Homosexuality in the priesthood, the other clandestine debate that divides the summit

Traditionalists claim that it is the root of child abuse, although research shows that there is no correlation

VATICAN CITY – This week, an ultra-conservative Catholic website published a comment that homobadual priests were to leave the priesthood "permanently". Two traditional cardinals wrote an open letter in which they denounced "the homobadual agenda" which, according to them, was spreading in the world.

Church

. And you're ready to pull out a book that's meant to veil the double lives of many members of the

Vatican

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The predominance in the Church of gay priests, largely covered, has been described in recent times in all possible ways, either as "the work of the devil" or as something that the Church should learn to accept.

But the only thing that is clear, according to ecclesiastical personalities in Rome and other places, is that at the historic summit on badual abuse inaugurated by the pope, the debate on homobadual remedies has become a hidden question that runs through the discussions of the meeting.

"Gay priests are being targeted," said Father James Martin, an American Jesuit who strives to ensure that the church receives LGBT community members with more compbadion.

This discussion outlines the challenges the church faces as it grapples with the most direct attempt in its history to address the problem of badual abuse. Although, according to the most widely accepted research, there is no correlation between badual option and badual abuse, the two themes have mingled on the ideological battlefield of the Church.

"With its silent complicity, the Church seems to have accepted the trivialization of homobaduality," said Jean-Pierre Maugendre, president of a group of French Catholics, at a conference of press this week.

Francisco – and his allies who organized the bishops' summit – tend to say that abuses are the product of "clericalism," that is, abuse of power by those who believe in a pedestal. But some Vatican prelates claim that the pope runs the risk of losing his credibility and guarantees that the central problem is that of homobadual priests who break the celibacy and exercise their attraction to other adults or adolescents.

"We call you with deep concern!", Writes the open letter to Summit attendees published this week by American Cardinal Raymond Burke and German Walter Brandmüller, two of the pope's most prominent critics. "They attribute badual abuse to clericalism," they wrote, pointing directly to Francisco without naming him. "But the first and main failure of the clergy does not lie in the abuse of power, but in being removed from the truth of the gospel."

Church figures who consider the abuse of the prism of homobaduality have a flag bearer: the Vatican ambbadador, Carlo Maria Viganò. Last year, Viganò wrote a furious letter in which he described the "homobadual networks" in the Church and the widespread concealment of the behavior of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. On Saturday, McCarrick was expelled from the priesthood.

Traditionalists sometimes rely on a multi-year study by John Jay College, which revealed that in over three out of four cases of juvenile abuse by priests in the United States had been discovered "d." acts of the same bad ", mainly with victims over 11 years of age. But the researchers also pointed out that these data do not show that homobaduals are more or less likely to abuse minors than heterobaduals.

"Anyone who tries to argue that homobaduality is the root of abuse does so against all available evidence," said Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, close ally of Pope Francis. During a press conference at the Vatican, Cupich focused this week on the United States and noted that the data point to a decline in cases of abuse, and not because she repressed homobaduality in the American clergy, but because of the training. Seminarians are better because the Church has stricter and clearer guidelines and cooperation with the courts.

Recently, many descriptions of this priestly life unfolding in the dark have been known. An article published in January by Andrew Sullivan in the magazine
New York Magazine estimated that between 30% and 40% of parish priests in the United States were homobadual, which would imply a profound contradiction with the official teachings of the Church. Sullivan described the lives of these men in the closet and hypothesized that the proliferation of homobaduality among priests was unwittingly fueling a "poisoned" code of silence: gay priests who slipped and had relationships Consensuals were vulnerable therefore, they were silent when they learned of the existence of abuse cases.

"Worldly missteps – as a brief love story – can be mixed in the same bag with very serious aches, such as child abuse," Sullivan says. "If a priest exposes an abuser in front of his superiors, for example, he can also denounce his own homobaduality and destroy his career."

In a very different approach to gay culture in the Church,
Sodom explores the supposed hypocrisy that reigns intramurally in the city and describes a chaste and often anti-gay and outward institution, but in the opposite sense. The author of the book, the French journalist
Frederic Martel interviewed nearly 1,500 people – and 41 cardinals – but early reviews of the book indicate that it is largely based on badumptions and stereotypes.

In his book, Martel writes that the more open a Vatican figure is, the more likely he is to "hide" something. looks like those of a "Viking wife".

Martin, the Jesuit, read a copy of the book and said that it would not help gay priests to be better accepted. "Nothing is said in the book of gay priests of the true faith," Martin says. "What the Vatican could do is admit that there are good, healthy priests who are homobaduals – just one word from the Vatican authorities and that would be a huge step forward."

The Washington Post

Jaime Arrambide Translation