The real threat to the Church are cynical homosexual Clergymen who take advantage of their functions on their own behalf, sometimes in an extraordinarily devious way. The problem is indeed a very difficult one.
For the readers who still find such a claim too far-fetched, I offer the experience and the testimony of one who would have been in a position to fully know and appreciate the problem.
Pope Benedict came to be aware of cliques of homosexual Clergyman during his long years of work in Vatican.
He repeatedly stressed how shocked he was to learn the extent of the plague of homosexual abuses in the Church, the size of that underground and the terrible damage caused to youth and the Church as a whole.
It was mostly about such clergymen that he referred to while still a Cardinal during the famous Way of the Cross at the Colosseum in 2005, shortly before the death of Pope Saint John Paul II and his own election as the Vicar of Christ: “How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the Priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him! How much pride, how much self-complacency! ... We can only call to him from the depths of our hearts: Kyrie eleison – Lord, save us”.
Beneict also said the greatest persecution of the Church was coming not from her enemies without, but has been rising from sin within the Church.
Unlike the present Pontificate, however, Pope Benedict took immediate and concrete actions to cleanse the Church of homosexually compromised Clergymen by removing them from office.
In addition, in the first few months following his election, he issued an instruction forbidding homosexuals from being Ordained. That instruction was preceded by a letter sent from the Holy See to Bishops around the world, ordering that Priests with homosexual tendencies be immediately removed from any educational functions in chanceries and seminaries.
Benedict XVI believed, and rightly so, that the best way of preventing future sexual abuse of minors was to prohibit the Ordination of homosexuals, thus preventing the rebirth of that community within the Church.
Pope Benedict clearly understood that homosexuality is irreconcilable with Priestly vocation. Consequently, he strictly forbade not only Ordaining homosexuals, but even admitting them to any position of authority or ministry within the Church.
In Benedict XVI’s Light of the World of 2010, we find as an afterword a very important passage about homosexuality and Priesthood. These words of the Holy Father are, in a way, a comment on the earlier documents of the Holy See. The Pope is quite explicit:
Homosexuality is incompatible with the priestly vocation. Otherwise, celibacy itself would lose its meaning as a renunciation. It would be extremely dangerous if celibacy became a sort of pretext for bringing people into priesthood who don’t want to get married anyway. For, in the end, their attitude toward man and woman is somehow distorted, off center and, in any case, is not within the direction of creation of which we have spoken.
The importance of the matter for Pope Benedict and his Pontificate was emphasized by the fact that despite a great shortage of priests and new vocations in Western Europe and America, the Pope did not want the Church to admit such candidates to seminaries because, as the Pope observed, the grave abuses of homosexual clergymen have already caused too much evil, too many disasters, and have cost too much.
As we know, Benedict XVI eventually abdicated the Papacy.
In his memoirs, he states no-one pressured him to resign but alleges that a “gay lobby” in the Vatican had tried to influence decisions and resisted his effort to rid the Church of the plague of homosexuality at every turn.
In the book, entitled The Last Conversations, Benedict says that he came to know of the presence of a “gay lobby made up of four or five people who were seeking to influence Vatican decisions."
Pope Benedict says he managed to “break up this power group”, but at the great personal cost of his mental and physical well-being.
Still, the former Pontiff cautions that many homosexuals hold positions within the Vatican and the Church and have have banded together to support each other’s careers and influence decisions in the bureaucracy.
Looking back on his Pontificate, the Pope emeritus admits that he lacked the ability and the resoluteness required to complete the task of ridding the Church of homosexual Clergy at every level of influence and authority.
What further need have we of evidence that there exists a significant and organized homosexual underground within the Church which is powerful, well-financed and resistant to any attempt to expose its existence as well as the predation of children and minors it has fostered.
What remains is for the Church to establish structures which provide an effective means of protecting minors from sexual abuse by Clergy and to provide a strict and universal protocol by which abusive Clergymen will be removed from Sacred Orders.
[Please note: This article which concludes the three-part series on this subject was written before the explosive letter of Archbishop Vigano, ex-Nuncio to the USA which was published last Saturday. Can anyone doubt that what Pope Benedict was saying is true? Can anyone doubt Archbishop Vigano's claims?]
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