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A Lavender Mafia?
Some weeks after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation, the Italian press went wild, reporting that his decision had been prompted by his receipt of a report issued by a commission of three Cardinals whom he had asked to investigate the so-called Vatileaks affair. That report, we were told, revealed the existence within the Curia of a network of sexually active homosexual prelates who were being blackmailed by outsiders.
That such a commission was appointed and that it issued a report is true. The members were Julián Herranz of Spain, Salvatore De Giorgi of Italy, and Jozef Tomko, from Slovakia. Initially, the Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi refused to comment on the contents of the report. Later, however, he denied that the press account was correct.
Soon thereafter, The Observer in Britain reported that three serving priests and a former priest had lodged a formal complaint with the Papal Nuncio in Britain, charging Keith O’Brien, Cardinal-Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh and Primate of the Catholic Church in Scotland, with having tried, in some cases successfully, to take advantage of them sexually some 30 years ago when he was spiritual director in a seminary and after he became a bishop. It was later revealed that last year another priest had made similar allegations about O’Brien’s conduct 11 years before. Soon after these revelations, O’Brien was forced to resign from his post. At first, he denied the truth of the charges. Later, he confessed his guilt.
If Cardinal O’Brien’s misconduct were an isolated case, I would be inclined to believe Father Lombardi’s dismissal of the reports in the Italian press. A close friend who knows the Vatican very well indeed suspects that the focus of the report issued by the three Cardinals is graft. “In Italy,” as he put it, “theft is a way of life.”
It would not, however, be surprising were there blackmail involved as well. It is not as if there have not, in recent years, been examples of homoerotically inclined prelates in the United States being blackmailed by former sexual partners, and it is a reasonable guess that there has been a lot more of this sort of thing going on than we know even now. The world of the Catholic clergy is a secretive world governed by a code of silence. Cardinal O’Brien’s misconduct escaped public notice for more than thirty years.
Some time in the 1980s, I became aware that some of the Catholic seminaries in this country were little better than brothels. I read no public reports, but I heard stories. The diocesan seminary at Catholic University in Washington, DC was notorious. In the late 1990s, I had a conversation with a leading Catholic layman that brought home to me how deep the rot went. He knew a priest who, upon being named to head a diocesan seminary, discovered that chastity was not there the norm. He made an appointment to see the Bishop of the diocese for the purpose of informing him of the problem, and he asked permission to weed out those who were sexually active. “If we do not do this now,” he reportedly said, “there will be terrible trouble when these young men are unleashed on the diocese.” The Bishop replied that he wanted nothing done. “I want numbers,” he said, and numbers he got. Not long after I had this conversation, this particular Bishop became an Archbishop, and soon thereafter he was named a Cardinal. The diocese he left behind has been a cesspool ever since.
It is against this background that the scandals of recent years become explicable. Much has been written about pedophile priests. But the truth is that, in the priesthood, genuine pedophiles were and are exceedingly rare. As the report commissioned by the American hierarchy some years back revealed, the vast majority of the victims were not pre-pubescent children. They were adolescent boys. Pedophilia was not a plague; pederasty of the sort common in classical Greece was. The seminaries were churning out a generation of sexually active, homoerotically inclined priests. Like many a heterosexual, some of these men found young people in the bloom of youth highly attractive. And the bishops – many of whom had strayed in their younger days – did not regard with great horror what these priests were doing.
I have long thought that the sexual revolution of the late 1960s had engendered a crisis within the Roman Catholic clergy. There had always been priests who were homoerotically inclined. In times past, the priesthood offered men who were not at all attracted to women a place of respect and responsibility within the community. As long as chastity was the norm, I reasoned, it was relatively easy for them to observe the vow of celibacy. Once, however, chastity ceased to be the norm in the larger society, their situation became more difficult.
