Silence.
Silence is what Pope Francis promised in the face of Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano’s accusations that officials at the Vatican had covered up Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s active homosexuality and his molestation of adolescents and seminarians.
Silence is what the pope has delivered.
On October 7, 2018, Archbishop Vigano issued a third public letter of testimony, stating at one point “It is no exaggeration to say that homosexuality has become a plague in the clergy, and it can only be eradicated with spiritual weapons. It is an enormous hypocrisy to condemn the abuse, claim to weep for the victims, and yet refuse to denounce the root cause of so much sexual abuse: homosexuality.”
Again silence. (Given Rome’s clandestine ways, the pope’s refusal to rebut Vigano’s charges is not extraordinary.)
Silence is what Pope Francis promised in the face of Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano’s accusations that officials at the Vatican had covered up Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s active homosexuality and his molestation of adolescents and seminarians.
Silence is what the pope has delivered.
On October 7, 2018, Archbishop Vigano issued a third public letter of testimony, stating at one point “It is no exaggeration to say that homosexuality has become a plague in the clergy, and it can only be eradicated with spiritual weapons. It is an enormous hypocrisy to condemn the abuse, claim to weep for the victims, and yet refuse to denounce the root cause of so much sexual abuse: homosexuality.”
Again silence. (Given Rome’s clandestine ways, the pope’s refusal to rebut Vigano’s charges is not extraordinary.)
Before looking at Vigano’s charges, we must distinguish between a crime and a sin. The molestation of adolescents is both a crime and a mortal sin. Consensual sex between seminarians, priests, and bishops is not a crime, but is a mortal sin, a dishonoring of their vow of celibacy.
This salacious behavior on the part of some clergy has been an open secret for years. See, for example, John Michael Gross’s Vanity Fair article, “The Vatican’s Secret Life.” (https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/12/gay-clergy-catholic-church-vatican)
In this 2013 essay, Gross examines gay saunas and clubs favored by clerics in Rome, gay camps, the political machinations of certain gay bishops, a penchant by some for hiring attractive young priests as “eye candy”, the gay priests who remain true to their vows of celibacy as well as those who actively practice homosexuality. He writes:
“A certain part of the clergy feels that no one will care if they are discreet,” says Marco Politi, a prominent Italian journalist and longtime Vatican correspondent, and the author of several books about the papacy and the Church. In 2000, Politi published a book-length interview with an anonymous gay priest, entitled La Confessione, republished in 2006 as Io, Pete Gay (I, Gay Priest). “Rumors are O.K., but not scandal,” Politi observes.
There has been plenty of scandal, though. In 2007, Monsignor Tommaso Stenico met a young man in an online chat room and invited him to his Vatican officer, where their conversation—in which Stenico denied that gay sex was a sin, touched the other man’s leg, and said, “You’re so hot”—was secretly videotaped and then broadcast on Italian television. (Stenico tried to persuade Italian newspapers that he’d just been playing along in order “to study how priests are ensnared into gay sex” as “a diabolical plan by groups of Satanists.” He was suspended from his Vatican position.) In 2006 a priest in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State injured police officers and smashed into police cars during a high-speed chase through a district in Rome known for transsexuals and prostitutes. (The priest was acquitted on all charges after claiming that he fled because he feared he was being kidnapped.) In a 2010 investigation of contract fixing for constructions projects, Italian police wiretaps happened to catch a papal usher and Gentleman of his Holiness, Angelo Balducci, allegedly hiring male prostitutes, some of whom may have been seminarians, through a Nigerian member of a Vatican choir. (The choir member was dismissed; Balducci was convicted on corruption charges.)
The investigation of Cardinal McCarrick, the Vigano letters, and reports from secular reporters like Gross should lead even casual observers to believe that the Vatican is indeed home to what some have dubbed the lavender mafia, a network of gay men breaking their holy vows and possibly working to undermine Church dogma. We may also deduce that, unlike their focus on clerical child abuse, many in the mainstream media are ignoring this story because they approve of homosexuality and also rightly regard these scandals as an issue for the Church rather than as crimes.
Finally, we may conclude that unless the pope and the cardinals end these scandals, they will inflict even greater damage on an already battered Church.
Meanwhile, Catholics in the pews continue to grieve this fifth column assault on their faith, withdrawing, in some cases, their financial support from their churches, and praying that their priests, wherever they may be, will follow Church teaching and honor their vows.
This salacious behavior on the part of some clergy has been an open secret for years. See, for example, John Michael Gross’s Vanity Fair article, “The Vatican’s Secret Life.” (https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/12/gay-clergy-catholic-church-vatican)
In this 2013 essay, Gross examines gay saunas and clubs favored by clerics in Rome, gay camps, the political machinations of certain gay bishops, a penchant by some for hiring attractive young priests as “eye candy”, the gay priests who remain true to their vows of celibacy as well as those who actively practice homosexuality. He writes:
“A certain part of the clergy feels that no one will care if they are discreet,” says Marco Politi, a prominent Italian journalist and longtime Vatican correspondent, and the author of several books about the papacy and the Church. In 2000, Politi published a book-length interview with an anonymous gay priest, entitled La Confessione, republished in 2006 as Io, Pete Gay (I, Gay Priest). “Rumors are O.K., but not scandal,” Politi observes.
There has been plenty of scandal, though. In 2007, Monsignor Tommaso Stenico met a young man in an online chat room and invited him to his Vatican officer, where their conversation—in which Stenico denied that gay sex was a sin, touched the other man’s leg, and said, “You’re so hot”—was secretly videotaped and then broadcast on Italian television. (Stenico tried to persuade Italian newspapers that he’d just been playing along in order “to study how priests are ensnared into gay sex” as “a diabolical plan by groups of Satanists.” He was suspended from his Vatican position.) In 2006 a priest in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State injured police officers and smashed into police cars during a high-speed chase through a district in Rome known for transsexuals and prostitutes. (The priest was acquitted on all charges after claiming that he fled because he feared he was being kidnapped.) In a 2010 investigation of contract fixing for constructions projects, Italian police wiretaps happened to catch a papal usher and Gentleman of his Holiness, Angelo Balducci, allegedly hiring male prostitutes, some of whom may have been seminarians, through a Nigerian member of a Vatican choir. (The choir member was dismissed; Balducci was convicted on corruption charges.)
The investigation of Cardinal McCarrick, the Vigano letters, and reports from secular reporters like Gross should lead even casual observers to believe that the Vatican is indeed home to what some have dubbed the lavender mafia, a network of gay men breaking their holy vows and possibly working to undermine Church dogma. We may also deduce that, unlike their focus on clerical child abuse, many in the mainstream media are ignoring this story because they approve of homosexuality and also rightly regard these scandals as an issue for the Church rather than as crimes.
Finally, we may conclude that unless the pope and the cardinals end these scandals, they will inflict even greater damage on an already battered Church.
Meanwhile, Catholics in the pews continue to grieve this fifth column assault on their faith, withdrawing, in some cases, their financial support from their churches, and praying that their priests, wherever they may be, will follow Church teaching and honor their vows.
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