, could invite attention to their own proclivities.
I wonder if being somewhat different from the perceived norm also encourages a Church official to strongly support other “established” Church teachings, such as opposition to artificial means of birth control. Could it be that a good number of clergy who oppose changes to the Church’s current policies are doing so to prove they are “respectable" members of the Church who uphold its traditions? If they were not so worried about being seen as different, might they be more open to the possibility of modifying some Church policies?
2
I perceive Andrew Sullivan and Frank Bruno as
gutsy articulate truth tellers.
Unhappily you two are "heretics."
The h word is offensive in whatever context.
The phenomenon of reforming the RCC is not
my business, actually ought to be everybody's.
Giving ammunition to know nothings of the modern era is what y'all know you're
doing.
The NYT is gutsy too, and I perceive the
Gray Lady has totally justified reason, but
as folk inferred re Adlai Stevenson and other
liberal egg heads, not electable by the
majority.
Wish reality weren't so, congratulations
and thanks for good work.
Yes, irony is seemingly heretical, as I think about the phrase, good work.
No need for quotation marks.
2
If Martel's book is as awful as it sounds, why did Bruni choose to give it so much free publicity?
6
Raised a Lutheran, I thought the ministers creepy and weird. My dating life included Catholics, and I thought priests were weird. I married an Episcopalian, and it pretty much sealed my thinking. And I am not a right wing homophobe, thank you very much...
4
a corrupt patriarchy. smash it. bring it down. level it. destroy it before it destroys more lives.
5
Once gay men gained more acceptance in society after 1980, why would men seek to hide as a priest? While some gay men might have vocation, and accept celibacy, I don’t see what the church offers to hypocrites.
The church has certainly done a much better job since about 1970 in screening candidates for the priesthood. Given that so many of the priests now named as pedophiles were ordained in the 1940-60’s, so many of these exposes seem to equate pedophilia with homosexuality they are misleading. Homosexuals are attracted to other adults, pedophiles to pre-pubescent children. Yes, there are some men, like Kevin Spacey, who get off on insisting young men to homosexuality, but whether their victims or not become homosexuals in the end is a real question. The victims of pedophiles and young people “initiated” often becomes adults with very confused sexual identities and far too often a predisposition to repeat their abuse on a child.
I’m Catholic and I’m 61 and never in my life I give much thought to the sexual orientation of priests I meet so long as they have sex with adults. Pedophiles should be discommunicated and jailed after trial in civilian courts.
If the Vactican is controlled by aging homosexual men then no Pope, even Francis is going to be able to clean out all of the rot.
The laity does not need those who have twisted the role of the Church. Maybe new church(es) will come together using the same liturgy & Christ’s message as their core.
2
Accepting that there is absolutely no connection between being gay and molesting underage boys, then virtually all Catholic priests are either gay or child molesters? Definitely time to expand the field by permitting priests to marry and welcoming female priests. It's kind of absurd that in society in general you can't turn around without bumping into some kind of minister or reverend but the Catholic Church can't get enough priests to fill what used to be a phone booth.
4
@EJS, I think the fact that the Catholic Church prohibits sex between consenting adults means the only sex they can have is to be kept secret. Either they have sex with each other, or with people that they can intimidate into silence. The 'celibacy' or 'chastity' that forms one of the pillars of the priesthood is unsustainable and unhealthy, and allowing priests to marry would eliminate some of the seediness that the demand for secrecy engenders.
1
The truth should not be subject to any agenda, no matter how noble. We have propaganda and mythology for that purpose. The celibacy issue aside, what honest gay person would enlist to lead an organization that forbids homosexuality, thereby living a lie and subjecting the institution to hypocrisy? It is this dishonesty which is unjustifiable. Join a church that embraces gay members and even ordains them. But don't subject others to your dishonesty and hypocrisy, especially in a religious context, where people are placing their faith in you. I hope Mr.Bruni is not making excuses for this behavior or calling for another journalist to engage in self-censorship in order to protect his agenda. If so, that is despicable.
3
Huh?
This is a bombshell?
A closed "boys only" club where men in denial dress up in flowing robes, and it's supposed to be a shock that most are deeply in the closet ?
This is not news.
A better book would be about getting them to come out and be who they truly are, and not stuffed into closet full of robes.
7
I am hoping humanity's spiritual evolution grows so much that the Catholic church no longer exists because people see it for the evil sham it is.
Lord, hear my prayer!
9
@Diana
Hear, hear !
Which is why I prefer those who bash their bishops in the British sense of the term rather than those who honour them.
4
I get confused with this Catholic priests as homosexual story: sure male, supposedly celibate priests have sexual lusts but I thought a higher power, a priestly power, a Godly power, was supposed to intervene to keep this human-all-too-human lust in check. Priests were were better men than the world’s lot of men and women because they worked harder at being good servants for the rest of us. They found a way to contain, lock-up, what the rest of us could barely control. They gave up sex not only to love God but to love us. So what does mere hot sexual lust have to do with a priest being a servant leader to his flock? Maybe it’s not about homosexuality but a breakdown of their inability to love?
I agree with Bruni, many Catholic priests “are exemplary — and chaste — servants of the church,” but it is impossible now for me, spying a priest in collar at an airport, not to wonder, if we make eye to eye contact, whether he is lusting for my body or reaching out to love my soul?
.
2
Fear and loathing of women is very current in the Catholic theology.
13
@farm This is not my experience at all. Overbearing old Nuns are a complete pain and need to retire.
1
Here in Quebec where the Church ruled until our 50 year old, quiet revolution the churches are for sale, all the churches not just the Catholic churches and their cloisters are for sale and soon will be replaced by the phone booths that have recently disappeared.
In our Jewish tradition there is no original sin and sodomy is the act of justifying the unjustifiable. For me there is nothing quite so absurd as being antisex and pro life.
4
Were the writers of The Sopranos "right-wing homophobes"?
"Of all the finook priests in the world, why did I have to get the one who's straight?"
--Carmela Soprano
3
What utter nonsense. There are over 400,000 priests worldwide. And virtually none of those priests would ever openly admit his sexual orientation to someone if he was gay.
Honestly, how could this author legitimately claim that he knows 320,000 of the world's priests are gay?
The right wing is certainly having another Gay Panic if this is just one more attempt to demonize gay men. This smacks of all the false research that Paul Cameron (Kirk Cameron's daddy) used to employ do denigrate the gay population -- false research that got Paul "defrocked" in Federal Court.
Here we go again!
3
They're obviously channeling the outrage over pedophile priests and coverups into an anti-gay crusade. The real issue is the twisted, psychotic sexuality inherent in the male Catholic clergy, gay straight or (he ha) celibate. Anyone who spent a long time in Catholic schools will recall that these people, nuns included, exhibited a bizarre obsession with sex.
2
Right-wing homophobes? Exploit it? How about us "lefty" hypocrisy spotters?
The Catholic Church in America is, in their majority, responsible to a large degree for the continued existence of the Republican Party - which, I we've seen and are seeing, is resulting in the demise of America as she has been known.
Down with the Churches of the Republican Way.
Waiting for the sequel on all the closeted gay American evangelicals who are fighting their own demons by demonizing the LGBTQ community. Those who are the most vocal very often are the ones who have the most to hide.
2
Gay witch-hunts by right-wingers are the least of the Catholic Church's problems. More than 40% of "raised Catholic" are no longer members of the Church because they can't accept hypocrites and pedophiles as their spiritual leaders. Lay people have done more to protect children and model the behavior of Catholicism than church leaders. This is not about you. Please don't divert the issue.
5
Well, whatever the percentage of gay priests, we do know that 100% of them are men.
5
Patriarchy!, Patriarchy!, Patriarchy! It’s at the heart of so many of society’s ills. The game is, and has been, rigged since forever. Say it’s name! State it loud and clear! It’s time to do your laundry, boys - the jig is up. Don’t be afraid, the “girls” are way more level-headed than you give them credit for. We don’t care if you’re gay or straight. Just, for god sake, stop claiming superiority. Newsflash! You’re human and therefore fallible. We’ll still love ya’ - I promise.
4
Who cares about data of gays . The issue with the Catholic Church, that need be exposed, is the harm to children, as pedophiles are scary, especially in a priests position of authority. Obvious, Catholic followers are dropping like flies in Europe and North America, as attendance is way down.
4
The problem contained in the Church's sexual proclivities is not homosexuality; it is pederasty. It is in the interest of the Holy See to emphasize the former and mask the latter.
1
Only Heaven can put this right. The CC has already descended into Sodom and only the Universal Creator can intervene in this leviathan now.
Be that as it may, homosexuality is a far cry from pedophilia.
Are we surprised that most Catholic clergy are gay? Of course not. Are we discussed by the hypocrisy of the Church? Of course.
As a cradle catholic, I pulled away from this religion back in 2002. I attempted a return in 2017.
The pedophile report from Pittsburgh and subsequent dioceses demand one thing: shut down this institution. Picket the churches. Write state attorneys.
But do not equate homosexuality with pedophilia.
Enough already.
2
Of course these gay priests are not celibate! It's the women that are evil seductresses, not men. As long as men steer clear of women, their souls and the church will be safe. This outing is not about "right-wing Catholics wanting a witch hunt for gay priests," it's about exposing the church's perpetuation of its "anything but women" dogma.
3
A “bombshell?” Please.
2
Yes, it's true that the extreme right-wing (fed by Stephen Bannon!!) are attempting to overthrow Pope Francis. Not because of the gay thing, but because Francis is a liberal from S. America, where they speak the Invading Language, Spanish.
4
1700 years of powerful, unimpeachable men, under the authority of God himself, abusing men, women and children with abandon...I can't imagine why anyone would want to make a stink about that.
2
Martin Luther is laughing.
2
My wife was friends with 2 gay IT guys who were both very kind and smart people. They had met in Catholic seminary and had told her that seminaries are more or less gay "Loveboats".
4
Is Raymond Burke mentioned?
1
Well said.
First came a society that banned homosexual love.
Second came a church that banned married men.
Third came the men who didn't want to marry ... and had to explain why.
Fourth came the seminarians, followed by ordained gay clergy.
Fifth came the lies and hypocrisy, for about 1500 years.
If the Catholic Church permitted women, and openly gay men, to serve as priests, the likelihood of child abuse would go down, and the likelihood of a truly redemptive church would increase.
3
"deep-seated homosexual tendencies"...
Examples:
Your neighbor just got widowed; he is in good health and knows how to cook and clean the house; he does not need a combination nurse/housekeeper. He would rather play golf with his male friends than go "dating". Obviously, he has "deep-seated homosexual tendencies", at least for the woman across the street whose advances he ignored.
Your daughter chooses to focus on her studies; she feels her best bet in life is to get a good job that will make her independent. Obviously, she has "deep-seated homosexual tendencies", at least in the eyes of the "involuntarily celibate" boy who tried to court her.
"Deep-seated homosexual tendencies" often exist only in the eyes of the beholder. They are likely to lead to slander: no matter how chaste and celibate a priest may be, once he has been labelled as "probably gay", the label will stick, without the "probably".
Sickening....
2
I’m gay. I have little sympathy for gay priests. They’re self-loathing religious fanatics with the world’s biggest case of Stockholm Syndrome, and they support a virulently misogynistic, homophobic institution. They’re necessarily broken. Banning them would be doing them a favor.
7
“Will right-wing homophobes exploit it?” Is the Pope Catholic? In fact, everyone who pays attention to it will exploit it. That's what juicy gossip is all about. Ask David Pecker. The question is whether the laity will care. Most American, European, and South American Roman Catholics know of at least one gay Priest in their local church. They'll probably see this book as nothing more than a titillating tabloid story – Camilla in drunken row with Queen! Eastern European, Asian, and African Roman Catholics are much more homophobic and may demand some action. Of course, we do have our own right-wing Roman Catholic homophobes who will make noise, but they will have little impact. I assume that this opinion piece is a pre-emptive strike directed at them. I doubt it will deter them.
1
Your column is an apology for centuries of abuse in the church toward men, women and children. The church continues to subjugate and degrade women. The issue is not gender preference. It is about an institution that is corrupt from its foundations, decreeing dogma out of its mouth and violating it with its actions. And nuns are another matter that deserves its own worldwide inquiry and legal remedies, though all those abusive nuns from the 50s and 60s are dead now too. I have no sympathy for the Church. Its complicity as a refuge for gay men, some of whom are and were pedophiles, is beyond understanding, no matter what your twisted analysis asserts.
1
"Will right-wing homophobes exploit it?" Is the Pope a Catholic?
2
The church's far right establishment, led by Cardinal Burke, are trying both to undermine the Pope, and at the same time, lay the church's abuse scandals at the feet of gay priests.
Conveniently ignoring, of course, the much greater problem of sexual abuse of children and adults by straight priests the world over. Witness the horrifying stories from Africa of priests raping nuns, reported in this newspaper.
The gay witch hunt began under Benedict, and is now in full flourish, exemplified by this book.
This is an utterly shameful way for Cardinal Burke and his allies around the world, but especially in the Vatican, to behave. But it is not surprising.
Come on! This should not be a surprise to anyone who has studied history of the Catholic Church. It reeks of homosexuality from the first myth of the divine conception, 21 known gay Popes, Michael Angelo’s and Leonardo DiVinci art, thousands of gay priests, etc. You can not correct something that is part and parcel to what makes something. The Catholic Church was created as a state religion for the Roman Empire. The Truth is that this organization is stuck in a world where it can’t hide anymore.
1
Being gay doesn't make you a bad person. Being gay doesn't make you a good person either.
