The Pink Elephant in the Church

As a Catholic priest, I have an investment in issues that affect the Church and the people of God. And, as a Christian, I have an obligation to speak out. So let me make the following points as clearly as I can:

1) Most of the scandals and evils we see in the Church today are brought about primarily by homosexuality. Homosexuality is an objective moral disorder and unacceptable in the priesthood! For nearly two thousand years the teachings of the scripture, the magisterium, and Tradition—the three sources of revelation which give us truth—have all agreed: homosexuality as an “abomination”! Only recently have Phil and Oprah and a few TV sitcoms disagreed. But God doesn’t change, and Phil and Oprah won’t be on the throne to judge us!

2) Even though Church documents forbid the acceptance of homosexuals into the seminary and, quite obviously, their ordination to the priesthood, those in authority have for years looked the other way, (don’t ask, don’t tell) and homosexuals have flocked into the Church. Now they have positions of authority! They use this authority to protect and promote one another, creating a distinct subculture that is rapidly becoming dominant. This sub-culture is the ideal homosexual environment. As a priest no one questions why you aren’t married. You get respect that you don’t necessarily earn. You have a target-rich environment, especially if you have a school, and, if you slip up and get caught, the civil authorities will not want to prosecute you because you’re a priest and, as we have seen, the Church will cover you, defend you, and may set you up in another parish or even another diocese so you can continue to prey on God’s people.

A homosexual predator could not hope to find a more friendly and supportive environment than priesthood in the American Catholic Church!

3) The fact that the leadership of the Church so obviously refuses to deal honestly with homosexuality in its midst is a proof of its very powerful presence and authority. The effort expended to avoid the obvious truth is evidence that gross ignorance cannot explain this blindness, only a conscious and premeditated effort to avoid what is so clear! Because it is done with awareness, it crosses the line from human weakness to genuine malignant evil!

4) To those who try to avoid the truth and hide behind some phony facade such as “addiction” or claim the answer will be found in a good workshop on chastity are either fools or liars. Get a few old diocesan directories and a magic marker and go through them: How many heterosexual priests died of AIDS? How many heterosexual priests have been pedophiles? How many heterosexual priests have been sources of sex scandals? (Only a small percentage of which ever reach the newspapers!) How much money have heterosexual priests cost the Church in lawsuits, pay-offs and cover-ups?

5) Many priests are aware of homosexuals in the priesthood but they do not have the spirituality or the courage to confront the issue, so they lapse into a false charity that is nothing more than an excuse for doing nothing. (This is a response that Jesus certainly did not allow!) Or they try to wash their hands of anything outside their parish boundaries. (Also not allowed!) Worst of all are those priests who know that evil is occurring, do nothing, and actually console themselves with the absurd idea that they are serving the Church. They have been formed by a seminary system that is designed to produce “churchmen,” not saints. These neo-Pharisees have confused the “means” with the “end” and have made the Church an idol! They have been perfectly willing to sacrifice truth, innocence and even the souls of Gods children as long as they keep up the facade. It is a sick and perverted illusion of love that would allow a priest to stand by silently while his brother destroys his own soul and the souls of others! These people must surely tremble at the thought of God’s judgment!

6) Yes, as we must love all sinners, we love homosexuals! If they can carry the cross they have been given they can become great saints. But they have no place in the priesthood! Weak and evil leaders have sat around patting themselves on the back at how “enlightened” and “charitable” they have been in that stirring “Cor ad cor” they had with “Father” regarding his little problem. While “Father” has a whole new target-rich environment in another parish or another diocese! (After a little counseling of course!) And while the warmth of false charity fills them, more children are destroyed!

The people are asking “When will it end?” It won’t! As long as we ignore the “elephant in the room”, as long as we prefer the comfort of false charity and absolutely refuse to deal with the truth, the scandal and the destruction of faith will continue. It will, in fact, get much worse! The “vocation crisis” is due in large part to the rise of the homosexual subculture in the Church. They have such power that Fr. Andrew Greeley has labeled them the “Lavender Mafia”! (A very appropriate term since the RICO laws are now being used against the Bishops of the Church!)

