Though the panel is far from exhaustive or representative, we have tried to begin a responsible conversation about the book in some of the ways we think are important. Various constraints on the organization of this symposium, it will depart from the typical Syndicate format in a number of ways. The essays will initially be posted without responses. Rather than releasing the essays on a regular weekly or semi-weekly schedule, I will post the essays as I receive them.
Two unenumerated rules are also worth mentioning. Tolerance went with discretion. Others will approach it selectively by isolating the findings that best serve their liberal or conservative agenda. Wittingly or unwittingly, these pastoral concerns remain the default position of many dedicated Catholics and especially of those with canonical responsibility: priests, bishops and popes. These concerns are based on the assumption that the institution might be slow in reacting but retains the capacity to deal with its anomalies internally and that there are two categories of people in the Church: those who have the right to know because they can handle scandal without harm to their faith and those who are best kept in the dark lest their trust in the institution might be fatally compromised.
For the Church has not shown any willingness to deal with this issue internally and will never do so because the crisis is not first of all ethical the behaviour of some individuals but structural institutional self-preservation. When it comes to holding its leadership accountable, the Church never acts; it only reacts when it is forced to do so from the outside. Countless previous attempts to expose the connection between clericalism and homosexuality failed because they were based on unverifiable rumours, did not rise above tabloid-style gossip and failed to prove the truly systemic nature of the problem.
Martel entices the interest of the reader through portrayals that are alternatively playful references to cardinal Burke , poignant the rent boys of Roma Termini and the final story of Father Louis , hilarious especially the chapter Passivo e bianco and often truly shocking cf.
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As he has argued in several interviews, Martel was not driven by anti-clerical sentiment, but by fascination for a very peculiar gay community and for the way it has had to morph to survive in an environment that offered safety to gay people at the cost of denial and forced them into a secrecy that has bred dysfunctional behaviours, misuse of power, and loss of integrity.
Among many others, two lessons in particular can be drawn from reading this book: 1 homo sexuality in the clergy cannot be dealt with through a prescriptive approach ; 2 the phenomenon explored in the book is a subset of the much wider distortion of sexuality caused by clericalism and the best way to tackle the latter is accurate description. With regards to the first point, the need to avoid a prescriptive approach , it might sound paradoxical, but the closet described by Martel thrives on morality.
It bred a generation of people who displayed real intellectual greatness alongside catastrophic lack of judgment as the case of Pope Benedict tragically exemplifies. The focus is on the acts, whether to ban them or to treat the occasional lapse ranging from pornography and masturbation to sexual intercourse with a member of the same sex as of no real consequence as long as it is confessed.
According to A. This resonates, of course, with the general approach to celibacy in seminaries: sexual abstinence can be achieved by inculcating a strong sense of self-discipline, routine of prayer, avoidance of temptations and the matter could be truly discussed only in the secret of the confessional. The assumption is that a prescriptive approach is enough to ensure proper behaviour. A veneer of spirituality and some perfunctory notions of emotional, sexual and psychological development handed out during the initial formation are all one needs.
For the rest, priests are left to their own devices in dealing with the emotional and sexual aspects of their lives. It is observed in many persons who use power to dominate others. Focus on the acts leads to mistaking this distorted form of asexuality for celibacy and is blind to the depressing human, spiritual and pastoral cost of this travesty. No truly comprehensive sociological research on the actual practice of celibacy has ever been conducted and will ever be authorized for as long as this depends on the Church. The institution is so afraid that obligatory celibacy will be disqualified that it is not ready to allow any clear and honest debate on it.
We need to meet the characters, hear the stories, understand the fears, face the contradictions, decipher the codes. We need to listen to the voices of the priests who have found a balance in their celibate lives but also of those who struggle with it. Truthful description is the only antidote to a denial so fierce and so entrenched that its very enforcers have become numb to its absurdity and its alienating character.
Over the past 20 years , I have reported on the phenomenon of gay priests in the Catholic church, but mainly in the United States. In the Closet of the Vatican is a reminder that the experience of gay priests may differ from place to place. For I have limited experience with the Vatican, never having lived in Rome and having visited only a handful of times in my Jesuit life.
The rest of his page book attempts to support that conclusion. He strives to do so with an impressive amount of research: interviews with 1, people—including 41 cardinals, 52 bishops, 45 apostolic nuncios and Catholic priests and seminarians, mainly in the Vatican. His book attempts to paint a picture of a louche, licentious and libertine culture populated by sexually active priests, bishops who frequent male prostitutes and cardinals who attempt to cover up their unchastity in ruthless ways.
At the top of this ecclesiastical pyramid are the various popes from Paul VI to Francis, who are, according to the book, either clueless or unwitting participants in this culture. The organizing principle of this wide-ranging but often maddeningly diffuse book is to investigate the cultures under each pope from Paul VI to Francis though, oddly, not in order. Early on M. Yet what prevents his book from presenting a convincing portrait of a decadent culture, despite four years of research, is precisely that. Essentially, it is a book largely about naming and shaming, tittle-tattle and denigration, both of groups and, especially, individuals.