5
On a side note, this may be the first Betteridge's law violation I've seen in a while ... the answer to the headline ("Will right-wing homophobes exploit it") is "yes".
As to Martel’s motive for the book, I once asked an investigative journalist if he ever worried about opening a can of worms.
“No, I’m a can opener. What is in the can is society’s problem.”
2
Bruni writes "The sourcing of much 'In the Closet of the Vatican' is vague, and other Vatican experts told me...." Your soucing's a little light here.
"Other Vatican experts told me" doesn't cut it Mr. Bruni.
So there are a lot of gay men in the Vatican ? And among Catholic clergy in general?
This is news ? Ummm....
There are a lot of gay male priests in the Anglican church, too. The Anglican church has been ordaining gay men for generations, but is still debating the ordination of gay men (and no doubt gay women, too, now that we have women priests in the Anglican church).
What we should be discussing is why we Anglicans cling to our hypocrisy and pretence, and won't admit the truth. Or accept it.
3
A gay priest of a parish I grew up in refused to send the weekly cut of collections from his church to the diocesan seat until the bishop revealed the names of priests who had been credibly accused of sexual abuse of children. Many victims of clergy sexual abuse sought his sympathetic and uplifting counsel. They all told him what had happened to them. His masses were full to the rafters. Soon, the bishop himself was revealed to have molested dozens of boys in the most despicable ways imaginable. This heroic gay priest retired at 65, married the priest from the adjoining parish and they boht moved far, far away.
3
The movie Spotlight. Quotes 50% of priests are not celibate and 6% are pedophiles. The hypocrisy of the church is what conceals the predation on children.
1
Brilliant, Frank. Another arrow In the Homophobia quiver. And the Church will blame “ the Gays “ for child rapes and other abuse. The official whipping boys, sometimes literally. And never mind all the Nuns that have been raped, even impregnated by Priest and Bishops. That’s just boys being boys.
Disgusting. Religion: The worst idea in Human History.
Period.
6
I believe the most dangerous place in my community is the Catholic Church. STAY AWAY, young man.
4
Catholic boys are told some of them will be called by God to join the priesthood, and that they will recognize the calling in adolescence.
1
A monstrous institution gets another pinprick. Who cares?
1
This is no surprise to anyone who knows and grew up with Priests. By "know " I do not mean go to church or had to dinner 5 years ago. Almost all the priests in my Catholic Prep school were gay. One of my fiends was having sex with 4 of them , during classes in their residence.
My mother was very devote and Priests were regularly at the house , having cocktails and cigarettes and showing my Mom what they bought at BFO( BUYERS FACTORY OUTLET). She passed away decades ago and never knew. A decade later living in NYC I knew they were in the same Gay bars as I was.
That the Church is corrupt is no surprise. ALL INSTITUTIONS BECOME CORRUPT WITH CRONYISM OVER TIME. The Church is the oldest institution in the world. Hence MEGA- corruption.
The real problem with all of this is that they are in the faith business, when, in fact, they are all really selling FALSEHOODS.
6
I was raised in a Catholic family. If an international corporation was as complicit in protecting its sexual predator management team members as is the Roman Catholic organization people would stop buying its product and it would be shut down, one way or another, by the justice systems of the countries it operates within. People who continue to "buy" the services of the Catholic organization are as complicit in supporting its incredibly toxic and corrupt behavior as are the cardinals who protect pediphilia priests. It's layers upon layers of sickness and stink.
6
Death by a thousand cuts?
Let's hope so.
The sooner the pustulent, rotting corpse of this irredeemably corrupt criminal organization dies, the better off the world will be.
3
Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord, and all that, BUT i say bring it on!!! The Church deserves whatever it gets in blowback. They have been the sworn enemy of women since the beginning, shamelessly restricting our freedom and the right over our bodies.They have abused children since time immemorial.So if a few homophobes want to have at them, i say, let it fly. It couldn't happen to a nicer church.
3
Is anyone really surprised? I just don't like the hypocrisy and the sort of inbreeding. Of course most priests are gay! And o f course they deny it because of the Church's stance on homosexuality "love the sinner, hate the sin" thing. In other words, be gay but don't you dare really be gay or enjoy your God given sexuality. Weird and unnatural to the max. Gay people within the Church need to stand up and call out the hypocrisy if they care about their Church. I have nothing at all against gay priests, but let them come out, marry if they want, and let straight, gay, men and women be leaders and priests too. Problem solved. The freak show though, I find a little creepy especially within a religious institution. Hiring prostitutes, beating them up, that's a little too out there for me. Either way, I am a lapsed Catholic and agnostic and like the author of this book, now simply an observer. I just detest the hypocrisy and money that the child molestation cases have cost the Church. Money that could have been spent to feed the poor!
4
irish born, raised in california, parochial schools: all kinds of catholic around me.
the clergy is held to a standard of celibacy that is mostly impossible. as a result, many, if not most, "fail". therefore, whether straight or gay - everyone has to pretend nothing is going on.
add to that being gay was so unforgivable that joining the priesthood was, short of suicide, the honorable solution to the problem. the pedophilia festers as a result of repressed and tormented sexuality.
i've known many great people in the catholic church, including family members; but it is obvious a great reckoning is inevitable.
the church has been corrupt financially, politically, socially and religiously for far too long.
" The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
2
It is not the sex with consenting adult men that is the problem .
It is the priests who sodomized young teenage boys . Many have
been unable to function normally as they became adults. Those
victims and the priests who performed non- consensual sex
who should be the Vatican's focus.
3
I noted that posters here ignored the incendiary “click baiting” sub-headline and stayed focused (mostly) on the subject. Good, maybe that type of lazy, hate-mongering has run its course.
Time to sell all the Catholic churches worldly goods, give the money to the poor, and try something else. It truly is amazing how far the Catholic church has fallen during the past 50 years. One wonders what will take its place? Maybe the aliens (as in
UFO aliens) will give us a more interesting version of Saturn worship the next time.
2
Religious precepts are simply not powerful enough to impede the homo sapien need for human connection.
Mr. Bruni, it's your faith or your political party. You must choose.
If it is your faith, then nothing can move it. That is because you alone manifest it. If it is your political party then the attack is real.
This is the age of division and tribal formation. It pretty much seems to be true everywhere around the globe. That is because there are enough people, finally. Well, that, and resources are running out as we all deplete our only home base.
Have you qualified your 'faith' or is it rather your political party?
All religions were the first large political party after the tribes grew larger than a hundred or so people. Until only recently in our history has the leader of a nation been able to stand up to the leader of the religion. It's an ongoing political battle.
Let the leader's of the religion which you have pledged yourself too, decide how to correct it's course while you attend to your faith. If your faith and your religious political tribe no longer coincides then you met with other decisions. But as a member and not the leader, you have nearly no power for whatever changes you want to see made. That is why democracy was so attractive. Then political parties entered into it and now we are right back where we started throughout history.
I have always said: Alliance is voting with your wallet.
This is an interesting take on it. I have great sympathy for the gay/lesbian clergy who joined for a safe place to be in a time when there was no safe place. But the church, while harboring this community, has ostracized it publicly; has allowed LGBTQ kids to grow up feeling alienated from the church, from God -- from religion generally. It has allowed them to feel wrong, and that is its own grievous sin. Calling out the hypocrisy was inevitable.
And it's important. It's important to note that the same aged systems of control that have encouraged its people to vote against gay marriage and storm abortion clinics is not really that committed to its position on either of these contentious topics. It's important to note that this system of all-male control, which has shut out female leadership on shaky and misogynist grounds for most of its history, is wormy with corruption. The more light we can shine on this, the greater possibility of change. And change is desperately needed.
I hope the change doesn't root out gay priests -- I hope it ordains lesbian (and all other) nuns. I hope it leads to the church confirming and blessing rather than positioning itself against gay unions. I hope it leads to throwing this chaste business out the window: very few people are going to manage that. I hope it finds, excommunicates and prosecutes pedophiles, and offers genuine and heartfelt healing to victims.
1
These clubhouses of gay, child-sex abusing men have long ago been exposed so everybody can see what they have turned into over the decades.
So tell me, please, why do the legal authorities allow them to keep operating. Where does RICO come in, to close down these so-called "churches", and arrest the violators and enablers of the seemingly perpetual crimes? These are organizations that protect violent criminals, posing as religious organizations. What does it take to protect citizens from these brazen, sexually violent and organized men? Nothing that has been tried has worked.
4
I hope all discussion of this important matter will help. What if Jesus was (is) gay or bi-sexual? We may never know but we should treat everyone with dignity, respect and compassion.
3
Frank, anyone who is or has been a Catholic would not find this book a real surprise, but you have to truthful with yourself. As a former Catholic, I have no doubt that some men enter the priesthood precisely because they are gay and they can associate with other who are likewise. If that number is 80% in the Vatican (as the book says), most people, including me, would find it hard to believe. The book will stir some trouble but in the end this giant Catholic machine will still roll on and still have a billion people following it. Indoctrination is very difficult to get rid of, specially if it starts at an early age. I am just glad that we are at least talking about it in a major newspaper. Hopefully it will open more eyes. I would however be very sad for the gay men in the Catholic priesthood who have done nothing wrong and who are very good people serving their community.
1
What a shame.
For all the ugliness, duplicity, prejudice, and spite that brought us here, this, with Francis, could be a shining moment of renewal for a Church wasting away from the inside.
This, this right here, could be the moment of rebirth, of re-connection with the people and their world, of a church experiencing salvation of its own. As someone below says, a "Come to Jesus" moment.
In my ignorance, I believe this is a chance, a step, a miracle Francis would embrace.
I know for a fact the darker Church, the Douthat Church of the Modern Day Inquisition, will be be opposed in vicious, even deadly earnest by those who see only the church they choose to see, the one that advantages them, that supports their personal bias.
A poor bias it is, that makes them want to die on a hill artificially and arbitrarily constructed by men, quite apart from any message from God or the bible.
Political decisions (priestly chastity/celibacy and anti-abortion, both) that have at long last exposed the venality of the Church itself, and that of its most lauded members.
Francis can save this, make it glorious, make it better. My bet is 'they' will not allow it, and this Church will continue its sad slide toward oblivion.
How do these ignorant, angry people ignore the lesson that God had his biggest impact, made known his best message, turned the Earth his way when he assumed the reality of being human, exposed, tempted, hurt and afraid. Like the rest of us.
There are gay men who ally with women and others who are marginalized, and there are gay men who seek patriarchal privilege above all else. Nothing new here. White gay right wing men have proven to be as dangerous as their heterosexual counterparts--sometimes more dangerous as denial and fear of being outed propels them to decry all things queer. There is no excuse, for instance, for Log Cabin Republicans other than that they are willing to sell their souls, to be part of the harm directed at LGBT people, because of greed and privilege.
The Catholic church is the quintessential patriarchal nightmare. Those in power justify their hypocrisy on a daily basis. And they think women are sub-human?!? Not fit for their ranks? Time's Up.
Raping children and nuns while being morally smug says all we need to know. Gay, het, whatever, The Catholic church has a long history of causing more harm than good, and the Vatican et. al. should be "outed" for all of it.
I speak as a recovering Catholic. Gay men with good conscience should not be part of it any more than I would be as a progressive lesbian feminist. Get out.
2
Mr Bruni is right. Sexual abuse is the real subject, no matter a priest's sexual orientation - and last week's coverage of nuns who have been raped in the church - is sickening proof https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/world/europe/pope-francis-sexual-abuse-nuns.html
With the devastation of widespread sexual abuse irreparably damaging the church both morally and financially, and, far worse, destroying the lives of untold numbers of its followers who have been abused - this is the tipping point: the Catholic Church should welcome male and female priests and nuns to participate in the institution of marriage (to real people, not just to Jesus.)
2
It's simple: Let priests marry. Quit this farcical celibacy which only seems to make sex even more enticingly taboo. This vow of chastity is unenforcable and quixotic to begin with. And while celibacy makes Catholic clergy special (look how sacrificial we are compared to those worldly clerics), it draws a less integrated element to its ranks.
Finally, recognize the origin of celibacy. The Church was a thousand years old before it definitively took a stand in favor of celibacy in the twelfth century at the Second Lateran Council held in 1139. It was mostly about keeping power in the church and not disbursed to families. No families means power remains concrescent in the Church. It was more a matter of financial convenience than walking in Christ's footsteps.
Celibacy is against God's nature and (in many cases) draws sexually immature men to the institution. I mean talk about a set up for failure.
When I was old enough to reason and understood what celibacy was, I was nonplussed that an organization would even allow this and that clergymen would wilingly embrace it. Imagine a 10 year old being nonplussed.
I don't know why I'm even writing this. Every sane person knows celibacy is inimical to normality, but like so many goofy traditions manifest in society, it's blithely accepted and here we are discussing it like it's a valid choice.
3
As I read the first few paragraphs of the column, I was mentally putting the book on my reading list. By the end I had taken it off. Not sure what Mr. Bruni's intention was in writing this, but he clearly is disturber by it.
1
"But I'm bothered and even scared."
Buck up Frank. You're a journalist, remember? Getting at the truth is and always will be the point. Perhaps Martel has an agenda. Perhaps right wingers will exploit the truth for an agenda (they usually do, don't they?) All of that's irrelevant. Truth matters and sunshine is the best disinfectant.
I too am a gay man. Older than you by decades who has spent the better part of adulthood fighting for gay rights. Fighting for AIDS funding. Fighting against homophobia. Always there are the liars and the closeted homophobes--the cowards who refuse to acknowledge their homosexuality, theirs, yours and my personal truth.
