Lavender blackmail, background of Papal resignation?

A reader sent me the article linked below:

John Hooper (Guardian's Rome correspondent), "Papal resignation linked to inquiry into 'Vatican gay officials', says paper" (The Guardian, February 21, 2013): "Pope's staff decline to confirm or deny La Repubblica claims linking 'Vatileaks' affair and discovery of 'blackmailed gay clergy'":

A potentially explosive report has linked the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI to the discovery of a network of gay prelates in the Vatican, some of whom – the report said – were being blackmailed by outsiders....

The paper said the pope had taken the decision on 17 December that he was going to resign – the day he received a dossier compiled by three cardinals delegated to look into the so-called "Vatileaks" affair....

According to La Repubblica, the dossier comprising "two volumes of almost 300 pages – bound in red" had been consigned to a safe in the papal apartments and would be delivered to the pope's successor upon his election.

The newspaper said the cardinals described a number of factions, including one whose members were "united by sexual orientation"....

[La Repubblica] quoted a source "very close to those who wrote [the cardinal's report]" as saying: "Everything revolves around the non-observance of the sixth and seventh commandments."

The seventh enjoins against theft. The sixth forbids adultery, but is linked in Catholic doctrine to the proscribing of homosexual acts.

La Repubblica said the cardinals' report identified a series of meeting places in and around Rome. They included a villa outside the Italian capital, a sauna in a Rome suburb, a beauty parlour in the centre, and a former university residence that was in use by a provincial Italian archbishop....

La Repubblica's report was the latest in a string of claims that a gay network exists in the Vatican. In 2007 a senior official was suspended from the congregation, or department, for the priesthood, after he was filmed in a "sting" organised by an Italian television programme while apparently making sexual overtures to a younger man.

In 2010 a chorister was dismissed for allegedly procuring male prostitutes for a papal gentleman-in-waiting. A few months later a weekly news magazine used hidden cameras to record priests visiting gay clubs and bars and having sex.

The reader who called my attention to this article, commented in the sent email:

Distressing.

And yet you would think the parties are warring over global warming or Left-handedness.

Really, people are prisoners of their own dented thinking. Read the last two sentences of the last paragraph of this piece:

The Vatican does not condemn homosexuals. But it teaches that gay sex is "intrinsically disordered".

Will these two statements make sense to moderns? Do they make sense at all? No. Does the Vatican "condemn" anyone? Any person? Of course not, not even Bishop Williamson. It would not condemn even Hitler as a man. But it is impossible to NOT "Condemn" homosexuals if you condemn homosexuality.

This is why the 'Born That Way" argument is in fact important (even if not decisive). But we have all but ceded the ground. There is absolutely NO conversation about the immorality or sinfulness of homosexuality, only noble posturing about "Defense of Marriage." You can't find arguments about it that include the idea that all other arguments aside, the practice of gay sex is itself wrong and should not be given any sort of tacit approval.

If you simply say, "Of course gays cannot marry. We can't approve of the essential sexual act the defines them, much less institutionalize it in a a sacred ceremony!" you have clarity. You would also have California rumbling so hard in rage it would detach itself from the continental plate. If you default to: "Well, the real purpose of marriage is after all procreation...," like our primary objections are functional, you turn the exercise of moral theology into a farce. The fact that marriage is meant for procreation is a far secondary argument. Marriage is made for men and women because Sex is made for men and women. To engage arguments that assume otherwise is to give them some legitimacy. Once you do that, unfortunately, you immediately lose all ground. If the boundaries of normal and abnormal, natural and unnatural, are blurred, there is no focus at all.

[Hat tip to J.M.]

Update:

And then there is this: "The Pope & Homoheresy," based on "a blockbuster report produced by a PhD priest at the Pontifical University in Kraków, Poland, who was asked to prepare this report by various bishops and cardinals. It details how the secret homosexual lobby of priests and bishops in the Church is trying to gain a stronger foothold in his native Poland and how much damage has already been done by them in other parts of the world throughout the Church, from active homosexual clergy among priests to active homosexuals among bishops and those that are friendly to them, that promote them and protect them, as well as those who had been hidden and covered up the resultant child sex abuse at the hands of predator homosexual clergy." [The report: by Fr. Dariusz Oko, Ph.D., "With the Pope Against the Homoheresy" - PDF]

Update (2/26/13):