I still suspect that there is a lot to this analysis. But I recently became aware that the problem was serious long before the late 1960s. In Jemez Springs, New Mexico, there once existed a Monastery of the Servants of the Paraclete named Via Coeli. From 1947 to 1968, Father Gerald Fitzgerald, who had founded the order, was the order’s Father General. In those days, the Catholic hierarchy sent wayward priests to this monastery for treatment. Most of these men had drinking problems, but, even then, there were priests who abused children and adolescents, and, over time, Father Fitzgerald came to believe that these men were incurable and that they should never be allowed to get near children again.
There is online a dossier including some of the letters that Father Fitzgerald wrote in the 1950s and 1960s. If you want to come to grips with what has happened in recent years, you should read them – all of them. On 12 September 1952, for example, Father Fitzgerald writes to the Bishop of Reno, Nevada about one such priest:
His record here was one of conformity to the rule and cooperation yet with no marked indication of fervor or penitential zeal. We find it quite common, almost universal with the handful of men we have seen in the last five years who have been under similar charges – we find it universal that they seem to be lacking in appreciation of the serious situation. As a class they expect to bound back like tennis balls on to the court of priestly activity. I myself would be inclined to favor laicization for any priest, upon objective evidence, for tampering with the virtue of the young. My argument being, from this point onward the charity to the Mystical Body should take precedence over charity to the individual and when a man has so far fallen away from the purpose of the priesthood the very best that should be offered is his Mass in the seclusion of a monastery. Moreover, in practice, real conversions will be found to be extremely rare. Many bishops believe men are never free from the approximate danger once they have begun. Hence leaving them on duty or wandering from diocese to diocese is contributing to scandal or at least to the approximate danger of scandal.
Five years later, he wrote to an Archbishop in a similar vein, describing those “who have seduced or attempted to seduce little boys or girls” as “devils” and “a class of rattlesnake,” and he suggested that they be confined to an isolated island. One letter, written on 10 September 1964, shows that Father Fitzgerald had expressed these concerns directly to Pope Paul VI in an audience.
In that same letter, Father Fitzgerald alludes to another difficulty he has encountered that bears on the reports in the Italian press:
When I was ordained forty-three years ago, homosexuality was a practically unknown rarity. Today, it is – in the wake of World War II – rampant among men. And whereas seventeen years ago, eight out of ten problems here would represent the alcoholic, now in the last year or so our admission ratio would be approximately 5-2-3: five being alcoholics; two
would be what we call “heart cases” (natural affection towards women); and three representing aberrations involving homosexuality. More alarming still is that among these of the 3 out of 10 class 2 out of 3 have been young priests.I mention this because it would seem in America at least this type of problem is more devastating to the good standing of the priesthood than anything else. It is very infectious and the prognosis for recovery extremely unfavorable. The majority of psychiatrists, physicians, and experienced priests are not sanguine of permanent recovery. Therefore, it would seem that more careful screening – especially the study of family background and personal motivation – is definitely in order.
Bishop, do not quote me because this is given you in strictest confidence, but we know of several seminaries that have been deeply infected and this of course leads to a wide infection. Therefore there should be a very strict discipline of dismissal and a very clear and printed teaching in the moral theology course that mutual masturbation is a mortal sin. Priests develop a blind spot on this matter which in my opinion involves very likely the fixation of impenitence. Seldom will you find these men evidencing consciousness of the gravity of what they have done. And this apparently is represented in the strange attitude of Bishops who place these men after reactivation in assignments where they are most exposed to a recurrence of a vicious habit which the majority of experts would consider practically incurable.
Decades before I became aware of what was happening in some of the seminaries, the problem had already appeared. It did not emerge as a response to the sexual revolution. It was already there, and the advice offered by Father Fitzgerald, who was removed from his post in 1968, was not taken.
The scandals that have rocked the Roman Catholic Church in the United States and elsewhere have deep roots. Things no doubt got worse in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s. But they have been bad for more than half a century. Scotland’s Cardinal O’Brien may not be typical, but his is by no means an isolated case. I would not be surprised were we to discover that the reports in the Italian press are more accurate than the Vatican spokesman has led us to believe. The next Pope will have a great deal of housecleaning to do.