Some are closeted for profit (I won't be made partner!) Others for personal gain (I won't be made a bishop!) and others from personal shame. I am sad for the last type but sick of all three. They are a stain on our community and a detriment to our full integration into a world outside of a closet. Self-loathers give bigots all the ammunition they need to attack gays.
I say drag them out and be prepared to fight the right-wingers as we have before, as we will again. Even in today's post-truth culture, Truth retains a power I hope it never loses. Our job isn't to perpetuate lies, it's to fight dissemblers.
4
The sex abuse scandal is already conflated. The general public struggles with understanding the issue because it has been framed as pedophilia. The vast majority of cases were more specifically ephebophilia and hebephilia and male to male. Mr. Bruni fails to do anything about that distinction and almost no one does. So why that level of conflation?
2
What difference does that conflation make if the adolescent is below the age of consent or is the victim of sexual abuse? Don't obfuscate the issue.
2
I assume you take that from the discredited Jon Jay report?
The management of this sadist superstition has done whatever it can to skew statistics in their favor and this is just one area where they have done so.
Purposely ignoring the dsmv definition for pedophillia and then self reporting for Jon Jay is practically a Mafia approach.
@ZA
The solution to the problem is not served by calling it something inaccurate. What motivates the lack of specificity?
1
What strikes me deepest is how priests of character who might just happen to be gay are loath to call out misdeeds. The gay stigma itself is at the problem’s root here. An institution that self-censors itself is bound to scandal, given the unreasonable dictum of celibacy.
1
Some findings from scientific studies for everyone to keep in mind:
Celibacy does not correlate to proclivity to commit sex abuse
Homosexuality does not correlate to proclivity to commit sex abuse
Rate of sex abuse in Catholic Church is the same as in the general population and lower than it is in public schools
Thank you
1
The far-right "Catholic" groups are the ones who tried hardest to cover-up the sexual abuse. They were the hand-maidens of the abuse because they believe that church rhetoric is more important for the dopey masses than is church behavior.
That said, I am sure they will continue to try to take advantage of any resource to aid their obfuscation of fact in the service of their idea of religion as a matter of dominance and submission.
1
Why are American taxpayers subsidizing this tax exempt "religion" in every city and state?
5
The book is not the problem. Lies are the problem. The early church betrayed Jesus when it lied about who first witnessed his resurrection: Mary Magdalene. Discrediting Mary to elevate Peter was step one, followed by declaring that only men had the authority of apostles, and the church would forever place authority in the line of apostolic succession, the gnostic gospels with the divine feminine were suppressed as heresy-- it goes on and on. For decades - centuries? - a huge number of priests are pretending to be celibate and condemning homosexuality when they're gay. A church built on lies is a house of cards.
Why is any of this surprising? Once the Church established the rule that clergy could not be married, all that did was make a de facto advertisement to gay males: "You're safe here and will meet lots of like-minded associates."
3
About 20 years ago, the Kansas City Star did a series on one class at one seminary. At that point, those priests should have been in their early 40s, with years to go in their careers. Instead, a large number of them had died of AIDS. The Star's reporters were pilloried for the reports: how dare them make those claims about dead priests? Homophobic people will see what they always see. Truth doesn't matter to them. It's all about illusion.
1
IMO the Pope knew this book was due out, so he spoke up about priests abusing others to get ahead of the storm, defuse it.
There are no coincidences at this level of play.
1
Until we know the number, exact or the best calculation as possible of the number of gay priests in the church, this book is not an expose', it is sensationalism of a real issue in the church not based on facts. If we constantly conflate pedophilia with homosexuality, we will never accept the fact that gay men and women will be in the church. These are not the same. Perhaps releasing the priesthood from celibacy will greatly reduce the incidence of "unlawful" sexual behavior conducted by the priests. Then we will have to decide what happens with the children born of these couplings, who pays for them and what is to be done in cases of divorce. This is a tremendous issue which the church deals with in secrecy.
It seems clearer and clearer to me that the entire human race is unable to come to grips with human sexuality.
1
Of course. The obvious has been mastered. Thank you MOTO.
Since gross hypocrisy is a given for me about organized religion of any stripe, frankly, I could care less if 80% of the Vatican hierarchy are gay and sexually active, except as concerns more powerful priests preying on younger gay priests who perhaps compromise their “careers” if they don’t submit or report the behavior. What concerns me infinitely more is the horrendous child abuse, and now the admission two weeks ago by Pope Francis that there is rampant sexual abuse, I believe he even called it “sexual slavery,” of nuns and novices, often young, poor girls in Africa and South America, by priests and bishops in those developing countries. I heard several long interviews on the BBC last week with young women from Peru, Nigeria, and Germany who were abused this way and it was sickening and heartbreaking in equal measure.
2
As a Protestant, I glean most of my information about the state of modern Catholicism from the news. And. Every. Story. Is. About. Sex. Abuse.
Priests raping children.
Church leaders covering up and perpetuating the rape of children.
Priests sexually abusing nuns.
Now, priests beating their male prostitutes.
Yes, there are bad apples in every bunch. But, that's not what's going on here. This is all the apples, in all the countries of the world, including the head apples. In other words, the Catholic church is merely a highly-structured, well-financed, global sex abuse and sex trafficking ring. A sex trafficking ring that gives quarter to pedophiles and child rapists.
In my capacity as an attorney, I have worked on behalf of victims of sex trafficking. There is one element all of these perverts rely upon in order to continue their criminal enterprise. It's their many enablers. And, it's no different with the Catholic church.
I used to feel bad for Catholic parishioners, but, now I tend to view them as enablers, instead. Look at the recent sex abuse report from Pennsylvania, and now New Jersey! You could make one in every state and every country.
I think about my friends blithely sending their kids to communion and confirmation classes. I wouldn't let my young children anywhere near a Catholic priest.
There is no more room to say, "not my church," or "not my priest."
4
A reading of William Manchester’s A World Lit Only by Fire will dispel the notion that the Catholic clergy is mainly associated with gay sex. Manchester describes a long history of heterosexual debauchery from the very top of the organization. It’s a fascinating, horrifying read.
1
I think that Frank is leaving out the most talked about and disturbing aspect of the Church scandals involving the sexual behavior and orientation of those in the Catholic Priesthood; the predatory nature of some of the priests and the impact on the victims, 80% of whom were males. Many, many thousands of young people were victimized while Rome fiddled.
70% of these victims were post-pubescent males aged 10-17, so same-sex predation was taking place not pedophilia; according to the long 2004 study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. It's long; suggest you read the executive summary. http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/child-and-youth-protection/upload/The-Nature-and-Scope-of-Sexual-Abuse-of-Minors-by-Catholic-Priests-and-Deacons-in-the-United-States-1950-2002.pdf
Like many these days I could care less about a man's sexual orientation. If a priest took vows of celibacy and then broke them with another priest, a layman or a male prostitute, that's between the priest and God. However what does concern us are the victims and the fact that the Church allowed these young, vulnerable people, mostly boys, to be supervised by same-sex predators.
Many Catholics and lookers-on wondered why so little was done to intercede with predatory priests but it has been clear for a while that Church leader's were compromised by their own closeted sexual orientation and predilections. We don't need this book to provide the tawdry details...
3
The Jon Jay college report is not credible as it based on self reporting by the church.
Furthermore the Jon Jay report does not follow the DSMV guidelines for description of pedophillia which state that 13 is the age cutoff so the church attempted to shift allot of its reported victims out of that category.
Clearly the Jon Jay report was a further attempt at coverup and damage control by the church.
2
Mr.Bruni, this book has a HUGE saving grace (all puns intended) : it shows, if that was needed, that God does not exist. The fact that "the body of Christ" (the literal self-definition of the Catholic Church) is a colossal pyramid of lies is proof that a moral god does not exist... and all human notions of god and gods always made god moral.
Now, will homophobes use this book ? Of course, and alas. But the Catholic Church brought it upon itself, and, to a lesser degree, so did the gay world.
Being outed as a gay when one is a catholic priest at the Vatican does not mean physical death, or even physical attack.
Therefore, if gays knew that gay clerics were among the declarators of homophobia, well, those clerics should have been outed long ago.
The same going for the many, many gays in extreme-right wing political parties.
You can't have your cake and eat it.
2
We have read the recent stories of nuns being raped and forced sexual spaces of some priests. And now this. And before this, years of stories and lawsuits by sexual abuse of children by priests.
How on earth has celibacy remained a goal of such a large and old institution? It clearly doesn’t work.
3
I once knew a seminarian, who identified as bisexual and who believed in the celibacy he felt called to, but whose main problem was being “hit” on by professors at his seminary! He told me the message he was getting there was: “Don’t do it with the laity. Do with with the clerics.”
That was eye-opening!
4
I left the church when I started college over 50 years ago. I am gay but that's not why I left. In the intervening years I have joined with Catholic friends to attend Sunday mass. Based on my not very scientific observations mass attendance is way down. I meet fewer and fewer devout, practicing Catholics other than Hispanic immigrants. In fact, the local church in my neighborhood would probably cease to operate without Hispanics and they have no priests living in the rectory because services are conducted by Franciscans from a nearby monastery.
In the movie "Sister Act" Whoopi Goldberg argues with Maggie Smith that the church must "get butts in pews." The latest news reports of abuse may peel off a few more Catholics but, from what I've seen over the past half century, many more have already voted with their feet and moved on.
2
My mother,a devout catholic,kind of forced me to became an altar boy.Fortunate the priest was into married women.
3
Revealing that many in the Catholic clergy are gay is a "bombshell"? Perhaps as a non-Catholic, my outsider perspective differs from the flock but... duh? Is anyone surprised by this?
The church is founded on secrecy, repression, guilt, and power. Sexual orientation is entirely beside the point.
2
Let married men be priests. Let women be priests. Decentralize decision-making. These three steps could help the Catholic Church begin to get through the current existential threats it faces.
1
This is nothing new, it is another confirmation of what has been known or suspected for a long time. The Catholic Church has a serious problem with sex. It's no married priests, celibacy rule, and exclusion of women has led to a twisted culture that breeds pedophiles and covers up their crimes as a matter of church policy.
As of now the church has become an evil in the world and should be shutdown and its leadership thrown in jail. Not for their orientation, I could care less, but for their crimes and cover up.
Sexuality is a normal and beautiful part of being human. Its suppression leads to perversion, as forcefully demonstrated by the Catholic Church. To have a hope of continuing, the church must immediately:
End Celibacy
Allow women in all church offices
Allow married priests
Rework the recruitment and training of priests
End the second class status of nuns and their exploitation
Until changes can take hold, no priest will ever be alone with a young person
2
The times are right for exposure chronicles. The Catholic Church is knee-deep in accusations and scandals . . and "Closet" is simply a religious version of "Fear."
The ancient Catholic texts and tradition requiring chastity of the pure male hierarchical structure of the church is inhumane- period! This practice is largely stemming from the immaculate conception of The Virgin Mary and is in (w)holy contradiction of God's commandment to procreate, let alone the laws of nature. (Clerical) chastity counters one of the the deepest of human natures to mate or otherwise experience physical intimacy with others.
The catholic church is clearly now inept in its mission to propagate, and can no longer be a moral guiding force that can contribute to civilization. That is- until they purge themselves at the vatican of ruling male protocol, elevate the authority of the nuns and lay women devotees to become ordained priest, cardinals, and yes, Popes! Until then Catholicism will remain imbalanced and dysfunctional.
2
Gay priests — though none of would have identified themselves that way in the early Church — have likely existed from the earliest days of the Church. But leadership was drawn on the basis of integrity, modest lifestyle, humility, maturity as well as chastity. These virtues were considered essential to the high calling of service. What perverted the selection of later clergy was the direct interference by Medieval royals and nobility. They usurped the appointment of bishops and abbots by popes and Church leaders and the people of God to place their own royal or noble male relatives as power hungry greed driven bishops and abbots of the wealthiest dioceses and monasteries. These royals and nobles had no spiritual inclination whatsoever but saw a Church position as their consolation prize as royals and nobles who were were not first born. This injected a princely lifestyle and royal privilege as the influential model for the Church hierarchy. All the worst excesses of clericalism soon follow this period and finally led to the Reformation. Today, Pope Francis seeks a return to the authentic model a Church leadership based upon Jesus’ leadership — Jesus who was the meek and humble shepherd and authentic servant leader who willingly lays down his life for His sheep. The cynical jaded clerical world of the “princes” of the Church in the Vatican must go. That is the real problem — not homosexuals— not heterosexuals— clericalism.
During the pontificate of Julius II, the pope who hired Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling, scandalmongers spread the rumor that Julius was homosexual, and even identified a boy that he was supposed to have molested. They also claimed that Michelangelo was homosexual. It was an easy rumor to spread in a culture where "normal men" prided themselves on sexual prowess and nobody could understand the concept of a man staying celibate.
500 years later, the M.O. of scandalmongers hasn't changed.
@Charlesbalpha
That Michelangelo WAS gay is a historical certitude, for which we have none other than Michelangelo himself to thank. Do your homework.
1
Nonsense.
There is no class of persons more potentially detrimental to the survival of the human race than those who do not conform to the two naturally procreative biological DNA genetic human genders. Both celibacy and LGBTQ are fine as long as they are a minority.
The notion that being gay is what is wrong here is diva narcissist fantasy. Sexual assault and harassment is the evil that is devoid of gender identity. Pedophilia is the sin that has nothing to do with sexual orientation. The callous corrupt cruel cynical hypocrisy of condemning the LGBTQ while in the closet is despicable and inhumane.
