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 reader who called my attention to this article, commented in the sent email:
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.
Distressing.[Hat tip to J.M.]
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.
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):
Thank you Progressive Prelates; thank you for your opening to the world; thank you for your dignity this and overcoming sin by love that; thank you for your keen understanding that the way to smash the teeth of the Homosexual Serpent that is destroying Holy Mother Church is to have a charismatic Pope spirit Bernard Cardinal Law out of America and install him in a posh and prestigious position in a major Roman Church - that sure as hell taught the world how damn serious we Catholics are when it comes to dealing with predatory perverted Priests and the pathetic Prelates who protected them.
ReplyDeleteThat is so much mo'better than to have, say, a Pope
George who would simply slay the damned homosexual serpent by immediately excommunicating those low-life bastids who never have had and never could have a vocation to the Priesthood because one who suffers the cross of homosexuality can NOT act in Persona Christi. PERIOD!!!
Any rational Catholic man who is worthy of the name knows this.
Dear Dr. Consider an innocent contest in which those who desire to participate promise to send you $5.00 and the winner will be he who most closely identifies the date that the Brick By Brick Bund declares the abdication was simply part of the hermeneutic of continuity (as all revolutionary acts have been since 1962 BCE*); and, just to be fair, you will get to keep 25% of the monies for operating the contest.
ReplyDelete* BCE = Bestest Council Ever
If you think Voris is overreaching, look up Hubbard + Albany + Likoudis + Minkler and start reading.
ReplyDeleteThe scandal coincides closely with the time span of Benedict's papacy. And it is Pope Ratzinger who is resigning, not the reptilian bishop of the Albany NY diocese.
Voris also shows that, as usual, Ab Dolan's role is that of Falstaff. How pathetic he is!