Published in General
I think one obvious question that our next Pope needs to answer is whether it is time to reverse the decision made by Pope Gregory centuries ago to require a Vow of Celibacy for Priests. I would much rather have a married heterosexual Priest than a homosexual Priest who is molesting young boys.
This is a very intense piece. And there is much wisdom in it.
Happily, Cardinal O’Brien is a very good start, on a number of fronts.
I don’t think that this is the only logic by which celibacy can be held up as a possible cause of this scandal. It may be that the requirement of celibacy made Catholic priesthood attractive to men who had no interest in marriage or women and wanted to be perceived as normal in a society that condemned homosexuality. This then created an atmosphere of homosexuality that attracted more of the same men, even at a time when it became less socially undesirable to be homosexual.
Since celibacy is not truly a doctrinal requirement but only a discipline of the Catholic church (and not observed in some Eastern Rite Catholic churches), I don’t think it’s wrong for those of us from churches with married clergy to note that there are some advantages to our practices.
I think the housecleaning, and sea change in attitudes, has already begun, but must continue. The legacy of the rot within the church was something I witnessed at USC.
I cannot speak to the allegations regarding Father Messenger, but I can say that his beliefs are highly heterodox.
Maybe I’m naive, but I just don’t understand how this could logically have happened. Men applying to seminary enter of their own free will, from the general Catholic population, don’t they? How couldso manymen, raised in families that respected the chastity of priests, so easily accept its reversal?
In Goodbye, Good Men Michael S. Rose alleged that seminaries run by liberal theologians screened out and rejected candidates for being “too orthodox.” Presumably the good men either went to other seminaries, or else took their rejection as a sign they did not have an authentic vocation and never entered the priesthood.
I don’t know if this is true or not, just offering it as a possible explanation.
Is anyone surprised? Highly centralized authority, enormous wealth, zero transparency, no checks and no balances. What would the Founders have thought about this model of governance? This despicable outcome was as predictable as rain in England.
Anyone care to predict the likelihood of this happening? One Pope simply resigned, something not done in 600 years. What message will his successor glean from that? Get out the broom and dust rag? I doubt it. Fish rot from the head.
This from one of the letters cited above. Is he using World War II as a place-holder the way many of us do when discussing the Twentieth Century, or did the war itself precipitate a shift in sexual behavior?
That gives me pause as well — that the founder, and not mere applicant, was so corrupt during his service and not before. But the Magisterium approved the order’s creation and continues to approve of it. Are we to believe they made a mistake? Has the Church ever abolished an order? ·28 minutes ago
The Magisterium didn’t approve anything.
To elaborate on that a bit Aaron, “Magisterium” refers specifically to the teaching authority of the Church (“magister” is Latin for “teacher’), as distinct from the governing authority of the Church.
A bishop has the authority to establish new parishes or close down and consolidate existing ones, and a pope can create a new diocese and approve new religious orders (or abolish them). They can, and do, make mistakes in such matters.
@James: I’ll second your comments from a RC monastic perspective. While I’m now a LCMS communicant, I’m still close to the Benedictine monastery that founded my secondary school.
It seemed that the nature of celibacy for a monk was very different than that for a diocesan priest. Some of the difference was because the monks were cloistered. But my take was that many more monks came to their calling after a career (or at least some experience of the outside world). As I’ve related in earlier comments, the immediate past Abbot was an Airborne Ranger in his previous life.
Such men aren’t choosing celibacy to hide from life.
I argue that the main problem is that contemporary man doesn’t accept the notion of authority – but that’s the essence of what the church is. ·4 hours ago
But is that true? Look at the debates over “climate change” or the debate currently raging here about Young Earth Creationists, and you’ll find a lot of people who are quick to point to the authority of experts to shut down debate: “the science is settled, the experts all agree” etc.
You see the same thing in political debates where politicians are quick to point to a study that shows how their plan would create X million new jobs or whatever. If a study says it, it must be true, right?