Jesus and his disciples could have been a gay pride parade. But the fact that the Three Marys were present at the crucifixion, the Empty Tomb and the resurrected Christ is a profound counter to the inherent misogyny and patriarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.
1
If this book helps bring the Catholic Church to a point where they allow priests to marry whomever they want, admit women to the priesthood, and support family planning then the author will have done nothing but good.
1
Um... women in the clergy? Hello?
Women have long kept the Catholic Church from falling apart, as priests, they would go a long way to fixing the Church’s many problems!!!
1
Harsh restrictions on sexuality is a common feature of most religions. Catholicism is not unique. Severe sexual abuse within the Southern Baptist Convention has recently been revealed. Systematic covering up of pedophilia perpetrated by ultra-orthodox rabbis in Brooklyn was uncovered several years ago.
Sexual abuse occurs outside of religious contexts, of course, but statistics indicate to a much lesser degree.
Could it be that religion, i.e., an institution built on supernatural belief incompatible with sanity in the 21st century, is the problem? Let's start by ridding humanity of religion and relegating it to the ancient and medieval times it belongs to. If you believe that a man can walk on water or that a sixth-century merchant who experienced visions was transported to heaven on a winged horse, you have surrendered reason and with it the capacity to think rationally about sex or anything else.
Since when people who collectively believe in magical nonsense based on bronze-age pre-scientific "revealed" scripture should make rules about how anyone should live?
2
Maybe all this emphasis on controlling women’s freedom and reproductive health was a ploy to divert attention. It is time for women to become priests and it is time for men to shut up.
2
As reported by the NYT the other day, heterosexual priests are accused of rape of nuns in the state of Kerala in India.
Power corrupts, gay or straight. Celibacy is very hard for all, except for asexuals maybe.
1
All of the above, and then some. Good, evil, Stone Age fairy tales, reproductive oppression, hypocrisy. To me, the immediate, easily defined issue is that we have a clearly-defined, global organization that by our laws is a criminal conspiracy. If the organization itself permits, encourages, and conceals actions that, in the wider world, are considered criminal, but which are given a pass because of our vaunted tolerance of (large) religious entities, the rest of us are being hypocrites.
I don’t care if a church worships satanic goats, a space alien apocalypse, or sex with other species: I can’t measure their benefit to society, the veracity of their beliefs, or even if they need not pay taxes. I do care if they encourage, abet, facilitate violation of the laws the rest of us have evolved for the higher purpose of a better, more just society.
The Catholic Church is clearly at a point in its long history where its utility as an arm of government has ended, and with that, its protected, supra-legal status. Maybe it can shape up; if it dithers too long, it’s bankrupt.
2
Eight years ago I wrote a letter to the NYT about a young man (a beloved family friend) who confided in me that he had been sexually assaulted by the Parish priest while an alter boy. His life was ruined by the trauma of those repeated assaults and, as an adult, he committed suicide. Yet here we are, so many years after the Washington Post's earth shattering reporting expose. Enough talking - the church must COME CLEAN - no more cover ups at any level. If no full admission, contrition, and reparations, there is no justice and there will be no healing....and no more Catholic church.
2
The sad part is I am sure the right wing, in the church and without, will use this as a defense, that the problem is gays being evil people. The 'Sainted' JPII tried that, O'Malley, Law's successor in Boston tried it, claiming "a gay conspiracy", and I am sure evangelical Christians and their allies will point to this. Of course, it doesn't matter that the church abuse scandal grew well beyond the US or other 'liberalized' countries, and more importantly, that the abuses often had nothing to do with sex or sexual orientation, like the Magdalene Laundries, the abuse of kids in schools in Ireland, the horrible orphanages where the kids of unwed mothers were treated horribly. The right wing is looking for a scapegoat, so if the "holy church" acted badly, why, of course, it isn't the church, it is those evil gays who have infected it........leaving out of course that JPII's response to the abuse crisis was to wash his hands of it, the Bishops that covered for the priests were not all gay, they refuse to recognize what people in places like Ireland have realized, that the abuse crisis was a failing of the church and its leaders that had nothing to do with sexual orientation and everything to do with abuse of power and the idea that 'do as I say, not as I do" works.
The truth about the leadership and organization of the Catholic Church needs to be exposed. For remaining Catholics there will need to be "a come to Jesus moment" on whether or not they want to stay and grow the Church.
The reality is that conservative Catholics will blame, condemn, and threaten homosexuals (they are doing this now). Right-Wing homophobes will use this as an excuse to purify.
At some point we as humans need to walk away from these man made institutions.
1
Yes, right-wing evangelical homophobes (who also don't like Catholics anyway) will exploit this news. (Not really "news," though, is it?)
Still, nice to see the rank hypocrisy of the Church's anti-gay agenda.
So no one can be gay except the bishops and cardinals, hey?
To simplify a very complex topic is risky, but here goes.
In the yoga model, a human being has a vertical axis along which energy centers are arrayed. These are called chakras. There are different descriptions but a classic one indicates seven chakras: a base, sex, the will (below the navel) the heart (the center), the voice (at the throat), high human knowledge (the "third eye") and a crown, referring to God or totality. (Other chakras lie beyond the body.)
This is a differentiated energy system that needs to work in a concerted way. The science of all this is prolific and confused. subtle and arduous. The best ways of entering the dimension of the chakras use the breath and meditation; and take time.
Authorities in the region of the Himalayas, where this kind of energy has long been recognized, would do the world a great service if an unbiased and scientific description and teaching could be developed for the chakras. But the countries involved would themselves have to remember and impart order to what they once knew!
This stands as one of humanity's most urgent tasks: we are facing chaos.
Now turning to the Catholic Church.From the vantage point of the entire array of human energies, it does seem unwise to exclude one essential energy, sex, from the possibilities a human has to develop, acquire self-understanding, and co-exist in harmony.
So, instead on focusing on scandal, let's work to understand the human organism from the yoga vantage point. Can it hurt?
Many years ago I worked with an ex-priest (he'd been a priest for about 20 years). He was gay. He said very much the same thing...a majority of priests are gay.
2
Whether the problem is child sexual abuse by clergy or closeted gay clergy, the root cause is patriarchy. In order to fundamentally address these problems, you must dismantle it.
1
The current strain of Christianity does not represent the teachings of Christ. Instead, it represents the philosophy of Paul - meanspirited, self righteous, controlling and small minded.
Christ accepted everyone. His message was simple and beautiful - "do unto others as how you would like done onto you". Paul was most like a gay schizophrenic who was ashamed of himself and laid out a great blame game to shame people into blind obedience.
Sexuality is not the issue with the church. It is the desire to control others in a very rigid way.
3
It's not that all gay men are "twisted characters of stealth…and…deception who band together in eccentric societies with odd rituals."
It's the other way around. Catholocism, as an eccentric society with odd rituals and patriarchal hierarchy entrusted with obedient choir boys and novices is the sort of existence apart from society that appeals to sweet souls unable to function in a society demanding their lives revolve around conspicuous conquest of women AND to twisted characters drawn to ritual predation of innocents male and female (perhaps having been indoctrinated thusly).
Many gays flock to same-sex, highly disciplined, ascetic lifestyles—asexual priesthood, macho armed forces, sports/gyms, scouts, seeking others of like mind who might rub off on them—one way or the other.
Reading The Da Vinci Code [SPOILER ALERT] I couldn't believe how long it took to tell a lapsed Catholic who'd seen her dad in a sex cult and ritual suicide the tamer topic he's getting at. With all the talk of the favored disciple Jesus loved I thought, "finally, what I wondered for decades," a homoromantic aspect to the bond. No, typical heteronormativity: it's a female.
Those who seek to divide us don't stop at politics. Christianity isn't just flawed humans who seek its refuge, it's Christ's example. Someone should defend that. Like, the church?
No sex outside marriage? Blackmail for being gay? Let priests marry, including same-sex. Gentle souls will find one another, twisted types rooted out.
2
Christ said nothing about how priests should be celibate. In fact, the teaching of the Bible is Gd created man to marry a(one) woman and not divorce her unless there was really something terrible. .this is biblical teaching. The bible also teaches a teaching of modesty and against materialism. All this gold and wealth and requirinv male celibacy none of this is biblical. If you believe in Christ just follow the teachings of the Bible. The Church is a corrupt, political organization which is not really representing all the time the true teachings and why would a normal man want to live under tbeir requirement to never have a family when Gd said this is not good for people. Although I like how the pope defends environmentalism and at least pays lip service to some of the teachings of Jesus.
I’ll just throw this out.
Last month The Pope, in regard to the sexual misconduct in the Catholic Church claimed that the priests were not to blame since this was the work of The Devil.
Can you imagine ?
3
No doubt "right wing homophobes" will exploit this. So too will left wing ecclesiophobes. Anti-Catholicism is particularly virulent in the United States where it runs rampant among a variety of social classes.
Yet, the faithful will still show up and raise their children in the church. Fear is a powerful tool the Catholic hierarchy has perfected over the centuries.
1
@RVB Really? I've been a baptized Catholic for 71 years. I'm not afraid of anybody. I'm ashamed of the betrayal, but believe every canon of doctrine and the teachings of the New Testament. People shouldn't conflate the Body of Christ, that is the Church, with the administration.
In my long life I have known a married woman who had a long-term affair with a priest and begat his child; known a series of priests who were gay but celibate as far as I know; known several gay men who attempted to join the priesthood, entered a seminary, gave up and entered the closet instead; and finally a seminarian who left and married a woman and another who lived openly with another man.
The problem is the stupidity of insisting on celibacy.
Let religious have normal sexual relations and family lives.
Allow women the opportunity to enter the priesthood and not to be forever the servants of anyone who is male.
2
I had a discussion with a friend more than 20 years ago hypothesizing that homosexuality would be more common among priest than the general population. My reasoning was that many homosexuals would see their desires as perverted due to cultural pressure and thus logically gravitate to a celibate life in a controlled environment. This same reasoning would also apply to pedophiles. In both cases, though they seek a path that they believe will help them control their desires, they are mistaken to think that sexual desires can be so easily controlled.
1
I was assaulted in a Catholic Church here in Providence R.I. when I was seven.
There were three of them a Priest and another man who was his "Friend" and a Nun.
The priest who assaulted me was primarily a Sadist. He clearly took his pleasure in seeing others powerless and in pain.
And from my experience that is the landscape that the Catholic church operates in, a Sadist - Masochist one.
The "Conservative" Catholic will make any excuse to vilify gays so they can hold fast with the Sadist - Masochist worldview they cannot seem to live without.
I grew up around openly gay people and have had openly gay friends throughout my life and none of them ever tried to hurt me.
Was the priest who sexually assaulted me gay? Certainly but I think that was a very much so a secondary trait of his.
The priest followed me around from 7 to 16 taking every opportunity to try to psychologically hurt me. Those actions had nothing to do with homosexuality and everything to do with Sadism. His crimes were vast and yet he only spent a small time in jail in Haiti when he was caught by a young woman at an orphanage there and had him arrested, the church worked to free him.
The church protected my predator Sadist priest probably because he had dirt on them and probably because Sadism is a fundamental pillar of Catholicism.
I agree with Mr. Bruni that the "Conservative" will likely use this book as a tool. They will use it as a Sadistic tool to punish the innocent and protect the guilty.
4
My problem with this is that it takes even one second of attention from the raping of children, a crime.
Do I care if anyone is gay?
Or lesbian?
Or heterosexual?
Or asexual?
No. I am an ancient, atheist old woman who once was straight and now is (sadly) asexual.
However, even when I was delightfully sexually active, other people's focus was not my business.
Do I care if the entire clergy is gay?
Nope.
But here is what I DO care about:
Crimes, in particular, crimes against children.
Crimes against women. "Sexual slavery" is a crime and the Pope last week did not say "manipulation". He said "sexual slavery".
Institutional protection from other institutions, police, journalists, educators, etc., that keep this whole mafiosa scheme going.
Tax-exemption. If the Constitution states that "Congress shall set no law", then exactly how is it that this church or any church received "tax-exemption"?
In terms of wealth, the Catholic Church is second in the US. The Mormon Church is Number One.
That's a load of tax-exempt billions.
As an atheist, I'm sick of both footing their bills AND having to tend to those whom those churches have harmed, raped, impregnated, fed booze to or damaged by sneering at because they have the wrong genitals.
I'm sick of the whole bunch of religionists and that includes the 'decent ones' that never speak up when other churches want to "discriminate".
Gays aren't my problem.
Rapists are.
1235
@rosa Gays aren't the problem, hypocrisy and double standards of the church are.
59
@rosa Couldn't agree with you more. This almost sounds like a plea for mercy because, surprise, it's the poor derided gays running it. One difference with your comment. I thought that the Catholic Church was the largest private landowner in America. Is it now the Mormon Church? Regardless, it is dehumanizing that we all have to support these rich, degrading religions with a tax exemption.
103
@rosa
Rosa, I think I love you! You have said what I have been thinking for years and I believe you are 100% correct. And what about Scientology? I've had it with these "churches". I've had it with all churches but how do we stop them? I don't think it's possible, especially in the U.S. where they have so much power and you can't get elected dog-catcher if you say you don't believe in god.
131
The Roman Catholic Church was a thousand years old before it took a stand in favor of celibacy in the twelfth century at the Second Lateran Council held in 1139.
Isn't it time for the Catholic Church to join the 21st century and allow priests and nuns to marry and then God forbid embrace the highly impossible acceptance of gay and lesbian marriage?
