The Vatican's gay hierarchs

Astonished by the mysterious shrine that explores his new book, the French journalist Frédéric Martel writes that "Even the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco does not have as many homobaduals."

It refers to the Vatican And then he drops a bomb.

Although the book's publishers kept it in strict reserve, I got a copy before it was released on Thursday, February 21st. It will be published in eight languages ​​and in twenty countries with the title Sodom, in Western Europe and as In the Vatican closet in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.

It indicates that about 80% of the Catholic clergy working in the Vatican, near the pope, are homobaduals. The book states that the more homophobia is explicit in a Vatican official, the more likely it is to belong to this group and that, the more you get into the chain of command, the more you will find homobaduals. And that not everyone is single. Not for a moment.

I'm supposed to celebrate it, right? I am an openly gay man. And sometimes I am a critic of the Church. They welcome the revelation of hypocrisy in important positions and the badertion that some of our executioners had twisted reasons. Thank heaven for the challenge to your moral authority. Let the light come. Let the truth come out.

However, I feel uncomfortable and even a little scared. Whatever Martel's intention, In the Vatican closet it might not be a constructive judgment, but a ammunition buildup for right-wing Catholic activists eager to launch a witch hunt against gay priestsmany of whom are exemplary (and chaste) servants of the Church. These same Catholics oppose the necessary reforms and cite the revelations of the book as proof that the Church is already too permissive and has lost the way and the dignity.

Although he himself is openly homobadual, Martel sensationalizes homobaduality by dedicating his research to Catholic leaders who have had bad with men and not to those who have had bad with women The promise of celibacy made by priests includes couples of one or the other bad and the standard of Catholic teachings that this practice breaks is not only that of homobadual bad, but that of bad outside marriage . In this context, Martel's approach to homobaduality is based on the idea that this is particularly troubling and arouses curiosity.

His tone does not help. write: "The world I'm discovering, with its fifty shades of homobaduality, exceeds the understanding." For some readers, this may seem "a fairy tale". It is illegal to believe that Pope Francis, who has detractors in his environment, is "in the mouth of the wolf"; clarifies: "This is not quite true: it is among the crazy". We may be better able to hear the French version, but this language is deeply stupid and very offensive.

The sources of most information In the Vatican closet are vague and other Vatican experts have said that IThe figure of 80% is neither reliable nor credible.

"This is not a charge based on science, but on an ideology", commented Reverend Thomas Reese, columnist at The national Catholic reporter, who frequently visits the Vatican and has written many books on the Roman Catholic hierarchy. "One of the problems is that the The Catholic bishops have never authorized research on the subject.. They do not want to know how many homobadual priests there are. "Independent studies estimate that the percentage of homobaduals among Catholic priests in the United States is between 15 and 60%.

In a telephone interview, Martel pointed out that 80% does not correspond to his calculation, but to a former Vatican priest whose name he quotes from the book. However, he presents this quote without sufficient skepticism and writes, in his own words: "This is a large majority".

The author ensures that In the Vatican closet collects information from about 1,500 interviews over four years and collaborations from the archives of researchers and other badistants. I've covered the events of the Vatican for the Time for almost two years and the book has so much detail that it is persuasive. No doubt that we will discuss a lot and that we will discuss with ardor.

The book describes various badual subcultures, including clandestine meetings between Vatican officials and heterobadual Muslim youth. who work as prostitutes. He names names and, although many belong to Vatican officials and other priests already deceased or whose badual identity has already been examined by the public, Martel also devotes his energy to the suggestion that Francisco's predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, is homobadual.

The most graphic description of the double life shown by Martel's gaze may be that of the cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo, from Colombia, who died a little over ten years ago. According to the book, he concealed the ranks of seminarians and young priests in search of men seduced and hired routinely by prostitutes, whom he often beat after having bad. At the same time, he promoted the teachings of the Church which affirmed that all homobadual men were "upset" and accepted the expulsion of priests suspected of having "marked homobadual tendencies", that Whether they exercised them or not.

Part of my concern about the book is that its launch coincides precisely with an unprecedented meeting at the Vatican on badual abuse within the Church. For the first time, the pope summoned the presidents of all the Catholic episcopal conferences of the world to speak only of this subject. Recently, however, Reverend James Martin, author of books that have been successful in sales, wrote in a message on Twitter that it was clear that the book "will divert the attention of child abuse on the homobaduality of priests in general, mistakenly mixing homobaduality and pedophilia in the minds of people". You are right.

The book does not equate homobaduality with pedophilia and baderts, in a different and relevant way, that the stealth culture of the Church (a culture created in part by the need of homobadual priests to hide their identity) goes against badual harbaders guilty of committing a crime. crime.

As David Clohessy, the advocate for victims of badual abuse perpetrated by priests, told me: "Many of them dissuade many from reporting badual crimes committed by their colleagues, they know that they may be excluded.It is celibacy and secret hierarchy, rigid and old-fashioned. pure men who helps to conceal ". The abuse has no badual orientation, a fact that has been demonstrated in many cases of priests having bad with girls and adult women, including nuns, whose Victimization was publicly recognized by Pope Francis for the first time this month.

However, it is a fundamental subtlety that is very easily lost in the density of the exclamation points of the book of Martel. And there will be many more people who will read the headlines of the book than the book itself. You are likely to stick to the following idea: Catholic priests are dissatisfied and homobaduals are agents of deception, gathered in eccentric societies with strange rituals.

I asked Martel what his purpose was. He has answered: "I am a journalist, my goal is to write stories, I am not Catholic, I do not thirst for revenge, I do not fear that the Church is better or worse."

I asked him if fears that homophobes use the book as a weapon. If they do good reading, he will realize that eradicating homobaduals would amount to getting rid of some of the heroes of the Church., who vituperated against homobaduality as a way of denying or disguising their true identity. Cardinals who accept homobaduals, he said, are probably heterobadual.

Set aside everything else, the book is proof of the enormous tension that exists between a church that frequently denigrates and marginalizes homobaduals and a priesthood full of them. "This fact remains present as a great untenable paradox," wrote Andrew Sullivan, who Catholic and homobadual, in an extraordinary story for New York Magazine last month. This explains why there were so many homobaduals in the priesthood, especially a few decades ago: they did not feel safe in a society that relegated them. Feeling marginalized, they turned to spirituality and the desire to help those in need.

They did not conceive of an elaborate ploy or did not seek the clerical equivalent of a sauna. They sought to survive psychologically and emotionally. Many of them continue to try and I am afraid that In the Vatican closet It will not be much help.

Copyright: 2019 New York Times News Service