I think in many cases “contemporary man” is all too willing to accept authority when it wears academic robes and comes with a long list of degrees and credentials attached.
And this is a major problem for the Church, since there are so many dissenting theologians in liberal academia these days. Many students are more inclined to accept the authority of their theology professor when he disagrees with settled Church teaching.
The Lord works in strange ways.
Genesis 50:20 may be the most beautiful verse in the book, with Joseph reassuring his brothers:
Thank you. That is precisely what I had in mind.
The question of why the rot set in when it did is worth pondering. Freud was big, in the U.S. at least, early in the 20th Century.
I also think there was a turn from liberty to autonomy. Think of FDR’s comment that “necessitous men are not free men.” Freedom is not about how one secures food, shelter, medicine, etc. Freedom is what one has once one is, like FDR, free of having to worry about money. According to the old teaching, would that be wickedness, for seeking to subdue nature, attacking God’s creation? That is not the liberty we are supposed to have after being kicked out of Eden–“by the sweat of your brow shall eat your food.”
If memory serves, the Church opposed the materialism and the individualism that it associated with liberalism in the 19th century. Might that opposition have, somehow, led it to embrace the odd alliance of communalism and autonomy that are the hallmarks of 20th Century American liberalism? Did that ential a turn to soft despotism?
Fwiw, Orthodox priests are generally married, but bishops and monks are not; somehow Orthodox monasteries and seminaries seem to have been spared the same fate as Catholicism, even where celibacy is enforced. I agree that there are advantages to having married priests, but feel that the case is frequently described in exceedingly credulous terms. I’d also note that Orthodox priests cannot marry after ordination, which strikes me as an important corollary; it’s worth protecting parisioners from predation even after they’ve reached majority. ·1 hour ago
There have been problems at various times and places. I was reading a biography of a Russian monk who visited the famous monastery at Mount Athos a century ago and was shocked by the fornication that was going on openly between monks. That anecdote should give us pause, since the scandalized Russian monk I’m referring to was Grigori Rasputin.
Thanks for the corrections and clarifications.
I don’t know much about religious orders (as perhaps I should) because there have never been many around in the places I have lived. When they were present, they were rarely visible. I met only one nun until I attended a college founded by nuns… and there the sisters were indistinguishable from the laity.
Religious orders always seemed to belong to European antiquity. They still do, even after having spent time with the Legionaries.
To elaborate on that a bit Aaron, “Magisterium” refers specifically to the teaching authority of the Church (“magister” is Latin for “teacher’), as distinct from the governing authority of the Church. ….
My understanding of the Magisterium was that it is simply the bishops acting together (on anything). Is this limited to councils and papal elections? Or does it ever apply to a selection of bishops, rather than the whole group?
You seem to have that mixed up with Gallicanism. You need the late Cardinal Avery Dulles SJ’s book on the Magisterium.
No, I did not believe the Pope is bereft of authority without his fellow bishops. But I always associated the Magisterium with the full body of bishops and considered the Pope its head.
Regardless, yes, I’ve got some homework.
There have been problems at various times and places. I was reading a biography of a Russian monk who visited the famous monastery at Mount Athos a century ago and was shocked by the fornication that was going on openly between monks. That anecdote should give us pause, since the scandalized Russian monk I’m referring to was Grigori Rasputin. ·1 hour ago
Sure. I spoke imprecisely; I didn’t get the impression when I moved in the relevant social circles that there were the same levels of, well, lavender mafias. More particularly, non-celibacy is generally put forward as a solution to pederasty rather than homosexuality; I don’t think many people believe that marriage alone is sufficient to cure homosexuality.
Our monasteries have plenty of sex scandals; for some reason Greek and Balkan women often develop fantasies about monks and many monasteries are much pestered with comely women, a phenomenon that does not always result in strengthened souls. Happily, though, the pederasty levels seem to be kept low.
Also in support of the limits on the help of non-celibacy; Father Maciel founded two families, but still preyed on children outside them.
Very well said.