Such a radical papal edict would take a serious miracle and another century to be enacted even if it could conceivably mitigate a small part of the epidemic of rampant abuse in the church.
1
We should all be grateful someone has the guts to step into this twisted and hypocritical organisation and tell us about this aspect of it. Mr. Bruni's criticism is as weak as his praise is faint, and there will be many others trying to make points off this book. But someone has to make a start taking this twisted place apart, and we need to keep pulling at the threads like this. Seeing who gets upset is interesting.
2
The Catholic church is the only major global force that I am aware of that places the poor and the powerless at the forefront of its concerns. That this is undermined by its rotting institutional culture is endlessly disturbing. I'm not a Catholic and what limited experience I've had with priests has not been reassuring. Nevertheless, if only for the elevation of the material and spiritual needs (or emotional needs, if you wish) of the lowest strata of the world's people, the Church, for all of its hypocrisies and outright crimes, remains important - at least until some other global force assumes the mantle.
1
The issue here is celibacy. I wouldn't suggest that the higher up a priest is in the Church, the more likely he is to engage in any kind of sexual activity- I don't think hypocrisy and corruption necessarily correlate with status- but the denial of normality, of the human condition, can only lead to internal rot. That is true in any human activity or edifice.
Whether the priests are homosexual or heterosexual has nothing to do with whether they are faithful to their vows. I’m sure there are many heterosexuals who have not been faithful to their vows. But that does not mean that they are criminals or morally depraved. Sin is a part of the church. Let he/she who is without sin cast the first stone. If the conduct is criminal then there should be penal consequences for the behavior.
No one needs a conduit to God, but the church has long operated as God's gatekeeper. What hubris! And a good racket, to boot.
The church I was raised in follows the Bible; has two "readers" (instead of preachers or clergy) who perform services. They are democratically elected every three years, and are generally male/female. Those elected have been both gay and straight, as have our board members. The church operates from a manual, and is worldwide. We're not in the papers much, which I've always appreciated. Not a lot of scandals.
The members aren't told who to love, advised for or against birth control or sex and the church takes no political positions. A core tenet is that we, as children of God, have the direct ability to talk and listen to God and be guided rightly in how to live our lives. If a change of course is needed, we go to God to work it out. It's on us, as it should be. We are each individually able, and accountable.
The founder of the church was female. The worldwide membership is growing. I would not think of trading my religious beliefs of having my own relationship with God to one that funnels all contact with God through priests, Bishops, and the infuriatingly meaningless "thoughts and prayers" for anything.
Old time religious gender and orientation discrimination are the root of our most pernicious evils in society today. There are so many other options today.
2
@AmesNYC: Where in the Bible does it say that the Church should be democratic? Jesus says to Peter, "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you declare bound on earth will be bound in heaven; whatever you declare loosed on earth will be loosed in heaven." Jesus never asked his disciples, “Raise your hands if you think we should go to Capernaum” or, “Who is in favor of Judas being our treasurer?” Nor is endorsement of democratic civil government anywhere in the Bible. "Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution; whether to a king or one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right." "I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority. "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's."
As painful as the road getting there may be, the best solution for Mr. Bruni's concerns is truth. What the Church needs is sunshine and fresh air. Whether this book contributes to truth and sunshine I don't know. But even if it doesn't, maybe it will prompt efforts by others to examine these issues and get to the truth.
If Pope Francis wants to reform his church, he needs help to do it by people of good will.
3
Lord Acton said, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Recall that this 1887 adage referred to the Vatican.
6
That Catholic bishops forbid research into the sexuality of clergy puts them in the same category as (US) Congressional Republicans who passed the (still existing) Dickey amendment that forbids the Federal government from researching the epidemiology of gun violence.
In the bishops' case, they just don't want to know; in the Republicans' case, they already know, but don't want it widely known.
3
I found this an interesting article, but I also read the article with the embedded link by Andrew Sullivan in which he argues for honesty about sexual orientation in the Church.
Mr. Bruni raises some legitimate concerns about the effect of acknowledging the number of gay men among the clergy, however, I find Mr. Sullivan’s argument for honesty much more persuasive. Refusing to deal openly with clerical sexual orientation only perpetuates the issues of the power this information has to distort relationships among the hierarchy and clergy and the clergy with the people.
At least in the United States I believe that most parishioners would applaud priests who came out, as occurred in the case described by Mr. Sullivan, if they were serving their parishioners well.
2
Mr. Bruni is concerned about the potential damage to all gays by exposing the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church and gay priests, who protect pedophiles to protect themselves. But think about the daily cultural damage done to all women - as the Church continues to systematically exclude women from the Church hierarchy. Let the "sun shine in" on this archaic, regressive, and increasingly dysfunctional institution.
4
This does suggest, even if the figures are half, are these the Men to be deciding what roles women should play in the church?
4
This comes as a shock--said absolutely no one. Since celibacy became the rule for the priesthood, it has always been a haven for gay men.
Being gay is a natural condition--not something new. Social ostracism of gay men, supported BTW by church teaching, has provided the church a reservoir of young men for the priesthood and for monasteries.
Molestation arises out of sexual repression, and is certainly not limited to, or even more prevalent in, any particular sexual orientation.
5
I’m sympathetic to Mr. Bruni’s concerns, but truth and transparency must always be the winner. And if you believe in Jesus, you would believe he would agree.
As we have painfully learned when presented a choice between truth and the survival of an institutions, truth must win. Penn State, previous Catholic Archdioceses and Bishop scandals, the Air Force Academy, University Of Southern California, Tailbook, U.S. Women’s Gymnastics, just to name a few.
169
@Scott
But usually doesn’t. That is why it is so memorable when it does that can instantly recall those exceptions. Usually the lie that protects the institution prevails. Tens of Millions of Americans will go home from work today and drink too much this weekend precisely because they live with such a lie at their work everyday.
13
In the 60's a book was published and quickly suppressed by the church, it was called, " The Great Apostolic Blunder Machine "
It addressed this material in depth and was successfully suppressed. It reminds me that an organization, that is not accountable to any laws or societal norms is always going to be troubled by lawlessness. IMHO, they should have a come to Jesus moment and embrace and accept the Gay's in their organization, and act legally when they find clergy that break laws, they are so far above the law, and slaves to their own ignorance about human nature.
1
The convergence of homosexuality and pedophilia isn't new or surprising or some contemporary paranoia or misunderstanding, as this author suggests. It goes back to the founding of our culture in the Ancient Greeks, who deliberately conflated the two and celebrated it. The author needs to re-read Plato's Symposium, where grown men seducing very young boys was considered the most "divine" form of love. It's this history of the Greeks which became embedded in the history of the Church. So, before the author dismisses this conflation as something only a mistaken contemporary would do, no, it's part of the foundation of our culture from ancient times until now. So, if you're gay, this is the history you have inherited over thousands of years, and it's not the responsibility of contemporary people to pretend it doesn't exist for the benefit of your conscience.
8
I don’t even know where to start.
We do not live in Ancient Greece. We have inherited some of that culture, but not all of it. We have also inherited (passively and deliberately) cultural norms from cultures around the world, and we devise our own norms that grow and evolve over time.
In the world of today, we have an understanding of the age of consent. Children under a certain age are deemed too young to consent to certain things done to or with their bodies. In some cases, their guardians must consent for them (as with medical procedures), but with others, we (as a broader culture), have deemed it only appropriate for them to consent once they are old enough to make that decision for themselves.
That has absolutely nothing to do with the gender of the person with they might choose to interact with physically, or who might violate that consent before they are old enough to give it.
6
@SL
We have no trouble recognizing that heterosexual adult males may have relationships with both adult and underage females (a famous name being Jeffrey Epstein)
and I agree that it is highly disingenuous for homosexuals to try to neatly finesse that gray zone by declaring that gays and pedophiles are always two separate categories.
Not my religion so I am not as alarmed as others. But it does seem that the prevalence of sexual behavior (human, all too human), in an institutional framework that prohibits the same, creates the conditions for secrecy, blackmail, and every other variety of dysfunctional behavior. I once thought the themes of clerical sexual depravity were tropes of an older tradition of Continental pornography ala DeSade. Now it seems that a clerical organization held a group of nuns as sexual slaves; an astounding revelation. These new allegations include superior ecclesiastics demanding sexual services from younger men as a condition of their advancement in the Church. #TheyToo
1
The churches entire relationship with sex is "seriously disordered." It's a hard to understand how a 2000 year old institution could arrive in the 21st-century having learned essentially nothing about human sexuality.
The church has been able to adjust to the challenges of Galileo and Charles Darwin. It's been flexible enough to accept the idea that the Bible is not always literally correct, and that the earth is more than 6000 years old. It's done good work on social justice and recognizes the importance of confronting global warming. But when it comes to sexuality, no such luck. The semi-celibate patriarchy, gay or straight, is unable to adjust to reality. Hence its teachings on birth control, clerical celibacy, and abortion.
It won't be a surprise if it proves true that most Vatican clerics are closeted gays who publicly express abhorrence of homosexuality. The patriarchal structure of the church combines with its teachings concerning homosexuality to create an evolutionary mechanism that selects for hypocrisy.
7
Actually, the latest research is that the world was created on October 23, 4004 B.C. But this is not Catholic doctrine. It comes from certain sub-sects of Protestantism.
What does celibacy have to do with sexual activity? In 1139 at the Second Lateran Council, celibacy was established by the church and it meant that priests could not marry. (some say it was to protect church property from inheritance). Sexual activity was not important, it was money. This side show currently distracting people should be stopped and the true problem (criminal molestation of children and unconsenting adults) be dealt with in the criminal justice system.
9
I simply can't believe that we still allow this organization to instruct the rest of us on 'morality.'
8
It's hard to understand the power and strength of this church in the light of what we all know about it at this point. The RCC should at least lose its tax exemption (fergodssakes). All we hear almost every day is about hundreds of priests who abused the trust of the followers, even harming children without any conscience whatsoever. And of course many cases have gone unreported because of the pain and shame experienced by the victims. And how long has this been going on? I'd say centuries if not eons.
7
I grew up a Catholic and went to an all boys Catholic high school I was taught by a teaching order of priests. They were stand up guys and I never experienced any abuse of any kind. I was an athlete and travelled with priests who were my coaches.
Never did I see anything untoward. Many of them eventually left the priesthood and got married. I don't know if any of them were gay and I don't care. I'm sure some of them were gay but looking back I could not guess who might have been gay. Living a celibate life as a straight or guy person must be tremendously stressful and difficult and it's unnatural. Many of the priests I knew died very young and I'm sure that stress was a huge part of their early demise. The Church must expose the truth in every direction and then it must open itself to all of those who wish to serve including woman and gays.
4
I can think of no other institution, public, private, corporate or non-profit in which the kind and frequency of sexual abuse evident in the Catholic Church could occur without there being a demand for its dissolution. I cannot even imagine permitting the existence of any other institution where one of its core tenets was the primary and obvious factor behind the kind of gross sexual abuse seen in the Catholic Church.
As another comment stated, the issue is not sexual orientation, it is sexual repression and the resultant sexual dysfunction. It's as if the church forbid priests from eating, and then tried to hide or explain away starvation and food hording. This is madness.
There is no persuasive argument of any kind, doctrinal or otherwise, that can support the edict of celibacy, not in the face of the consequences. And there is no credible denial --- including a suspect, dog whistle-like attribution of extensive homosexuality --- that can direct attention anywhere but to the sexual dysfunction driven by celibacy. This is not to say that no Catholic priest is capable of celibacy, but to say that this can never be described as a normal human condition.
As long as the church insists on imposing medieval restraints, we can expect an endless and fruitless search for the "truth", when it sits right before our very eyes. In this regard, I have to ask... What difference can it possibly make to solving the sexual abuse problem by pointing out how many priests are gay?
4
I can no longer attend Catholic Mass. The last time I went, I sat there and seethed.
Decade upon decade of sexual abuse. Forced abortions for nuns impregnated by clergy. Protection of criminal priests.
All the while, doctrine that cohabitation before marriage, birth control, and abortion are sinful for the rest of us.
I have no sympathy for the powerful men descending on Rome being greeted by the release of this book. Let them be uncomfortable. Let them squirm.
The whole edifice of the church can burn to the ground for all I care. It's a patriarchal facade constructed of misogyny, deceit and lies.
It is long past time for leaders to be honest about themselves and the lives of their parishioners. And if the militant right wing continues to hold sway, they'll inherit empty churches in the West within a generation.
Myself, I'll be sitting in an Episcopalian church when I am inclined to attend.
10
Why is celibacy necessary? Only the Catholic church requires it. Why are women not allowed to become priests?
The Catholic Church is the richest organization in the world, perhaps wealthier than the USA. It has always been fraught with intrigue and politics. Think about it - a bunch of mostly older white men deciding what people all over the globe can or cannot do as catholics. Absurd.
If priests and nuns are just ordinary people and they like the idea that God is "calling" them, fine. But that doesn't automatically make them perfect. The rules against being gay should go, period. They just fuel persecution of gays (or the whole LGBT community) outside the church.
The "awakened" people on this planet (and they are many and growing) understand samadi or nirvana or bliss consciousness directly. They perceive God/the universe/presence or that which has no name as ecstatic constant love. They do not need religion, church or any external structure to live a "divine life". They understand love - compassion, kindness, generosity, and peace from deep within. Their behavior reflects that.
If the church had taught that "the kingdom of God is within you" as Christ taught, maybe our entire planet would be better off. Gayness isn't the problem, it's predatory behavior anywhere. Maybe living an awakened life might someday be part of the church's teachings but first you need to deal with the first two things of this comment.
