UNITED STATES
Catholic World Report
Pope Benedict XVI, in his September 9, 2009 general audience, noted that the Benedictine monk, cardinal, and Doctor of the Church, St. Peter Damian (1007-72), was “one of the most significant figures of the 11th century … a monk, a lover of solitude and at the same time a fearless man of the Church, committed personally to the task of reform, initiated by the Popes of the time.” St. Peter Damian was born into a poor family (and was orphaned a young age), demonstrated remarkable intellectual skills as a teenager, and by the age of twenty five was a renowned teacher. He then renounced the secular life and became a monk, and eventually became prior of the hermitage at Fonte Avellana.
Between 1049 and 1054, he composed the powerful book Liber Gomorrhianus, or “Book of Gomorrah”, addressing it to the new pope, Leo IX, who himself would eventually be canonized. Pope St. Leo IX praised St. Peter Damian’s work and the monk became a key reformer, addressing widespread excesses and grave sins.
Thomam Books and Media has now published a rigorous and careful translation of The Book of Gomorrah, praised by scholars as “highly readable”, “clear and well-articulated”, and “excellent and accurate”. Carl E. Olson, editor of Catholic World Report, recently corresponded with the translator, Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, who is a graduate student at Holy Apostles College and Seminary and a regular contributor to a number of Catholic periodicals, including CWR.
CWR: What is The Book of Gomorrah and why did St. Peter Damian write it?
Matthew Cullinan Hoffman: The Book of Gomorrah is letter written to Pope St. Leo IX around the year 1049 in response to an epidemic of sodomy among the priests of Italy, which Peter Damian feared would bring down the wrath of God upon the Church. This plague of sexual perversion was part of a larger crisis of moral laxity in the priesthood, including widespread sexual incontinency and illicit marriages, the simoniacal purchasing of clerical ordination, and the prevalence of a worldly and carnal mentality among the clergy. The laity were outraged by such behavior and were even beginning to rebel against the Church hierarchy in some places, such as Florence and Milan.
The Book of Gomorrah is an eloquent and impassioned denunciation of the vice of sodomy, describing in harrowing detail the devastating spiritual and psychological effects on those who practice it. Damian holds that sodomy is the worst of all sins because it does the greatest harm to the soul, and argues very persuasively that no priest who is habituated to such behavior should be permitted to continue in the priesthood. However, the work is not only a condemnation of evil, but also an outpouring of grief for those who have fallen into such immorality, urging them to “rise from the dead” and return to Christ, and promising them forgiveness and even spiritual glory if they repent and do penance. So the work expresses very profoundly both the justice and the mercy of God. …
CWR: Does The Book of Gomorrah address the sexual abuse of minors as well?
Hoffman: Indeed it connects this epidemic of sodomy with the abuse of “penitential sons” by confessors. It also approvingly quotes an ecclesiastical law that requires any cleric caught in an act of sexual abuse of a boy or adolescent to be publicly humiliated, bound in iron chains, required to fast on barley bread for months while imprisoned in a monastic cell, and then placed permanently in the custody of two other monks to prevent any further harm to children. Damian’s canon provides a stark contrast with the lax attitude that so many modern prelates have shown regarding the sexual abuse of minors, which has caused so much damage to souls and to the Church’s reputation in recent decades.
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