Fr. Z's Blog

There is a lot of chatter on the interwebs about the whole “homosexuals in the Vatican” thing.

This has been so obvious to me for so long that it isn’t news. It also makes me angry, and not in a good way. I hate reading or writing about it.

I detest this whole story because I suffered at the hands of these types for decades both in my home diocese and in Rome. And to be clear, they weren’t always liberals. Most were liberals and dissenters, but a few here and there were solidly on the traditionalist side which makes them even more loathsome.  But most of them were dissidents and liberals and were well networked. And they were vicious to anyone who was conservative.  These evil twisted men need prayers for the shameful way they treat the priesthood and the Church and because they risk the eternity of Hell. If I sometimes seem to have little sympathy for homosexuals – including and especially pedophiles – in the priesthood, that’s part of the reason.

Many homosexual priests and bishops strive to live holy lives, truly. While I still think they should have chosen a different vocation, because I think deeply-rooted same-sex attraction makes it too hard to relate properly to the Church as a priest (much less bishop), they have all the sympathy and admiration I can muster. Their cross must be very hard to bear. If they bear it and die a holy death in God’s friendship, I suspect their place in heaven will be very high indeed. However, when homosexual clerics act in the twisted and underhanded ways the whole “gay lobby” issue points to … they don’t get a pass from me just because our wretched society is blindly rushing like a hoarde of lemmings towards a “new normal”.

I digress.

One of the words flung around in the blogosphere and opinion items is the word “lobby” as in “gay lobby”. Because this story is driven by Italian sources we need to be clear about what this “lobby” means.

In Italian, “lobby” has a different connotation than it does in English. To get a good description of the different impact, I asked my old friend the great Roman Fabrizio, whose facility in English is amazing. Here is what he sent:

Although increasingly used in a more Anglo-Saxon political sense, the term “lobby” has a decidedly more negative and at times conspiratorial flavor to it in Italian. We otherwise use “gruppi di pressione” [pressure groups] o “gruppi di interesse” [interest groups] when referred to organized and official entities. Another negative term would be “poteri forti” [like “powerful forces”]. In short, it means sinister people who maneuver in the dark and who have leverage enough to make things happen or to prevent them from happening.

In other words, there is nothing benign about “lobby” in this context. When you see it in this context, know that this is nasty business with lots of passive-aggression, villainous-smiling, lying-in-wait, and backstabbing.

I may not write much on this blog about the whole “Vatican gay lobby” thing. It makes me pretty mad. But it is time for me to say this:

For decades our society has been slowly but surely and purposely shifted by those in control of the mainstream media and entertainment industry. At first, because of the rise of AIDS, active homosexuals were constantly portrayed as innocent, though perhaps quirky, victims. Once the notion of homosexuality was shifted from its moorings and a new status was created in the minds of the public, another shift took place in the media. Now, TV shows and movies are saturated with homosexuals who are far more sophisticated, with it, intelligent, good looking than their more dysfunctional heterosexual counterparts. Victim time is over. It is cool to be “gay”.

For years an artificial sub-culture was carefully crafted and now it is busting out into a “new normal”.

But – contrary to popular opinion – human nature and God’s revealed truths have not changed. Homosexuality is not normal. Christ’s priesthood and homosexuality converging is like pushing misaligned magnets together. It can be done, but it requires force. It is no wonder that some of these misaligned clerics do gawdawful things, especially to other clerics. They are out of sorts with themselves at their deepest core. How they must suffer! That suffering will sometimes come out sideways. Homosexual violent crime is often the most brutal and bloody that the police see. Homosexual clerics usually won’t be physically violent. Their conflicts manifest in other ways.

There is an old macaronic-Latin phrase in clerical circles in Rome: homo homini lupus… sacerdos sacerdoti lupissimus.

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