5
Celibacy was adopted to prevent Papal heirs from inheriting church property. It is based on economics, not theology.
The only way to solve, or at least mitigate the issue of sex in the church, is to allow women into the hierarchy and permit priests (priestess?) to marry. However, a look at the Southern Baptists recent expose into sexual abuse of young women belies that notion.
So, maybe we should just all accept the fact that any male dominated institution--religion, politics, entertainment, etc--will exploit women sexually.
Are M2, Senate confirmation hearings, Bill Cosby type prosecutions, more women in positions of power the answer?
We stumble to a solution as the abuse continues and is exposed to little lasting effect.
Until men accept that they are the problem and must act responsibility toward women, nothing will change.
2
Personally, I think the only real dividing line between people - ALL people - is whether they spend most of their lives helping other people, or spend most of their lives harming other people. No one is entirely one way or the other (although 45 seems to be an exception, and not in a good way).
To me, the true problem is the enormous damage the catholic church does to women ALL around the world. The catholic church has harmed millions, and continues to harm millions every day because of their ongoing attitude that only men can be leaders, their stance against contraception, etc. The issue of whether so many of the patriarchal chauvinists are gay or not truly doesn't matter to me, and the fact that they're bothered by being confronted with the problem of being seen as "less" than other types of human beings is highly ironic.
3
With apologies to my Catholic friends (of which I have many) the Catholic Church in America needs to be shuttered.
Trump should just declare that the Catholic Church has created a national emergency - which of course he alone can fix - and just shut the church down.
Then the chant at his political rallies could be “shut it down”, “shut it down”, “shut it down”.
Oh my. Only in Trump’s America.
3
While the Catholic Church has much to apologize for, the point really now is: Can the Church effectively address the problem.
It sounds to me like Frédéric Martel is a loose cannon. He is not of the church and seems to be using a lot of hearsay. Whether a priest is gay or not doesn't really matter. Period.
1
when I was an altar boy, I wasn't allowed to question the church. after I stopped believing in gods -- my first year in a catholic high school -- I didn't want to.
still, I expected the purgative conservative element to rise up. But there is enough hypocrisy in other churches to go around.
1
First off how much of an advance did Martel get for his book deal?
I am no fan of the Catholic Church but I agree with Frank the issue is sexual abuse and its cover up and tolerance, not sexual orientation.
1
For me, the saddest part of all this is that so many people glory in proclaiming that they are lapsed Catholics and the Church has a long row to hoe before it will gain their good graces after all that is being revealed. Who Jesus is, what he calls for, what is promised, and the fact that we are all individually responsible for our own salvation seems to be a vanishing concept.
I long to see the human race see religion for what it is. The longing of a species for immortality. This species may not be capable of living in reality. For those who prefer irrationality, you get what you ask for.
5
Rigid, hierarchical power structures, like those of the Church and the military, attract people who seek direct personal power over others. Consequently these institutions have a problem with rape which is the ultimate exercise of personal power over another.
You could argue that the Church has been corrupt since the Council of Nicaea -- absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Until the Church democratizes and gives women and the laity an effective voice and vote in Church policy, it will remain a refuge for pedophiles and abusers of all kinds.
Having so many closeted gay men controlling the organization and operating in secrecy to protect their own status opens them to blackmail by pedophiles and embezzlers in their ranks.
This nonsense has been going on since the 4th century protected by the childish faith of lay people in the sanctity of priests and the Church itself. If the Church survived the Reformation, it is safe to say it's not likely to change or get better now.
2
What does the data show re: rates of abuse of boys versus girls by Catholic male clergy? I imagine the numbers would reflect the typical distribution of straight versus gay folks in the population. We do hear a lot more about abused _boys_ in the news though; not sure why that would be.
2
The accompanying illustrations by Ben Wiseman seems nonsensical. Isn’t the rainbow a symbol of gay *pride*? Whereas homosexuality within the Catholic church is currently treated with shame and suppression. Does the image suggest that the priesthood, with whatever percentage of gay individuals among them, casts a long shadow of closeted pride and self-acceptance? That’s more of an oxymoron than the perfectly natural possibility that plenty of priests are gay (and celibate and non-abusing, whereas abusers enjoying the culture of secrecy may have any orientation)
Frank, if the author doesn't have sources backing up his claims, then why even write about this book? If what you say is true (no real sourcing) then it's already a journalistic fraud. Yet you've just given it something all authors want..publicity. It seems your concerns are more about what effect it will have on the gay community than where the truth lies, and that's a problem.
Speaking as an ex-Catholic
The problem is forbidding the expression of human sexuality (built in, hardwired, fundamental, basic) in adults. Repress it, prohibit it, deny it, keep it a festering secret, punish it. Chances are sexual expression denied will curdle, twist, and come out in weird and perverted ways.
The Catholic Church's many "secret" sexual problems are basically a large organization problem. How many large organizations demand celibacy, and if so, how well that usually work out? And why would a religious order do that, except for organizational control and to gain the inheritance of unmarried, childless clergy?
Given an obviously widespread organizational problem, how did the hierarchy deal with the issue? Oh, looks like sexual expression is necessary, so let's do what other large religious organizations have done for centuries and let the clergy marry (straight or gay) and establish a deeply intimate personal relationship with a soul mate. If harm is being done, divorce.
Or: keep demanding celibacy (that is not working and is doing harm to children, sexually assaulted nuns), and just for spite, demand that parishioners not use birth control or enjoy sex without guilt, even when married ("original" sin).
It's still the Dark Ages in the Church: Secrecy, sexual assaults, cover-ups, millions in payments to victims (maybe more).
For Lord's sake! Open up the window, let the sunshine in, and allow human love within this emotionally perverted organization
2
There are celibate priests and non celibate priests, gay priests and straight priests, sexual predators and those who never did. The one underlying theme common to all is power and powerlessness.
Much of the problem in the church is below the belt.
Celibacy should be optional as in the past. Women religious should be invited to the hierarchy. Women should take a proactive decision making role. Time to cease the outward signs of power that may have served in the 10th century but no longer.
The church needs to globally rid themselves of leaders who protected pedophiles. All orders should publish a list and give them to appropriate authorities.
As far as gay priests who are we to judge?
3
Mr. Bruni take exception to the book's focus on gay sex to the exclusion of non-marital heterosexual relations.
But, the Catholic Church opposes gay marriage and all gay sex. So episodes of gay sex may not be fundamentally more scandalous, but they are a stronger sign of hypocrisy.
It makes sense the secrecy around abuse is out of fear of being exposed for mass hypocrisy. Does not seem very Christian to allow kids to be abused to protect your own secrets. I say shut the whole thing down and start over.
1
The most authoritative estimate is Richard Sipe and his research “he conducted a 25-year ethnographic study published in 1990 about the sexual behavior of supposed celibates, in which he found more than half were involved in sexual relationships”.
So pick your number ....all in the Vatican should have their vows annulled, including the celibate few who chose power, prestige, and silence over doctrine and morality.
2
Just to clarify:
There may be clandestine meetings between priests and young male prostitutes in Rome (of any, or no religious beliefs), but those men who do sex work with other men for pay are not “heterosexual”.
This concept is a fantasy that reflects self loathing on the part of the client, and also on the part of the sex worker, no matter how many wives and kids are at home waiting for husbands to return after a long night working the Vatican.
The descriptive adjective is “bisexual”, I believe.
4
@Michael c
From the wife's perspective, the best descriptive adjective would be 'disease vector'.
The priest that performed the marriage of my husband and me and baptized both our children was a soon-to-be-convicted rapist that Cardinal Law chose to hide. I'm sure they sent one of our abusers to the parish in Ohio where he came from. He happened to be gay, but I don't conflated pedophilia with being gay and I don't think most people do.
The Catholic church in the US is already having a difficult time attracting normal people to serve as priests. And by normal, I'm not talking about sexual orientation, I'm talking about normal in the sense of psychological development. After all, the institution retains a culture where women are second class citizens and both priests and nuns are expected to be celibate. What well-adjusted person would choose to spend their lives in such an institution?
Priests were made to be “celibate” centuries ago when the church decided it didn’t want women inheriting property that could otherwise be amassed by the church. That is where the word nepotism comes from. It is derived from the word for nephew, the euphemistic way to refer to the illegitimate sons of the popes who were given jobs in the church.
The church will either reform or crumble under its own weight. Gays being priests has very little to do with the fundamental problems of the church and I don’t think this book will make a ripple in people’s views on that subject.
3
Can Mr. Bruni appreciate that the very same arguments he uses against the publication of this book are exactly what led to the code of silence that he otherwise opposes? I would have hoped that he stand firmly against the lethal hypocrisy of a church that continues to define same sex orientation as a sin or pathology despite its prevalence among their senior ranks. Mr. Bruni is worried about right wing backlash. How about long awaited reform? How about at long last rethinking the vow of celibacy? How much evidence does it take - how many victims are required- before the church comes to the most obvious conclusion?
5
The quote from Andrew Sullivan that this is an unsustainable paradox is the perfect description. The doubts of veracity to the actual numbers (80% how did the author get that number?) and concern of homophobic backlash raised by Frank Bruni are valid concerns. However, the book speaks to a Truth that cannot be ignored.
The Church’s teachings are clearly at odds with the clerical culture; but, we have turned our eyes from the glaring contradictions for generations. The roots and causes are more an enigma than paradox. (A riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma)
As the recurring scandal of priest pedophilia tells us the Church has a big problem with sex. It is not just sex however, I believe it is with biology, and science.
Until the Church can completely re-order its doctrine to be consistent with the science of human biology, allowing for the equality of women with men, the dominant male paradigm supporting malevolent clerical privilege will continue.
A married clergy and women priests are not enough. Without a fundamental restructuring of doctrine, devoid of pre-science dogmas, power will remain with the male clerical elite.
2
Fear and loathing of the body in general and sexuality in particular are deeply rooted in Catholic theology, going back as far as Paul. Until the church grapples with this, the dysfunction will continue. I'm not holding my breath.
327
@Jay U
The all-male gay stuff existed and was allowed because the Catholic church since inception declared females unclean inferiors. Thus, sex with females could never be "godly" and no man seeking to rule inside the church could be so male debased. And thus, the absurd Catholic nonsense that Jesus, whose very existence is unproved, was borne of a virgin who'd never had sex. Worse still is the claim that any female who has had sex, be it voluntary or rape and inside or outside of marriage, is unclean.
There were, of course, married popes and popes with children - both inside marriage and illegitimate. However, the all-male "females are unclean inferiors" came over from the Greeks and Hebrews, with the celibacy crud starting early after the fall of Rome in some corners, slowly taking over the entire church doctrine in the Middle Ages (as did ever more horrors invented by the church to punish and torture females...as the scapegoat of males/male behaviors).
42
I am giving serious consideration to joining a Catholic religious community with the intention of studying for the priesthood. I agree with most comments that the Church has made many mistakes in their handling of sexual abuse. I also agree that the Church is at time hypocritical. So long as it is run by imperfect individuals the Church will always be imperfect. The same can be said for every other form of religion.
I also feel that many fail to realize that celibacy is not about sexual oppression. Rather, it's directing that love in other ways. For example, ministering to the dying late in the night, hearing confessions for hours on end, or giving up personal time to console the person who approaches you on the street.
All of these actions would probably not be possible or much harder if I also had to balance a wife and family. The love I could potentially have for a wife and family is not wasted through celibacy. It's more satisfying because I'm able to share it with everyone. Just because I'm celibate doesn't mean I'm incapable of physical love. A hug or handshake can be just as satisfying.
I also know what I'm talking about considering I was in a serious, long term, physical relationship with another woman.
2
Some people in these comments seem to equate gayness with pedophilia ; that is homophobia . It is not surprising that someone who grows up in a culture that expects them to marry a women and have a family would turn to a revered all male cult as an alternative. The problem is with the demonization of sexuality and the excessive power the church exerts over individuals. Hence the subterfuge and abuses ( straight, gay, whatever) .
164
@Peter
A phobia is a type of mental disorder. Ignorance and misunderstanding is not a mental disorder. Differing social views is not a mental disorder. Prejudice or bias are not mental disorders.
“Homophobia” is almost always inaccurate as a label and just itself an insult.
8
@Peter
Re: the demonization of sexuality...
Among the more outrageous of insults is the tradition of women getting "churched" after childbitrh. Going to your church to be CLEANSED by word of the pries for the perceived DIRTINESS of the awesomely powerful and beautiful act of giving birth to a new little person.
I remember as a kid in the 50 s hearing women in my little rural RC parish chatting about whether they would be going "to get churched" after their newest baby. I hope this concept has died out but don't know if it has, having left the church over 50 years ago. In any case, historically and still, the RC Church is a very sick institution.
13
The problem with the Catholic Church may be a function of our overall rigid view of sex and sexual identity. Maybe our un-evolved psyches need to hold onto the concreteness of two sexes only. But I wonder how many of us are bisexual as opposed to being either straight or gay. Heterosexual identities and experiences are enshrined in our culture to the point where many of us never consider whether or not we are gay or straight. Marriage and establishing a conventional family are dreams we cherish from the time we are very young. TV sitcoms, romance literature, movies, I can't name all the different types of media now available, depict heterosexual love as a form of ecstasy that many of us, perhaps most of us, strive for. Why wouldn't we? Is there any other kind of romantic relationships enshrined here? I realize that is changing but for the most part, romances between same sex couples are not enshrined, and often not depicted at all. But it may be that sexual identity is more fluid, less set in stone, less regimented than we have come to believe. So our vision of sex may be part of the problem since it is not really consistent with who we are.