To wit:. The Order of Malta? The Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre?
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John Paul II? Much of what he says about the gay subculture in the Vatican may be true. Even if a tenth of the book is accurate, it would be awful: the worst perhaps being his description of a cardinal who enjoyed beating male prostitutes. Martel also uses that worst of reporting techniques: imagining, guessing, hypothesizing:.
But Benedict is suspect for other reasons.
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Another technique is his reliance on a skill not available to all reporters. Cardinal Stanislaus Dziwicz, the former secretary to St. Ironically, Martel, a gay man, traffics in gay stereotypes and even slurs. As an aside, the book has seemingly been translated by Google Translate. So to be fair, his book includes some important information and insights.
Likewise, his insight that when Pope Francis speaks about duplicity in the Curia, he is referring to homophobic and sexually active gay clerics may explain the force and regularity with which Francis attacks these themes. But it is nearly impossible to separate the fact from the fiction: the gossipy tone overwhelms the reader, or at least this one. In the end, even after 1, interviews, someone is absent: the faithful gay priest.
The idea that priests could live their vows of chastity and promises of celibacy with any peace or fidelity is absent from the book, save a few throwaway lines. Martel, of all people, knew full well that these dangers applied when he set out to write this book more than four years ago.
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Surely it was this foreknowledge that led Martel to produce what is, ultimately, a deeply researched and assiduous account drawing on 1, interviews, with the help of 80 researchers and collaborators in over 30 countries and featuring a web-accessible page bibliography.
And yet those who scour these pages looking for juicy bits of gossip are likely to leave disappointed; our intrepid narrator is often more coy than cavalier. But then what is Martel trying to accomplish with this book? But then he tells the story of a brilliant young parish priest he knew as a boy growing up in traditionally Catholic Avignon. It is as collaborators in a system that makes contradictions of themselves that many gay men in the Vatican are pushed either to one extreme chasing handsome rentboys down the backstreets of Rome or the other repressed to the point of self-erasure.
Martel draws out the connection between homosexuality and homophobia at the Vatican not in order to embarrass anyone again—this book is far less sensationalist than its press would have you believe! So beyond a diagnostic account, or a recent history of gay infighting at the Vatican, or an idle look at the sex lives of elderly men, this book stands as a simple public acknowledgement: there are homosexuals at the very heart of the Church.
We are witnessing a parrhesiastic moment, then, when truths long kept silent are finally being spoken. I am a practicing Catholic of a particular kind: theologian, religious, director of a Centre for theological formation and active in the theological formation of lay people and seminarians for ministry and priesthood.
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Therefore, I am invested in the Church whose leadership is under scrutiny, for various reasons: the relationship with God, in Christ, I find there, the cloud of witnesses to a life of service that have convinced me, and the beauty of its truth when thought is careful and courageous. The point that perhaps best summarises his thesis and its most concerning consequence, can be found ironically?
It is our moral duty as human beings and believers, if such we are. The book is long, hard to read for many reasons , at times repetitive and bit convoluted with storylines and the occasional sweeping statement that is usually later qualified. But it also quite courageous and reflects years of research. It is too important a book to dismiss, and demands our considered reflection.
There are things I disagree with: the author does, not, and perhaps cannot understand the value of well lived celibacy or consecrated life. This is understandable. Sexuality is too essential an aspect of our humanity to simply ignore or pretend it is unimportant, whatever our sexual orientation. Examples of frustrated celibate lives are not hard to find, but so are the witnesses of lives dedicated to the gospel and the service of others, whose generous, courageous and prophetic work has improved the lives of millions throughout the world.
And the perhaps mysterious, rather than unnatural call to live exclusively for God and for the need one sees through the eyes of that felt love is too essential to Christian faith to allow hypocrisy and abuse of power take it from us. I can already see the women and men for whom this will be one final push to definitively leave the Church, or to never come close again. For those within, it may be a redemptive scandal, if the Spirit is allowed to take charge, but the fact is that vested interests and the abuse of power affect the leadership of the Church and its duty of pastoral care.
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That must be the focus of our scrutiny. I intuit the book will bring into question two areas of Catholic faith and teaching, for better or worse, depending on how they are received and dealt with. How can we trust its guidance if bias blinds or conditions perception and judgement? The second is a consequence of the first: what issues have been and still are sidelined as a result of this situation?
But three areas come to mind as essential and urgent, in dealing with the challenges raised:. As a Christian whose faith helps her make sense of life and the world around, it gives me hope to remember that truth will always come out, even if too late, for some. And God will make all things new. In the end. There is exceptional work being done in this field by theologians well equipped to facilitate and lead the shift of culture necessary for future generations of Catholics.
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A recent document produced by scholars of Boston college is one example of the fruits of such thought, but it is only the tip of the iceberg of what is at our disposal, if we wish to reflect upon it. But snobs earn the right to be snobs by doing their job well. There is, after all, much that is impressive about it, not least its sourcing, its many research assistants, its globe-traveling reporting.
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