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A Troubled Vatican

By Scott McKnight
Christianity Today
November 17, 2020

https://www.christianitytoday.com/scot-mcknight/2020/november/troubled-vatican.html

The deepest problem in the Vatican – Pope Francis and the Curia – is less its theology than its praxis, and by praxis I mean at least the last three popes, including Francis (as the report in The Spectator has it), have seemingly known about and covered up molestation of minors. That’s not all they have covered up.

Let’s begin with the cultural problem before we get to the recent revelations about McCarrick, what the popes knew, and before we get to comments by conservatives like Vigano and Barron. I begin with Frederic Martel’s blockbuster book published simultaneously in eight languages, based on more than 1500 people interviewed (some many times) from 30 countries, including 41 cardinals, 52 bishops and monsignors, 45 ambassadors and nuncios, all conducted by the author and some 80 researchers, etc.. In other words, lots of data accumulated in his book called In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy.[1]

What I am about to describe is, yes, duplicity regarding same-sex relations, but our intent is to frame this description as something about the Vatican’s culture, a “Christian” culture corrupted to the core and all the way to the top. It is so pervasive no one in the Vatican, from the Popes down, could not have known what was going on.

Martel discovered fourteen rules for those who are gay yet “in the closet,” which some disgustingly call being “in the parish.” I now summarize a few of his rules. Most (he suggests perhaps 70%) of the religious leaders in the Vatican (which is a City outside the jurisdiction of Italy, yet in Rome), often referred to as the “Curia,” are gay -- whether they are “in the closet” or “out of the closet.”[2]

Martel contends many enter the priesthood because it both gives a person religious and social respect and provides a relatively safe environment for same-sex relations. Because homosexuality is far more socially accepted in the world today, far fewer males are choosing the priesthood.

One of his rules is that the higher one ascends in the RCC’s hierarchy of leaders (from priests to pope), the greater the likelihood the person is gay. Some live with boyfriends, some visit male prostitutes, and some seduce seminary students at beach houses on the Jersey shore.[3]

In Martel’s viewpoint, the more vehement a Roman Catholic leader is against same-sex relations, the more likely it is that he is himself gay. Publicly condemning homosexuality gives a gay leader credibility in the eyes of ordinary Catholics as a man who is faithfully celibate. He writes what is so pertinent to the McCarrick case:

Behind the majority of cases of sexual abuse there are priests and bishops who have protected the aggressors because of their own homosexuality and out of fear that it might be revealed in the event of a scandal. The culture of secrecy that was needed to maintain silence about the high prevalence of homosexuality in the Church has allowed sexual abuse to be hidden and predators to act.[4]

I read this book over a period of two weeks when working on A Church called Tov and was constantly disgusted by both the intentional failure of priests as well as by the systemic duplicity of Vatican culture.

So Martel’s book. I don’t recommend reading it.

It sickens that this culture of deception chooses also -- to protect its own skin, its own reputation -- to protect pedophiles. Why? If pedophiles are exposed, so also will be the corruption of the others.

Maybe this was too much for you, I know the book was too much for me and I had to put it down numerous times. But the story has to be told in order to understand what is going on right now and so we turn to the revelations about McCarrick, who is but the tip of an iceberg.

 

 

 

 

 




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