1
The idea of celibacy in the priesthood originated in the Vatican as a tool to keep bishops and cardinals from passing on Church property to their heirs.
Celibacy has come to mean abstinence from sex but it was originally meant as abstinence from marriage.
Powerful institution, whether churches or governments or kingdoms, seem to need to hide their excesses from their subjects. Hiding the truth has never really work out well for anyone.
If the Catholic Church were to drop its insane positions of married priests, and sex in general, the priesthood might again flourish with a wider group of people from which to choose. Including women would also be a good idea.
3
I am not a right-wing Catholic. Indeed, I'm a left-wing Catholic. I applaud the revelation of the truth about clerical hypocrisy, as well as abuse. The Christian mission of the Church cannot survive in the 21st century in the hands of a bunch of old men who could not possibly have stopped the massive abuses committed by thousands of priests because they had their own secret sex lives to protect. The only answer is to admit women to the priesthood and allow priests to marry. And if some of those priests are gay, more power to them. If that turns us into a bunch of Episcopalians, Amen.
8
The problem as I see it is not a sexual issue, but a secrecy and power problem.
The inner workings of the RC church function as a secret society where the goings on behind closed doors is the mystery and power of the church. Even at the local level parishes' and dioceses' priests and bishops have a real wall of secrecy/power between themselves and their parishioners. After all, parishioners are required to confess their very deepest actions and even thoughts to them, but priests do no such confessing of their own to the parishioners. And, this is where the church gets its power. The secret ingredient in the church power sauce is secrecy.
This is why the church will never, ever let sunlight in, open the doors, pull down the veil of secrecy, etc., because to do so is to transfer their power to the parishioners.
3
Celibacy? Celibate priests? A caste of men who abjure sexual contact for life and exercise huge, seductive spiritual authority over vulnerable men, women and children?
It is more than interesting that the scandalous abuse of nuns has not gotten more press. It must be widespread. Heterosexual abuse has been subordinated to the gay revolution. It has eclipsed the seduction of women and girls which has been the Church's traditional moral achilles heel since its inception.
Celibate priests dedicated to helping and uplifting humanity are extraordinary human beings whether one agrees with the Church's sexual teaching or not. Are they in the minority? Is the Church better or worse than non-sectarian organizations? Who knows the answer to these questions? Who is to be believed --the Church and its officials who have a lurid record of lying and deceit? Or writers with suspect motives and dubious statistic sources?
The Catholic Church will never allow outsiders to survey the priesthood in an attempt to reveal the truth. It exercises moral and legal dictatorship. It will protect the priesthood always.
So until or unless this situation changes lay catholics and others must keep the pressure on victims to come forth and hold the Church accountable -on the margins of the problem. Both homo and hetero abuses.
Or the Church could get serious about the problem, prosecute abuse, eliminate celibacy and allow women to exercise roles reserved for men.
Let us pray....
.
9
Perhaps if church officials hadn’t tried so hard for so long to hide offending priests there would be some sympathy from this lapsed catholic, but they brought it on themselves and judgement will be severe. It is to my siblings who are still members of the church my sympathy goes, and also a question as to why?
11
If the Church is to survive, it must change. The church must: open the priesthood to women; allow all priests to marry; allow all men and woman to serve as priests regardless of their sexual orientation, and finally recognize sexuality is fundamental part of being human, and that celibacy is contrary to the natural law.
27
What this Church needs is WOMEN in the clergy, women in positions of oversight and leadership. It's so obvious it's almost embarrassing to have to spell it out in words. Without women involved at the highest levels, there is simply no reason for the Church to exist as anything beyond a cultural artifact. As it is, without understanding of the most important issues of our time, stuck in a millennia-old mindset of justifying women's oppression, not to mention covered in the fathomless muck of the global child-abuse scandal, there is no amount of "charity work" that makes up for the abyss of irrelevance and destructiveness the Church now represents.
31
@ThePoliskeptic
Agree.
There's no saving the husk. Even if priests were required to get jobs and support themselves, it's too late.
1
It's an intractable mess. And it will remain an intractable mess so long as the Church refuses to rescind its medieval, non-Biblical -- and as this book makes clear, profoundly hypocritical -- demand of priestly celibacy. There are, by the way, Roman Catholic priests who have long been allowed to marry. They are priests of the western Ukrainian "Uniate" Church: a branch of the Roman Catholic Church, under the authority of the Pope in Rome, which maintains Eastern Orthodox rituals. The Uniate Church is the product of an historic compromise: when western Ukraine was ruled by Poland, the Ukrainian nobles wanted to assimilate into the Polish nobility but couldn't so long as they remained in the Eastern Orthodox church. So the Uniate Church was created as a compromise. Since the Uniates maintained Eastern Orthodox ritual,their priests, like Eastern Orthodox priests, were allowed to marry. They are happily married to this day. No lightening has struck. The heavens have not been rendered asunder. The thriving community of married Roman Catholic priests in western Ukraine highlights just how theologically arbitrary -- and destructive -- the celibacy demand is.
22
Mr. Bruni quotes David Clohessy, “Many priests have a huge disincentive to report sexual misdeeds by colleagues. They know they’re vulnerable to being blackballed. It’s celibacy and the secretive, rigid, ancient all-male hierarchy that contributes to the cover-up and, therefore, more abuse.” The book "Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes" suggests that priests covering up for priests likely started when the RCC forbade priests marrying and forbade sexual relations between already married priests and their wives. The book suggests that in medieval times, married or non-celibate priests were subjected to torture and prolonged penance including enforced fasting and public shaming. The book "God's Bankers" states that Pope Pius X declared a day of mourning when he and his secretary were accused of being homosexual. Ultra reactionary groups such as "Church Militant" will naturally focus on some subgroup (perhaps a large subgroup - I don't know myself - I only know what I read about gay priests) at which to point their fingers for what is centuries of systemic, sin-oriented, neurology and biology "challenged," grossly misogynistic, authoritarian sexualizing and shaming of human bodies, human psyches and human love.
4
As a Catholic with a close ties to the Church, I suggest the that same is true of the priests who attend to the bishop, so the various secretaries who follow him at events.
The problem is only partly repression. The other is an organization of men. This will naturally attract a higher proportion of those not looking for a life with women.
The solution is to have female priests and bishops, and to end celibacy.
36
Anyone who has ever seriously studied the history of the church realizes that it is no different than any other large institution over the centuries. The papacy was bought and sold by the strong political families of Europe for centuries. The church had armies do its bidding. The church organization had very little to do with the teachings of Christ, it was always about wealth, power and prestige. Taking care of your fellow man has never been high on its list. Spreading the gospel with bible in one hand and sword in the other is essentially the history of the church. I'm sure Christ would shudder to see how the church and other institutions have twisted his simple message ... love one another and take care of one another.
23
@Trento Cloz
You are correct in your historical assessment. And yet, the Roman church has positioned itself worldwide as the authority and arbiter of truth, as if everyone has historical amnesia. After all, she still considers herself infallible. And worse, most Protestant churches whose historical protests to their church’s corruptions led them out of their mother church, have recently officially reversed themselves in an effort for unity. Like many other religions they look to the Pope as the world’s spiritual head. Sad.
1
@Trento Cloz
Who says the RC church is slow to make amends for past misdeeds? It only took 350 years to acknowledge that maybe Copernicus and Galileo knew something about astronomy.
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/31/world/after-350-years-vatican-says-galileo-was-right-it-moves.html
The Church of Rome has been corrupt for millennia yet survives today with renewed status by following a simple formula: Outlive your transgressions. The next generation will be born ignorant, fresh fodder for your time-tested dogma.
@Trento Cloz The message of christ is don't think that you are a god responsible for the world and, for god's sake, if you think that way, don't tell other people. They will crucify you. Period. That's it.
I disagree with Mr. Bruni: Any exposure of the truth, regarding the catholic church, is ultimately good for the church and parishioners. It is, like any dysfunctional family, the secret and lies that perpetuate the pathological behavior. Of course, it is not about gays or straights, it is about an unhealthy closed system with inordinate amount of power that has a long history of abuse and an blatant and arrogant refusal to correct it. It is about parishioners who stand by, like sheep, instead of walking away and demanding the hierarchy clean the house of corruption or there will be no more money donated. It is about, ultimately, the church as it is, crumbling and starting over again with an open, honest system that all can have faith and trust in again. And exposing any secrets, and all secrets, is a step in the right direction.
354
@david gain Mr Bruni's problem with this book is not its exposures of secrets, but with its tone. Mr Bruni is right to be concerned that this tone will be weaponized by the Mel-Gibson style conservative faction within the church to persecute gay people.
26
@david gwin Exposing the truth is always good. It's not good, though, to publish marginally-provable information cast in deliberately sensational language.
26
@david gwin Well said. It's surprising that Mr. Bruni, an openly gay man, is worried about protecting a status quo hypocritically at war with the gay and lesbian community while at the same time they transparently subvert the laws against pedophilia, intimidate the police and the court system and threaten our religious freedom and democracy. Was there not a recent report that one thousand Catholic priests in Pennsylvania alone are believed to have engaged in pedophilia? 1000! And of course this Church repeatedly chooses to protect the abusers (and itself) while demonizing the victims. Such protection is mandated from the upper church echelons. Witness Cardinal Law, exiled from the USA, but honored in Rome. Witness the last Pope, allegedly overseeing a large pedophile scandal in his German diocese before becoming Pope (crowned by Cardinal Law!) and forced to retire for some reason by the Church's "gay overlords". Has the Catholic laity been brainwashed? I don't understand.
19
Exactly right, Frank. Your response to the book is so thoughtfully nuanced about the lives of gay Catholic priests and so clear about how this "exposé" may provide ammunition for the enemies of Francis within the Church.
3
It would seem to me that, if a priest is genuinely celibate, his orientation doesn't really matter.
480
@SDC
WOW! I think this is the most powerful comment of the day!
Well stated SDC.
26
Perhaps it does matter. If by his silence he implicitly condones the actions of others, is he not part of the problem?
26
@SDC
If a priest takes vows of celibacy because he finds eschewing personal sexuality freeing, that's a beautiful thing. If he is celibate because he—perhaps pushed there by a homophobic family—is seeking refuge from having to deal with conscious or subconscious gay tendencies that a heteronormative society has refused to provide him any outlet to explore or any future to hope for, that's the problem, especially after awhile as he realizes how many other guys are there for the same reason.
Our heteronormativity is so total that some people make it all through high school, even through college and out into the world, some actually marrying someone of the opposite sex, before they come out to themselves. I know people like this spanning generations.
Perhaps now that gay marriage is legal and millennials and Gen-Z have become so accepting this will lessen with new entrants to the priesthood, but then of course there is still the problem of the homophobic family set to disown someone unless they go somewhere to squelch this nascent aspect of themselves.
By all means, say what you will about the Catholic church's hierarchy. But complicit in all this is a society that laps up all this bigotry and intolerance and denial. The Catholic church's problems won't stop until homophobes stop looking to the priesthood as a form of gay conversion therapy.
20
Not a single reported word from the mouth of the Rabbi from Nazareth ever suggested celibacy as a requirement for anything.
Indeed, one of his first reported miracles was keeping the party going at a wedding after the host ran out of wine.
Until the Catholic Church abandons its absurd celibacy requirement, it can never move forward.
37
You really have to be very creative to rationalize the existence of a deity with some interest in individual humans’ lives, and a moral code, and for whom the Catholic Church can claim to represent.
9
As if "right-wing homophobes" needed another excuse to put down the LGBTQ (to which they often wittily append "XYZ" or "and sometimes Y") community.
Fear not, Frank. Most of them are fundamentalist "Christians" who aren't crazy about Catholics, either.
5
@Hans Christian Brando. Never underestimate the creativity of the right wingers. They may not need another excuse, but they could probably tease a new argument against gay men out of this, blaming the RCC's attitude toward women on men who are not interested in creating families with women.
As a lesbian Catholic I just always expect to hear some crazy at my church say that it's because of gay men and not a larger problem about both gay and straight priests breaking their vows of celibacy or molesting and abusing people.
4
The opinion writer's objection is difficult for me to relate. There is hypocrisy in the church: It needs to be exposed. Seemingly simple. As for conflating homosexuality and pedophilia, that ship has already sailed and is out to sea. The Catholic church is built upon Roman culture--where sex between adult men and paige boys (pedophilia as we understand it) was un-frowned upon. If light is the antidote to shame which requires the cloak of darkness, I say let it shine!
7
Judging from your quotes, the book is mercenary trash. Still, it's important to remember that even if this were a more scrupulous & dispassionate exposé of what the closet and self-loathing do to people, the RIght and the homophobes would still cherry-pick its contents to excite prejudice. That's simply the way they work, and you can't speak or write any words that they won't distort and use against you.
2
I wonder why the Catholic priesthood (and perhaps other religious) has (if the accusations are correct) so many gays as compared to the general population.
1
@Dennis Martin
Because it attracts men looking for a "vocation" that allows them to avoid women and marriage, and be celebrated and gain social stature for doing so.
1
The problem is sexual repression, not sexual orientation. Expecting men and women to never act on their natural sexual desires is the problem.
Celibacy was not always required in the Roman Catholic Church, nor is it presently required in the Eastern Orthodox Church. And married Episcopalian priests can apply and be accepted as Roman Catholic priests.