A brief note to comment on some points and concerns raised by KC and Aaron. While the gravity of the moral offense of the scandal is monumental, KC is right to point out, and Aaron please keep in mind, that the overwhelmingly vast majority of priests did not engage in any of this conduct. You wouldn’t know that from how the scandal is discussed in the media. At its root, its breadth across various diocese was a function of episcopal mis-management. However, it is also important to keep in mind that the quiet shuffling of offenders to different locales after “therapy” was a common approach in the 60s to early 80s, and one engaged in by public school systems with at least the same frequency. Still, the Church has, and should be held to, a higher standard. The point of Dr. Rahe’s excellent and deeply unsettling post is that an insidious subculture with a sexual ethic that is anathema to orthodox Christian teaching appears to be central to the vast majority of the abuses conducted over the decades of the scandal’s highest incidence. And KC is right, at its most fundamental, this was about malignant disobedience.
Right. When searching for explanations, it’s always worth remembering that public school teachers have higher rates of offending. They can get married (or, at least, there’s no authority preventing them from doing so). They don’t have weird catholic beliefs (well, most of them).
To my mind, the focus on Catholic clergy has always seemed like a way of inducing mental comfort by conflating categories of people who one dehumanizes. Whether or not that’s true, it remains the case that most of the factors commonly claimed by liberals appear to be unnecessary. Prof. Rahe’s alternative contributing factor (increasing theological liberalism) is, sadly, entirely compatible with the public school teacher phenomenon.
The Church is highly decentralized, each bishop runs his own diocese with very little oversight from Rome. The Vatican bureaucracy is too small, understaffed, and underfunded to meddle much in local affairs if it wanted too.
Enormous wealth? The Vatican posted a “record” budget deficitof $19 million in 2011, and worldwide donations to it totaled $69.7 million.
So, the Catholic Church at its highest level is insignificant, ineffectual, broke and apparently unaccountable, right? Then why are we talking about it? What difference does it make who the Pope is if what you say is true? He claims universal moral authority. But according to you he has little or no actual authority over (and hence little or no accountability for) what happens inside the organization he actually heads, as opposed to the universe in which he merely resides. Child rape inside his church—can’t do nothing. Intercession with God Himself? No problem. I suspect I’m not alone in seeing a discrepancy here.
On a positive note, if you are correct my instinct to turn away from incessant media blather about Pope Benedict’s resignation and the selection of a successor is vindicated.
I don’t think that this is the only logic by which celibacy can be held up as a possible cause of this scandal. It may be that the requirement of celibacy made Catholic priesthood attractive to men who had no interest in marriage or women and wanted to be perceived as normal in a society that condemned homosexuality. This then created an atmosphere of homosexuality that attracted more of the same men, even at a time when it became less socially undesirable to be homosexual.
Since celibacy is not truly a doctrinal requirement but only a discipline of the Catholic church (and not observed in some Eastern Rite Catholic churches), I don’t think it’s wrong for those of us from churches with married clergy to note that there are some advantages to our practices.
Quite right, but those who make the argument you offer normally are friends of the church and understand the rationale behind celibacy. I refer to those who use the “weirdness” of celibacy ina sexualized culture as a way of casting doubt on the whole church. It is an effective weapon, since so few people (includingCatholics) know the rationale behind celibacy anyway.
So, the Catholic Church at its highest level is insignificant, ineffectual, broke and apparently unaccountable, right? Then why are we talking about it? What difference does it make who the Pope is if what you say is true? He claims universal moral authority. But according to you he has little or no actual authority over (and hence little or no accountability for) what happens inside the organization he actually heads, as opposed to the universe in which he merely resides. Child rape inside his church—can’t do nothing. Intercession with God Himself? No problem. I suspect I’m not alone in seeing a discrepancy here. ·15 minutes ago
You overstate his point to make your own. I’m not sure why you did that. Subsidiarity refers to the principle for local control over local issues. The pope simply can’t “run” the church the way you presume. We’re talking about a billion in the “organization” he “heads.” Do you offer any evidence of direct control or mismanagement, or are you simply moving the goal posts by exaggerating the claims of others?
