“You can hide the rubbish only for so long. Eventually it overflows, out into the open. When the [Catholic] Church should be speaking with a clear and direct voice, it is instead spreading confusion, misunderstanding and scandal.” Benedick Kiely, National Review
Why does the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church never seem to go away? Allegations of sexual abuse covered up by the Church is spread across more than a half dozen counties that include Austria, Chili, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Brazil and the United States. Australian Cardinal George Pell was charged with child sex offenses; Jozef Wesolowski, a former Vatican ambassador to the Dominican Republic was found guilty of sexual abuse of minors and possession of child pornography by a Vatican tribunal and defrocked; sex abuse alleged at the Munich, Germany archdiocese where Pope Benedict XVI once served as archbishop; Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Newark, NY and D.C. stepped down from the ministry after numerous charges of sexual abuse, etc.
The Church isn’t about to air their dirty laundry but a former porn star and author of Swallowed by Satan: How Our Lord Jesus Christ Saved Me From Pornography, Homosexuality, and the Occult, Joseph Sciambra is more than happy to elaborate on the back story surrounding the gaying of the Catholic Church. As a youngster within the Church, Sciambra claims that when he was coming out he went to his priest who did not try to dissuade him but rather confirmed him in his disordered desires. And since then, according to Sciambra, nothing has changed, in fact, they’ve gotten worse. There are now priests openly promoting the gay lifestyle, usually under the guise of gay-friendly outreach at the parish level.
Concerning New York, Sciambra reports that a homo/trans ministry operated at St. Francis de Sales Church in NY City is run by a drag performer. Another homo/trans ministry, “Out at St. Pauls,” located at St. Paul the Apostle Parish in NY City hosts its winter social at a notorious gay bar called Rise in Hell’s Kitchen that regularly hosts weekly drag shows where the bartenders “wear nothing but a jock-strap.” They also hold their spring social at a bar called Bottoms UP. Jesuit priest James Martin who has spoken numerous times at Out at Pauls events considered it an example of a “vibrant” outreach. Blessed Sacrament on the Upper West Side, headed by a married homosexual, hosted a Halloween dance party that featured heretical gay speakers including Carl Siciliano of the Ali Forney Center who calls Catechism “homophobic.
“In San Jose, California, a LBGT Ministry, Eucharistic Minister and Lector at St. Julie Billart Catholic Church, married his live-in boyfriend several years ago. The Archdiocese of Atlanta allowed the Catholic Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to march in a gay pride parade that featured naked or near naked men feigning anal and oral sex. The Shrine also hosts a regular potluck dinner for homo/trans couples.
In April of this year, Jesuit James Martin, who called a gay priest a pioneer for coming out, promoted an October retreat for gay priests at Siena Retreat Center on his official facebook page. The October retreat, to be led by Fr. Bryan Massingale is for gay priests, brothers and deacons at the Siena Retreat Center in Wisconsin overseen by the Racine Dominican Sisters, sponsored by the dissident pro-gay marriage group New Ways Ministry.
In 2013, prior to the College of Cardinals gathering in the Sistine Chapel for the conclave to choose the 266th Pope, the largest Italian daily newspaper, La Repubblica, reported that a “gay lobby,” a more or less unified cabal of homosexual power broker, might be operating inside the Vatican. According to the newspaper, the possible existence of this gay lobby was among the many secrets described in a two-volume, 300-page report bound in red and presented to Pope Benedict XVI by three cardinals he had appointed to investigate the affair known as “VatiLeaks.” That scandal, which raised fresh suspicions of endemic corruption within the Curia, had broken the previous year after Paolo Gabriele, the papal butler, made off with some of Benedict’s private papers and leaked them to the press.
“Gay lobby” according to the article is really shorthand for something else. At the Vatican, a significant number of gay prelates and other gay clerics are in positions of great authority. They may not act as a collective but are aware of one another’s existence. And they inhabit a secretive netherworld, because homosexuality is officially condemned. Though the number of gay priests in general, and specifically among the Curia in Rome, is unknown, the proportion is much higher than in the general population. Between 20 and 60 percent of all Catholic priests are gay, according to one estimate cited by Donald B. Cozzens in his well-regarded The Changing Face of the Priesthood. For gay clerics at the Vatican, one fundamental condition of their power, and of their priesthood, is silence, at least in public, about who they really are.
Self-centeredness can breed a sense of entitlement. “A certain part of the clergy feels that no one will care what they do 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, Prete Gay (I, Gay Priest). “Rumors are O.K., but not scandal.”
These stories can be told from coast to coast, from border to border, and it has all happened with the express support and even encouragement of priests and bishops. Everyone knows this is going on and no one does anything about it. But perhaps that is about to change.
Just this week, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court released the results of an 18 month probe on six of the state’s 8 dioceses that detailed 70 years of misconduct and listed hundreds of names of Priests that had been accused of sexual abuse. Washington Archbishop Cardinal Donald Wuerl, former longtime leader of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, warned his priests in a letter that the probe will be “profoundly disturbing.” The report will recommend systemic changes and can be a catalyst for criminal charges, some involved said; two priests have been charged since the probe began.
“Rationalizations for moral misbehavior work like this. Anyone who chooses an evil act must present it to himself as good; otherwise, as Aristotle taught, he would be incapable of choosing it. When we rationalize, we convince ourselves that heretofore forbidden desires are permissible. In short, we assert that bad is good. Conscience may struggle to the fore and repentance follows. The temporary rationalization crumbles, and moral reality is restored. What of habitual moral failure? Conscience must be obliterated.” Robert Reilly, In Making Gay Okay
Source: The Fetid Sea in Which They Swim by Austin Ruse, Crisis Magazine; Timeline: A look at the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandals, CNN; The scandal of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and why no major media outed him by Julia Duin, Get Religion; Retreats for ‘gay priests, brothers’ and ‘lesbian sisters’ to take place in Milwaukee archdiocese, Lifesite; How the Catholic Church Priesthood Became An Unlikely Haven for Many Gay Men, Ross Benes, OutWard; The Vatican’s Secret Life, Vanity Fair
