Bertone: It's the queer eye, stupid!

Mollie, in "Anecdotes, data and definitions" (GetReligion.org, April13, 2010), writes:

Were you thinking that the Vatican Media Frenzy had gotten a bit stale? Well, you’re in luck. Roughly eleventy billion media outlets are running a story about something Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone said at a Chilean press conference yesterday:

The Vatican’s second-highest authority says the sex scandals haunting the Roman Catholic Church are linked to homosexuality [gasp!] and not celibacy among priests.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state, made the comments during a news conference Monday in Chile, where one of the church’s highest-profile pedophile cases involves a priest having sex with young girls.

“Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and pedophilia. But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia [double gasp!]. That is true,” said Bertone. “That is the problem.”

Ruh-roh! For what it’s worth, this quote is a bit different than the quote that Reuters gave, which didn’t include the last seven words above but includes this additional information:

“This pathology is one that touches all categories of people, and priests to a lesser degree in percentage terms,” he said. “The behavior of the priests in this case, the negative behavior, is very serious, is scandalous.”

There's a good bit more about terms and translations in the article of note. Have a look at the entire article for a good read.

[Hat tip to J.M.]