Prohibition of marriage in Catholic clergy was primarily an anticorruption measure in the Middle Ages, to prevent popes and bishops from enriching themselves and their heirs at the expense of their parishioners. Once marriage was prohibited, it was morally consistent (though biologically silly) to institute a vow of no-sex-whatsoever, since sex outside marriage was already against the rules.
Remove the requirement for a vow of celibacy, and more men might be willing to serve as priests. And while you're at it, open up the priesthood to women, too!
881
@Duane McPherson Thank you for this historical detail, another example demonstrating that "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely."
It would be timely for the re-publication of David Yallop's book, In God's name, about the conspiracy to murder of John Paul I who died 21 days after becoming Pope, and being replaced by the ultra-right-wing John Paul II.
No institution should wield absolute power, over money or doctrine or anything else.
32
@Duane McPherson
It isn't just, or even primarily, the celibacy requirement, as far as gay priests and officials go. It's the condemnation of gay people, and the demand that they lie about their orientation. This creates self-loathing and anger that often gets taken out on others.
44
Brilliant. If the Church wants to prevent religious dynasties a la the 14th and 15th century, then make the process of appointing bishops, cardinals and the Pope more transparent. Allow priests to marry - other Christian denominations, Jews and Moslems seem to deal with it just fine. And hey - the gays are here and there are more of them than you think. Deal with it or prepare to become less and less relevant in the lives of your believers.
30
The book's outlining of the pervasiveness of sexual secrecy and repression might help others to consider how that has rippled out to damage healthy sexuality among all in the church: priests, but also parishioners. The priests, caught within a culture of celibacy that I find perverse, lead flocks with doctrines that twist and repress human desire and healthy curiosity. The whole of the church is overly preoccupied with sex, its repression, and unhealthy and unrealistic conceptions (pun intended) of what it is to be a human. Immaculate repression for all.
7
To Mr. Bruni's point, I lived a semester or two at the Newman House at a major state university. The pastor raged at Sunday masses against adultery and fornication. Lo and behold it became known that he was having an affair with the parish secretary, a woman in her late twenties. . More than a violation of celibacy, it was an abuse of power.
As was the custom, his bishop transferred him to a parish in the boondocks. One must assume that for the bishop, the priest's sin lay in getting caught.
18
It is quite interesting that Times published this thoughtful piece urging caution and "sufficient skepticism" in reporting scandalous accusations! Where were those journalistic standards with men getting their reputations and careers destroyed with reportage with no skepticism during the metoo witch hunt? What standards were used for the draconian implications and threats for anyone objectively questioning the validity of those accusations? Equally interesting is the quote on how it is not scientific! Absolutely agree. But do those standards apply only to gay men and not straight men; straight men can be thrown to the dustbin for much less with subjective reportage with the warning that accusers must always be believed using academically discredited statistics. I still remember fondly those old days when New York Times was a newspaper.
6
A significant part of this blatantly hypocritical situation would disappear if the Catholic church would move out of the dark ages and remove the ban on celibacy and allow clergy to marry.
9
I hear Bruni’s argument and am somewhat sympathetic, but changing times make it impossible for Catholics to condemn homosexuality when a significant percentage of priests—whatever the figure is—are gay and not celibate.
This should never have been tolerated by an institution that asserts it is the body of christ. It can’t be accepted if the church wants to survive.
Why are Catholics so obsessed with sex over the centuries?
3
@CinnamonGirl
To control people, especially females and reproduction that produces each new generation of the money/power spigot. Control that and you control the males. It's a familiar marketing scheme invented not by Madison Ave. in the 1950s but by ancient desert peasant Abrahamic cults in the Bronze Age.
1
Self delusion is an incredibly powerful force. Mr. Bruni's exposition on the innocence of gay men's motives for entering the priesthood is a case in point. I have no issue with gays in the priest or sisterhood. What I have issues with are predators and sociopaths of every sexual persuasion entering any profession, using their position to prey on and abuse the innocent, and through amassed power and leverage taking over their institutions to perpetuate their criminal behavior. It is the responsibility of moral clergy of all sexual orientations to stand up to tyranny and predation. Mr. Bruni's empathy for Gay priests' need to survive evades the question of "at what cost". Gays have a proud history of standing up to oppression and abuse within and outside their community. More Gay priests should have done the same, even at the risk of their "survival".
4
I suffered through a Catholic education until I graduated high school, after which I never set foot in a church again, except to attend weddings and funerals. What medieval institution, completely disconnected from the reality of modern life and therefore totally useless! Let the light in on its practices and let the chips fall where they may. Perhaps the day they allow priests, gay or straight, to marry the abusers will finally be rooted out and a new church that truly serves its members can emerge.
261
@Roberta
The rate of pedophilia among the married is about the same is it is in the cases studied in this scandal.
@TD
Most of here see straight through your straw man arguments.
This will make it even more difficult to retain and recruit worthy men for the priesthood. If there are going to be any priests at all, the Catholic Church is going to be forced to ordain women. Finally.
4
What else is new? Haven't we all suspected for a while now that our preachers, priests and politicians who screech the loudest about family values, who are anti-gay, anti-women's rights, anti-abortion, are the ones with the biggest skeletons in the closet?
Hence, the old saying about the best defense is a good offense.
6
Like it or not, Martel's book makes more plausible Cardinal Viganò's thesis: according to Viganò, “the underlying reason why there are so many victims” is “the corrupting influence of homosexuality in the priesthood and in the hierarchy.”
I am not saying he's right; I'm not saying he's wrong. Just that his thesis is now more plausible. Anyone who says it can't possibly be true is not being rational.
3
"80 percent of the male Roman Catholic clergy who work at the Vatican, around the pope, are gay. . . the more showily homophobic a Vatican official is, the more likely he belongs to that crowd, and that the higher up the chain of command you go, the more gays you find. And not all of them are celibate."
Good grief, with the amount of time & energy various members of the Vatican spend on denying or ignoring claims about gays in the Vatican, is it any wonder why nothing positive, beneficial or productive is ever accomplished or achieved from the Papal or his Cardinals or staff?
There is not just ONE elephant in the room, but rather, many herds of elephants in the room AND the courtyard AND the Vatican.
As long as something as "simple" as celibacy continues to preached but is not adhered to from within, then the Catholic church's foundation is based on hypocrisy rather than truth. It reminds me of what my mother used to always tell me, "Do as I say, not as I do".
I find it difficult to follow the teachings of Christ when those doing the teaching are not acting nor living Christ-like on so many levels. I can truly understand why folks leave the Catholic Church and/or become atheists.
But at the end of the day, I keep remember what the Bible said, "Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."
I pray that those in constant torment find inner peace.
3
These guys, with their conservative, male “on top” and first in line ideology, exist in Evangelical churches as well, as we have seen in the “exposure” of sexual predators in Southern churches earlier this week. Perhaps it’s time for congregants, especially women, to separate God from these human organizations and stop Him from being used to satisfy the testosterone drive of male clergy.
4
Surely what all this uproar proves is how unnatural the Church's requirement of celibacy is, and how impossible to enforce. Will the Church finally look at the root problem, the insistence on a celibacy that was not part of the original church? This suppression of a natural part of life leads to unnatural acts.
4
@Dianne Karls
"Celibacy" was the cultural alternative to marriage. From the Ancient Greeks on, women were considered inferior and men who rejected women and marriage would be "celibate," which allowed for relationships among men and celebrated sex with young boys. This cultural idea went from the Ancient Greeks to the Romans and became what the modern church is today. When you see the word "celibacy" it just means, historically, rejecting women and marriage. As for what's left, that was always fair game.
1
It seems to me that the book's aim is to support homosexuality. It should be noted that a gay priest is not necessarily a pedophile, though he may be. They are two separate things. I saw a documentary on this issue several years ago. It was shocking to see the hypocrisy among priests, who take a vow of celibacy, but are clearly not. I am not religious and think that most religion is used to promote the power of the church, so I am not surprised. It is all a fraud.
4
Umm, nothing new here. As surprising as it sounds, I read a book about this topic when I was 13, back in 1987 in the USSR, how about that? The country, famous for a phrase from one comedy movie where a character says "There is no sex in the USSR", yet, this book somehow landed in my hands, and had very detailed accounts going back to the inception of the Church.
1
I have a cousin who is a Benedictine monk who has spent his life teaching and studying in a monastery/seminary. He left for the seminary when he was only 13 years old. He is one of the most loving, smart, joyful and interesting people I know. He exudes love for life and for each of us.
I have no idea whether or not he is gay. I know that he has many friends, both male and female, lay and cleric. We all treasure him. He comes to every wedding, Baptism and funeral of our family. When he says grace at our family gatherings he always mentions, by name, the cooks and servers. He holds us together in ways that reach deep into our lives.
He doesn't talk about God, so much as he talks about life. And art. And music.
His sexual orientation seems irrelevant. Who cares?
613
Well, many religious institutions certainly do care and do their darnedest to deny gay people civil rights.
As if two gay people who own a home with a picket fence, go grocery shopping, give to charity, and take care of elderly relatives and friends pose an existential threat to society.
88
@Beth Cioffoletti
I’ve often thought that the contemplative orders are better places for men or women than the diocesan priesthood. The former provide plenty of friendships and a sense of community. But the latter are left alone in their parishes, all by themselves.
I’m opposed to celibacy except for those called to a contemplative life in community. That’s routine for the Eastern Orthodox, from whom the Bishops generally come - as Orthodox Bishops are required to be celibate. But for the ordinary Eastern Orthodox parish priests, if they marry before ordination, no problem! The married clergy have families and are wonderful priests.
Forbidding men to marry, who feel called to the priesthood, is a huge source of the RC problem, whether of sexual abuse or consensual sexual relationships. But even the consensual relationships, in my view, are exploitative because the cleric, to remain a cleric, cannot be open about the relationship or marry, which is not fair to the other party in the relationship.
50
@Beth Cioffoletti - He sounds like a remarkable, exceptional individual, which is no doubt due to him, not the robe he wears.
51
The homophobic conservatives want the world to blame Pope Francis reforms for the closeted priests in the Vatican. Two points: 1. They did not arrive under Francis, 2. If celibate they are welcomed by church tradition. It is and has always been the “conservative” element in the hierarchy that has preyed on homosexual, heterosexual sexual, and pedophile priests. Silence within the ranks and power are their goals. Conservatives have no interest in ending the courage of pedophilia and normal sexuality. They derive their power from fear of exposure and complicity of priests.
The greatest threat to the Conservatives is the equality of women and marriage for priests.
1
The real question that needs to be addressed is what percentage of the clergy are pedophiles. The alt-right will glom on this as their rallying cry against gay clergy and they will try to make the argument that they are to blame for the pedophilia that has been rampant in the Church. People need to realize that being gay does not make you a pedophile any more than being straight does.
3
My wife was a child just after WWII in France. Her friends told her of the local priest who would routinely sexually assault the altar boys. He was doing that for years and all the kids were aware. It was not a surprise to other kids from other parishes and was a common story. Mothers told their boys to reject any of that. Other mothers were not aware and left their sons to deal with the authority figure who approached. When you have a choice, why would anyone choose to be a Catholic.
6
B, please. If you’re a Catholic woman with friends in a seminary, or work at a parish or a dioceses office, where women do most of the work, you’d know the 80% estimate is at least true.
4
The fact that a sizeable portion of the clergy is gay is not the problem.
It's the fact that both gay and straight clergy are engaged in sexual relationships that is the real problem. This reality leads to a climate of secrecy within the church. And a climate of secrecy makes it easier to hide the fact that some clergy are abusing children. "You keep my secret and I'll keep yours".
The church needs to clean up it's act and to do it soon. Otherwise it will find that a gay clergy will be the least of it's problems.
4
Re "They didn’t feel safe or comfortable in a society that ostracized them. Their sense of being outsiders gave them a more spiritual bent and greater desire to help others in need."
Perhaps. I have known a handful of gay priests and monks, and I have a different theory.
Because they were once boys raised in a church and families that shamed the notion of homosexuality, and presumably aware that they had gay tendencies (at least), many may have believed that taking refuge in the rule of celibacy would save them from acting on those tendencies and hence, damnation.
Of course, they soon found that mere rules — and even shame — did not take away those primal feelings or overcome the sheer power of the human sexual urge, and many helplessly violated their vows of celibacy.
As a straight atheist, I say that religion suppresses sexuality (as best it knows how) precisely because it recognizes that sex is, truly, a potent force that, in time, overcomes the imprecations of the most fiery sermon or (unsupported) claims of eternal torment for those who succumb to its power.
9
So is a priest who is celibate, whether straight, bi, or gay, not allowed to work in the Vatican? As a non-Catholic, I thought the standard was celibacy, as in "hate the sin, not the sinner". What about the confession/absolution ritual? Is this a scandal or just a church tripping over the hems of its doctrine? Does 'Ego te absolvo.' apply in the Vatican or not?
2
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. On the other hand, if this is more or less true, I don't think a group of gay men should be telling straight men and women how they should conduct their sex in marriage.
6
f figure of gay in the church is either 15%, 60%, 80%...or somewhere "in between".
In other words, we have no idea and therefore, no sense of whether such an orientation is impacting anything in the church at all...for better...or for worse....or for nothing at all.
Without having read the book, I have a problem with a journalist who would cite an 80% figure based on ONE source. That is nuts, and is not the basis for a conclusion.
I agree with the author on this one. Seems like this is the stuff of National Enquirer intrigue...not serious, reflective thought on the impact and fallout of policies and practices at odds with an institution's actual cultural norms.
Hopefully the church will begin taking the child abuse of their past more seriously and pressure will build from our collective governments to make sure they are never above the law again.