Posted on 05/01/2002 12:39:44 PM PDT by ThomasMore
ENTANGLED ON THE WEB
by James Hitchcock
Last year there was a brief sensation over the revelation of the existence of a website called St. Sebastian’s Angels, where homosexual priests throughout the English-speaking world regularly exchanged messages. Official reaction to this revelation (more accurately, non-reaction) leads to the inescapable conclusion that activities of this kind are not taken very seriously in hierarchical circles.
Of the public reaction, far more outrage was directed at the group called Roman Catholic Faithful, which discovered the site, than to its contents. Charges of “sexual McCarthyism,” “prurience,” “invasion of privacy,” and other things were immediately hurled at the messengers, often with only the most perfunctory expressions of regret, if that, about the website itself.
Two priests of the diocese of Portland (Me.) were among the organizers of the site, and it was announced that they were being put on leave of absence and that the site was being closed. However, the principal organizer was soon assigned to what was described as a very desirable pastoral assignment, and some months later the site was still operating.
The most sensational revelation was of the regular participation of Auxiliary Bishop Reginald Cawcutt of Capetown, South Africa. But from the beginning Bishop Cawcutt was completely unrepentant and claimed to have the full support of his own archbishop and of the papal nuncio to South Africa, a claim which no public evidence thus far contradicts. In the fall, Bishop Cawcutt told the media that he had been summoned to Rome to meet with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but when he arrived the meeting had been cancelled, inevitably leading to the conclusion that this is a problem which the Holy See is unprepared to address.
The fact that Church authorities have been unwilling to deal adequately with the revelations made on the website in turn reveals the degree to which homosexual activity by clergy is now in effect a protected area in the Catholic Church. If, for example, the priests on St. Sebastian’s Web were heterosexuals, their remarks would be denounced immediately as adolescent, sexually obsessed and demeaning of women. Although homosexuals claim that their critics are hateful, it would be almost impossible to exaggerate the hatred these priests express towards their perceived enemies, Cardinal Ratzinger in particular — including lip-smacking anticipation of his death and that of Pope John Paul II. Theirs is a culture dominated by hatred of everyone who is seen as opposing their agenda.
It is a culture that is also inherently dishonest. Part of that dishonesty is lying to oneself, so that priests engaged in actions which the Church condemns as sinful somehow think of those very sins as signs of virtue. After the site was made public, Bishop Cawcutt insisted that he had participated only in order to render “pastoral service” to those on the site and that he always defended the discipline of celibacy. However, on the web he boasted of the sexual attraction he felt towards a curial official in Rome and looked forward to administering Confirmation, where he hoped to see attractive boys.
The St. Sebastian’s Web priests believed they were invulnerable and that they had friends in high places, specifically mentioning by name a prominent curial cardinal whom they boasted would protect them from Cardinal Ratzinger. They gave direct empirical evidence that, as has long been suspected, there exists a network of homosexual clergy who protect, support, and even promote one another. The priests on the web made references to their contacts around the country, including chancery officials and others in important positions, and confirmed the suspicion that in some religious orders vocation directors vigorously, even exclusively, recruit homosexuals.
There are many theories as to why Church authorities do not act boldly to root out this pathology, the existence of the clerical homosexual network being itself the most likely explanation. So too is a kind of pre-conciliar clericalism, the instinct to protect one’s own, so that parents whose children have been molested by a priest sometimes find that the bishop almost seems to think the offender is the victim. Endless “compassion” and “help” have been extended to priests who have abused their office for the most pernicious purposes.
This continues to be the case even though the Church has had to pay many millions of dollars in pedophilia suits. As Michael Rose has pointed out in his study of seminary practices, the psychological tests required of candidates for the priesthood seem incapable of identifying pedophiles but are quite efficient in identifying the theologically orthodox, who are then defined as “rigid,” one of the signs of their rigidity being precisely their disapproval of homosexuality.
While the Roman Catholic Faithful are denounced as “right-wing extremists,” scarcely any informed person any longer bothers to deny the phenomenon of clerical homosexuality. Father John Cozzens, rector of the Cleveland diocesan seminary, has published a book calling attention to it, and Father Thomas Reese, editor of the Jesuit magazine America, has observed that the Church is in the dilemma of teaching that homosexual activity is sinful, yet depending on a significant number of homosexual priests to carry on its work.