Many young men who have stood up against the homosexual agenda in the seminaries have been labeled “homophobes” and “rigid” and treated as though they are the sick ones. If they somehow manage to get ordained and then discover the truth, they experience terrible frustration. They realize that they have no place to go to get the problem “fixed”! It does no good to go to the bishop when the bishop is the problem! The chancery staff, the Monsignori, were appointed by him. For example, right now there is a young man in the seminary in St. Louis who will be ordained a priest soon. His picture and his story were front page news in the “Illinois Times.” He was the president of a gay and lesbian organization in Springfield, Illinois. Current Church teaching is that he should not have been admitted to the seminary and should not be ordained. His religious superior and the appropriate bishops are well aware of his orientation yet, in complete contradiction to Church directives from Rome, he continues and those who objected were labeled by his superior as “whiners”! The Rev. Charles Bouchard, president of the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis said: “I think straight priests and seminarians shouldn’t be whining. I just don’t think it’s a big deal.”

The few priests foolish enough to speak openly about the scandal of homosexuality in the priesthood have soon learned that they will receive no help or support from anyone. The people don’t want to believe it. The newspapers won’t print it. The district attorney won’t prosecute, after all, his is an elected position, and the only thing more pointless than writing to the bishop is writing to “Rome”! Only in the area of pedophilia have we been able to enlist the aid of lawyers and multi-million dollar lawsuits to help keep some children a little safer.

Only when they got hit in the purse did these bishops have a sudden attack of morality. The bishop of Dallas took in a pervert from New England in the “pervert trades” and, as a child was violated, the pervert-priest was moved from one parish to another. The day after a multi-million dollar lawsuit was filed, the chancellor of the diocese began an investigation in all the parishes where this pervert had been assigned to “surface these poor damaged children”! Everyone, including a jury, was very aware that these men who supposedly stand “in persona Christi” didn’t give a damn about the “poor damaged children” until 180 million dollars got mentioned!

The truth is, a few money-grubbing lawyers have done more to keep our children safe than the entire NCCB and all its committees! People simply don’t want to believe!

I was once relating some information I had been given by two male prostitutes concerning their clergy clientele. The person I was speaking to said: “How could you believe them if their prostitutes?” I explained that people didn’t go to Douglas Park late at night to pick up saints! I have always found more honesty in sinners than in false shepherds!

Now the priesthood has come to be considered the primary “gay profession.” We are the butt of jokes and presented as a pathetic caricature in the media. If the new document from Rome on homosexuality soon to be released leaves it up to the bishops or leaves loopholes in dealing with such a “complex issue”, then the floodgates will swing wide. Heterosexual priests will not want to send fine young men from good families to the seminary. Priests will need to know with clarity their bishops policy on homosexuals in the seminary and the priesthood and be allowed to incardinate in a diocese where they can minister in obedience and good conscience. This could well be the issue that reveals the schism in the Church.

So the real issue is – HOMOSEXUALS IN THE PRIESTHOOD! The solution is – GET THEM OUT!

Something else needs to be said. I posted an article by Michael Davies yesterday on the abuse of ecclesiastical power on the part of Catholic auhorities. For some reason the article was pulled. But its main thrust needs to be mentioned over and over because too many Catholics have been trained from childhood--all too falsely--to be obedient to church superiors even when to do so would be morally culpable and offensive to the faith. It is one thing to be obedient, but it is another to enable evil men to continue to do evil. And it is important to be informed enough to tell the difference.

Here is what Michael Davies said in part:

The Abuse of Ecclesiastical Power

According to Catholic theologians and canon lawyers, a prelate can abuse his position in a number of ways, which include the imposition of unjust laws or failure to guard and transmit the deposit of Faith, either by remaining silent in the face of heresy or even by teaching heresy himself. A Catholic has the right to refuse obedience in the first case and a duty to oppose the prelate in the second. Their consensus regarding law in general is that the legislator should not simply refrain from demanding something that his subjects would find impossible to carry out, but that laws should not be too difficult or distressing for those subjected to them. St. Thomas explains that, for a law to be just, it must conform to the demands of reason and have an effect which is both good and for the benefit of those for whom it is intended. A law can cease to bind without revocation on the part of the legislator when it is clearly harmful, impossible, or irrational.1 This is particularly true if a prelate commands anything contrary to divine precept. (Praelato non est obediendum contra praeceptum divinum.) In support of this teaching St. Thomas cites Acts 5:29: "We ought to obey God rather than men." He teaches that not only would the prelate err in giving such an order but that anyone obeying him would sin just as certainly as if he disobeyed a divine command. ("...ipse peccaret praecipiens, et ei obediens, quasi contra praeceptum Domini agens...").2

Dealing with the question as to whether subjects are bound to obey their superiors in all things he explains that: "Now sometimes the things commanded by a superior are against God. Therefore superiors are not to be obeyed in all things."3

Where a matter of faith is involved, resistance is not a right but a duty for the faithful Catholic...To sum up what has been demonstrated so far, normally subjects must be obedient to lawful authority in Church and State but they have the right to resist harsh and harmful laws which do not contribute to the common good. They must never compromise the Faith under the pretext of obedience. "When the shepherd becomes the wolf the flock must defend itself."

