Posted on 05/10/2019 9:50:43 AM PDT by ebb tide
Pope Francis pauses as he answers questions from journalists aboard his flight from Skopje, North Macedonia, to Rome May 7, 2019. (Credit: Paul Haring/CNS.)
ROME - A prominent advocate in the fight against clerical abuse has said that during a recent private audience at the Vatican, Pope Francis told him he’d read Inside the Closet at the Vatican, a book about homosexuality in the Catholic Church, and said that he was already aware of many of the priests mentioned in it who are gay.
“He said he read it. He said it was good and that he knew of many of them. We discussed good gays and the gays who are evil, but because of power,” the advocate said in a text message obtained by Crux.
The message from the person was sent to Frèdèric Martel, French journalist and author of Inside the Closet at the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy, a book published Feb. 21 that details the presence of homosexuality in the Catholic Church and that is the product of four years of research and interviews with more than 1,500 individuals in 30 countries, including 41 cardinals, 52 bishops, and 45 apostolic nuncios.
Crux verified the text message with the sender, who prefers to remain anonymous.
In the past, Francis has often used conciliatory language when it comes to homosexuality, starting with his now famous line “Who am I to judge?” and more recently he stated that homosexual tendencies “are not a sin” during a March interview with the Spanish news outlet La Sexta.
RELATED: New book claims gay subculture flourishes at Vatican
Though Martel made clear that his book is not about the abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church for the past decade, he said that “the book gives you the key to sexual abuse in the Church” in a May 9 interview with Crux in Rome.
“Homosexuality has no link to sexual abuse,” he underlined, adding that statistically most cases of abuse involve heterosexual men with young girls and women as the principal victims.
“But when you look at the Church there is a singularity where 80-85 percent of the victims of the priests are boys or men,” Martel said. “In the Church the link is clear.”
According to the author, most of the homosexual clergy he has interviewed “have a sexuality that is sublimated and repressed,” which in his view leads not only to living a double life and even crime, but also creates problems in terms of accountability.
“All the stories of cover-up are intrinsically linked to homosexuality,” Martel said. “In 90 percent of the cases the bishop who covers up is himself homosexual. When something happens, he is afraid of the scandal, he is afraid of the ‘mediatization’, he’s afraid of the trial because he fears that his own homosexuality may be revealed.”
The world that the French journalist attempted to unveil in his book is one of lies and deceit, which opens the door to a culture of secrecy where “there is a lot of blackmail,” he said.
Martel’s view on the Church’s abuse scandals puts him at odds with the perspective of Pope emeritus Benedict XVI who, in a lengthy essay written for the Bavarian magazine Klerusblatt on April 11, made the case that the clerical sexual abuse scandals are due to the sexual revolution of the 1960s and a post-Vatican II “collapse” in Catholic moral theology.
RELATED: Benedict blames scandals on ’68, says Church law can’t just protect accused
“This is nonsense,” Martel said about the essay. “The confusion is that the problem of sexual abuse is sexual liberation, when all the priests who abused never lived the sexual liberation.”
“The abusers are priests, they are not the homosexuals in the gay parade or women who have sex before marriage,” he said.
Martel’s book drew considerable criticism when it was initially published.
“People have said I don’t have proof, but I have proof,” he said, “when I talk about apartments, perfume or clothes, I have the proof. I cannot share the proof because it’s not possible and there are legal issues.”
The author said that so far, his book has sold over 300,000 copies worldwide and has been published in eight languages with more on the horizon - including a new English translation. In France alone, the book has sold 100,000 copies, making it one of the most sold publications on religion in decades.
“The reception of the book depends on the state of Catholicism in each country,” Martel said. “Some countries are ready to listen to this kind of stuff, France for example. Italy is not.”
In Italy the book sold only 10,000 copies and the author blamed a complacent local media that he believes is unwilling to ruffle the feathers of the Vatican.
Another source of criticism for the book was its release date, which coincided with the beginning of the summit of bishops on the protection of minors at the Vatican called by Francis to address the clerical sexual abuse crisis.
Martel discredited these accusations, stating that the writing of the book began years before the news of the summit broke and was originally scheduled to be released in October, but had to be postponed to allow for its translation in several languages.
Once it was clear that the release was going to occur in February, which saw not only the beginning of the summit but also the opening of the film “Grace de Dieu” detailing the case of French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin who was convicted for sexual abuse cover-up in March, “we adapted to that agenda,” Martel said.
“Whenever I would have decided to publish this book, it would have been in the middle of the sexual abuse crisis,” he said, citing the explosion of the crisis in Chile, the accusations of pedophilia against ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the letters by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò about homosexuality and cover-up in the Vatican.
“One day my book will be seen as a book that helped the Church,” Martel said, “and the people who now lie all the time about sexual abuse are in fact contributing to destroying the Church.”
“He said he read it. He said it was good and that he knew of many of them. We discussed good gays and the gays who are evil, but because of power,” the advocate said in a text message obtained by Crux.
Question: What's a "good gay"?
Answer: One who doesn't get caught.
Ping
So, who put in the white smoke tablet on this guy?
But, using those same statistics, we find that the average homosexual man is 14 times more likely to abuse a minor than a straight man.
“Fifty Shades of Gay”?
Advocate says pope read, liked new book on gays in the Vatican....wanted phone numbers and to be included in any email lists....
“I read ya, I likes ya, and I wants ya” - Pope Fleece Johnson I guess
How Catholic Caucus threads have changed over the past decade.
If a priest marries a women, he’s thrown out of the priesthood and the church. If he fools around with gays, he’s not kicked out.
Something wrong with that policy, eh pope?
Provided you’re Catholic, and I have no reason to believe that you aren’t, I have no objection to you posting in caucus threads even if you don’t like caucus and don’t particularly care for the Pope. It has been a coon’s age since I’ve seen any Catholic Freeper be enthused for Pope Francis—the most he gets around here is something like an even break and some defense when his words are twisted (some Freepers still read articles).
In my view, Caucus isn’t so much as to create a safe space but to keep discussion focused. Wanting a focused discussion is distinct from wanting a safe space.
Concur, but I have seen some become quite venomous in their defense of the Caucus. Besides, there are numerous Catholic sites where discussion threads can go til the cows come home, but FR is a place for open discussion. Caucus threads are isolationist.
He's married to art historian Liz Lev, daughter of former U.S. Ambassador and Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon.
Catechism of the Catholic Church
675 Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.
Jiminy Tap-Dancing Christmas.
Thanks fieldmarshaldj.
Evil homosexuls are evil because of power. What that means I have no idea.
Maybe Pope Francis is making himself appear friendly to homosexuals, so more reveal themselves. Like Father Martin.
Do you have a link to that statistic?
I’m trying to remember how I got to that figure. It’s been a long time but the stats bear it out.
Something like half of all molestation of minors is done to boys by men, which means by definition half of all molestation of minors is committed by 3% of men (homosexual men). Subtract the percentage of molestation of minor girls by (straight) men and divide by 3, and you come up with 14 — 14 times more likely.
Those aren’t the exact numbers but pretty close. It’s the same thing as saying that half the murders in the U.S. are committed by 7% of the population, so a member of that population is many, many times more likely to commit murder (even though the overwhelming total percentage of that population does not commit murder.)
So no, most homosexual men are not “child molesters”, but the dirty little secret is pubescent and post-pubescent boys have ALWAYS been an object of ardor in the homosexual community, going back throughout history.
Be aware.
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