As for “universal moral authority” vs. child rape, you’re making a category error.
The Church is highly decentralized, each bishop runs his own diocese with very little oversight from Rome….
So, the Catholic Church at its highest level is insignificant, ineffectual, broke and apparently unaccountable, right? Then why are we talking about it? What difference does it make who the Pope is if what you say is true? He claims universal moral authority. But according to you he has little or no actual authority over (and hence little or no accountability for) what happens inside the organization he actually heads, as opposed to the universe in which he merely resides….
HVT, a distinction lies between teaching or magisterial authority versus governing/administrative authority. Papal pre-eminence in the first category is substantial to be sure, but in the second it is much more restricted, comparatively. There is a tendency to assume that the Pope is CEO, the Cardinals, Senior VPs and the Bishops, General Managers of Catholic, Inc., but the Church’s structure does not follow such a model.
So, the Catholic Church at its highest level is insignificant, ineffectual, broke and apparently unaccountable, right? …… What difference does it make who the Pope is if what you say is true? He claims universal moral authority. But according to you he has little or no actual authority over (and hence little or no accountability for) what happens inside the organization he actually heads, as opposed to the universe in which he merely resides. Child rape inside his church—can’t do nothing. Intercession with God Himself? No problem. I suspect I’m not alone in seeing a discrepancy here.
…..
It strikes you as contradictory that a cleric could be close to God without enormous secular power? I’d have thought that this was historically normal. If you mean he has great power and should use it to combat child rape, then, well, yes. It seems likely to me that Popes have been honest in claiming to pray for just that result. Who knows? Maybe it would have been more widespread absent such prayers.
Why haven’t the POTUS, or Gov. Jerry Brown, who do have secular powers, been able to end child rape amongst teachers?
I’m quite familiar with Cardinal Ratzinger’s record as head of the CDF and his role in being by far the most effective and tenacious prelate in pursuing the action that legitimately fell within his sphere of influence.
Please do enlighten us as to your extensive knowledge of that case.
You go ahead . . . no, actually, you’ve done enough . . . your talking points are perfect . . . you’ve outdone the Vatican’s lawyers with “the most effective and tenacious prelate in pursuing the action that legitimately fell within his sphere of influence.” Sounds authoritative and compelling . . . says nothing. You also managed to convey the how-dare-you-mere-peons-question-authority tone, which over the centuries has served Rome so well. Pitch perfect. I’m awed. ·7 hours ago
The case of Maciel is an easy matter of public record and since you have nothing to say on the topic I assume the only thing you have to say is what most outflanked courtroom lawyers do when they don’t have anything to do but rant: pound the table.
Sure. I spoke imprecisely; I didn’t get the impression when I moved in the relevant social circles that there were the same levels of, well, lavender mafias. More particularly, non-celibacy is generally put forward as a solution to pederasty rather than homosexuality; I don’t think many people believe that marriage alone is sufficient to cure homosexuality.
Our monasteries have plenty of sex scandals; for some reason Greek and Balkan women often develop fantasies about monks and many monasteries are much pestered with comely women, a phenomenon that does not always result in strengthened souls. Happily, though, the pederasty levels seem to be kept low.
It isn’t that marriage cures anyone of bad inclinations. I don’t for a minute think you’d cure even one man of a propensity to one of these sins by allowing him to both be a priest and to marry. But you might well make that same man much less inclined to become a priest. I think that would be a very desirable result.
HVT, a distinction lies between teaching or magisterial authority versus governing/administrative authority. Papal pre-eminence in the first category is substantial to be sure, but in the second it is much more restricted, comparatively. There is a tendency to assume that the Pope is CEO, the Cardinals, Senior VPs and the Bishops, General Managers of Catholic, Inc., but the Church’s structure does not follow such a model.
The question is one of accountability. What significance is there in saying someone leads an organization if they are not accountable for its performance? Absent accountability, what difference does it make who is in charge?