Few Catholics concerned to uphold orthodoxy within the Church during these troubled times would dispute this. Catholics in English-speaking countries do not normally have to contend with shepherds who have actually become wolves but with shepherds who permit wolves to ravage their flocks, shepherds who condemn any of the sheep who have the temerity to complain. Such bishops are not the exception, they have become the norm. Dietrich von Hildebrand denounces them with the burning indignation of an Old Testatment prophet:

"They either close their eyes and try, ostrich-style, to ignore the grievous abuses as well as appeals to their duty to intervene, or they fear to be attacked by the press or the mass-media and defamed as reactionary, narrow-minded, or medieval. They fear men more than God. The words of St. John Bosco apply to them: "The power of evil men lives on in the cowardice of the good."...One is forced to think of the hireling who abandons his flocks to the wolves when one reflects on the lethargy of so many bishops and superiors who, though still orthodox themselves, do not have the courage to intervene against the most flagrant heresies and abuses of all kinds in their dioceses or in their orders."4

Dr. von Hilderbrand is in perfect conformity with the authorities who have already been cited when he denies that the faithful have the duty of automatic obedience to their bishops in the present state of the Church. He shows with admirable clarity that the mark of a truly faithful Catholic can be a refusal to submit to heretical or compromising bishops.

"Should the faithful at the time of the Arian heresy, for instance, in which the majority of the bishops were Arians, have limited themselves to being nice and obedient to the ordinances of these bishops, instead of battling heresy? Is not fidelity to the true teaching of the Church to be given priority over submission to the bishop? Is it not precisely by virtue of their obedience to the revealed truths which they received from the Magisterium of the Church, that the faithful offer resistance?...

"The drivel of the heretics, both priests and laymen, is tolerated; the bishops tacitly acquiesce to the poisoning of the faithful. But they want to silence the faithful believers who take up the cause of orthodoxy, the very people who should by all rights be the joy of the bishops' hearts, their consolation, a source of strength for overcoming their own lethargy. Instead, these people are regarded as disturbers of the peace."5

"Is not fidelity to the true teaching of the Church to be given priority over submission to the bishop?" asks Dr. von Hildebrand. "Yes, it is," replies St. Thomas Aquinas together with every reputable theologian who has examined the subject. There can be very few faithful Catholics who would refuse to align themselves with St. Thomas and Dietrich von Hildebrand on this point - with one reservation. Many, if not most, would add the proviso: "Unless the bishop in question is the Bishop of Rome." Some are quite unwilling to admit, even to themselves, that an occasion could ever arise when a Catholic should justifiably refuse obedience to the Sovereign Pontiff. However sincere such people may be, they display a lamentable ignorance of Church history and Catholic theology.

Professor Marcel de Corte of the University of Liège can be ranked with Dr. von Hildebrand as one of the outstanding Catholic philosophers of our time. He has noted that the attitude of these Catholics towards the Pope is tantamount to the claim that he is inerrant, that his every decision, his every word, is divinely inspired, that he is, in fact, a divine oracle. Writing in the March 1977 issue of the Courrier de Rome he remarked:

"For them it is as if the person of the Pope were, as such, infallible, and as if all his words, all his directives, all his judgments in all matters, even those foreign to religion, could never be subject to error, though the whole history of the Church protests against that conviction which is close to idolatry.

"There have been Popes whose doctrine was near-heresy, Honorius and Liberius for example. There were others whose faith, hope and charity could hardly be perceived behind the disorders of their conduct. And there were some whose faults, stupidity, blunders, extravagances, and weaknesses in the government and administration of the Church were such that the divine organism entrusted to their care was more than once shaken. It is enough to read the twenty or so volumes of Ludwig von Pastor's History of the Popes to be convinced of that."

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