This is literally scandalous. Catholics must then either adopt a deeply cynical attitude towards their spiritual leaders or conclude that Catholic moral teaching is not intended to be taken seriously. If actions speak louder than words, then it is not possible to claim that the Roman Catholic Church today is upholding Christian moral teaching on this crucial subject.
James Hitchcock, a regular columnist for Catholic Dossier, is Professor of History at Saint Louis University.
Or somebody's work . . . .
Sometimes the more things change, the more they remain the same.
patent
I think they have gone beyond the point of charity. Are they using shock treatment? Before I condemn them, I've tried to remember that they have gone at it the NICE way for several years and NO ONE has listened and they have been rejected to boot. Maybe they feel this is the only way to finally make the point.
We will have to disagree here, Patent. I see them as warriors, and warriors and soldiers to the rough work with rougher talk, sometimes. Respectfully, V's wife.Tell me something. If I debate with a Protestant here at FR, I have the truth, (in our view) correct? Does it make me a warrior if I post that truth, they reject it, and then I call them liars and cowards? Click on the link I gave above and scroll down to the freepermail I posted. That guy is what RCF sounds like to those who don’t agree with them. They will NEVER convert anyone acting like that, and will only give faithful Catholics a bad name. Read that freepermail, that is how RCF sounds in its frothier moments.
patent +AMDG
Before I condemn them, I've tried to remember that they have gone at it the NICE way for several years and NO ONE has listened and they have been rejected to boot. Maybe they feel this is the only way to finally make the point.Read the freepermail I linked to above in #9. Maybe he felt this was the only way to finally make the point.
patent +AMDG
I dunno. I think some of us (me) were so insulated that we need the full truth, including pictures, to drive home the issue. Sometimes I read so much stuff pro/con about the militant homosexuals within the hierarchy, I shut down and don't know what the heck to believe (well, I do know what to believe now). I don't want to be naive, but I don't want to be judge and jury, either. Those pictures were gross, irrefutable and drove home that there is a BIG problem here...
And those pictures were not an "occasion for sin" for me, I found them so repulsive that I couldn't get away from them quickly enough.
The two are oil and water, mutually exclusive. The Catholic Church has become a tool of Satan, period. Anti-scriptural and extra-liturgical Catholic practices have turned the Catholic Church into a vile, sin-infested Satanic Cult.
They worship idols, they place the church heierarchy above the church body, they pray to The Virgin Mary, they teach men to confess their sins to other men, and they preach works (pennance) as being intrinsic to Salvation.
All of these points are in direct contradiction of God's Holy and Perfect Word in the Bible. And we haven't even discussed the homosexual agenda of this Devil Religion.
Even if saying the pennance issued by a man of God could save you (and it cannot!), mouthing the babble given to you by a queer is just more offensive cultic chanting.
Catholics repent, for the time is short. Jesus alone can save you. God wishes that none should perish. Nonetheless, many shall.
It is XXX. But RCF warns people of that. I personally think that this is so BAD and SCANDALOUS it needs to be seen and something needs to be done about.
RCF went to their brothers first; they did nothing but ridicule RCF. RCF then went to the Church and the Church has done nothing. I guess RCF believes it must go to the lay faithful.
PS: Since RCF put the site back up, my pastor has seen it and is outraged; not at RCF but at the scandal and worse, that the scandal has not been sufficiently addressed by the hierarchy.
Please take your anti-Catholic bigotry elsewhere. Men are sinful, not the Church. And if you are worried about us being saved, DON'T! We'll be fine.
Telling the truth is not bigotry, though those who hate the truth love to paint it as such.
"The Church" is the body of people who believe in the birth, life, crucifixion and ressurrection of Jesus Christ, and in their salvation in His Blood.
"The Church" is neither an anti-scriptural, sin-drenched pack of pedophiles and their apologists, nor the ostriches who refuse to either acknowledge or disown such a patently sinful estate.
Rather than hurl ad-hominems at me, please address, point by point, your cogent refutation of the charges I have enumerated against the Cult-tholic "Church."
1. They worship idols (stations of the cross, rosaries, etc.)
2. They place the church heierarchy above the church body
3. They pray to The Virgin Mary
4. They preach works (pennance) as being intrinsic to Salvation
Please cite the chapter and verse in the Bible where any one of these abominations is taught as scripturally sound Christian behavior.
Ane when you cannot, then explain to me how my decrying them as false teaching is "bigotry."
These points, and the "Church" which sits upon them, are in direct contradiction of God's Holy and Perfect Word in the Bible.
"Let your 'Yes' be yes, and your 'No' be no!"
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