Imagine the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association announcing that, from now on, it would only be accepting members who didn’t drink wine. Those who didn’t drink spirits, on the other hand, would not be welcome. And those would-be pioneers who mostly didn’t drink wine but occasionally didn’t drink spirits would have to prove it had been three years since they’d even thought about not drinking a Bacardi Breezer.
This, in effect, is what the Vatican has said about homosexuals and the priesthood. All priests are required to be celibate. So why is the Pope issuing instructions about the precise nature of the intimate relations from which potential clergymen must undertake to abstain? Either they’re willing to pack it all in or they’re not, and if they are, then it shouldn’t matter what their practices or tendencies or preferences used to be. If they’re not, then their being homosexual is no greater threat to the integrity of the Catholic church than if they were perfectly mature heterosexual sadomasochists. In fact, it would probably be less so, since the evidence from several residential institutions suggests that the worst sex abusers appeared to take particular pleasure in inflicting pain and humiliation on their helpless victims.
All homosexuals are not paedophiles and all paedophiles are not homosexuals.
But it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this new Vatican instruction is aimed at scapegoating homosexuals within the Catholic church for all the scandals. If only we’d done this years ago, runs the text between the lines of the controversial istruzione, we’d never have had all that bother. Such a worrying mistrust and misunderstanding of human sexuality, in which almost medieval superstition and prejudice is dressed up as scientific truth, augurs poorly for the church ’s ability to address the cause of past atrocities.
The Ferns report expert group unanimously concluded that the priestly vow of celibacy contributed to the problem of sexual abuse in the church. While this pronouncement is surely hurtful to the many who managed to honour their celibacy vows, it stands to reason that there are some who find that sacrifice more difficult than others — not because they’re gay or straight, but because they’re human and biologically programmed with sexual responses.
When Woody Allen’s analyst asked him if he thought sex was dirty he replied: “It is if you’re doing it right.” Pope Benedict seems to take the view that it is if you’re doing it at all. Because what lies at the root of this profoundly regressive Vatican instruction on homosexual priests is an almost wilfully obtuse attitude to the diversity of intimate human behaviour.
This is because the Pope believes, and has consistently stated, that homosexuality is a disordered inclination towards moral evil. Couple that with the evident view that, because this inclination lacks the biological imperative of procreative heterosexual relations, gay people are more carnal and promiscuous, and you can instantly understand the Vatican’s extraordinary antipathy towards them.
At least when dealing with the rest of us, the church can point to its ban on artificial contraception and feign a presumption that all heterosexual couples are desperately trying for babies. But with gays there is undeniable evidence they just do it for fun. How much more evidence of objective disorder and moral evil do you need?
For generations, the Vatican was guilty of anti-semitic pronouncements and nuances that ultimately provided a tacit moral authority for the Holocaust. For this, the German-born Pope Benedict has quite properly expressed regret. He seemed to understand that an authority such as the Vatican simply can’t go on condemning a huge chunk of humanity as morally evil and genetically inferior without implicitly approving the oppression or, in the extreme, the elimination of those people.
It’s hardly a coincidence that neo-Nazi groups persecute gays as viciously as they do Jews, and such types don’t need a helpful Vatican istruzione to paint a big pink bull’s eye on their targets. It’s even possible that young gay men, in particular, may be conducting their very own mini-Holocaust to spare the neo-Nazis the trouble. Confusion about sexual identity is believed by many experts to be a factor in the alarming rate of young male suicide in this country, and the evidence that their “disordered inclinations” are even less likely to be acceptable in Pope Benedict’s reign won’t reverse that trend.
In a nutshell, the Vatican believes that homosexuality is a perversion that is treatable, reversible and, given the then Cardinal Ratzinger’s description of it as an “intrinsic moral evil”, freely and wilfully chosen by licentious degenerates. And if in future such immoral and disordered types might hang themselves, or have their heads kicked in by drunken but otherwise upstanding heterosexual members of the community, it will be a challenge for the Catholic church to work up a convincing head of indignant steam.
Almost certainly there are many citizens of this country who privately share the Vatican’s opinion of gay people. They can’t legally do it publicly, though, because of laws that take a dim view of incitement to hatred and discrimination. Our equality legislation makes it a crime to disqualify any person for a job or a promotion on the grounds of sexual preference. The civil law in this country is based on the opinion that homosexuality is not a manifestation of evil but a legitimate sexual identity.
The Vatican holds the entirely opposite view, and has just expressed it in trenchant terms. If, say, a large American multinational issued the same edict to its staff in this country regarding the private sexual preferences of the Irish nationals they could hire, the gardai would have some interesting questions for their executives.
The Vatican has a view on the merits and morals of a proportion of our population that is at odds with both our legislation and our constitution. The papal nuncio is the Vatican’s ambassador to this country. If we set any store at all by our democratically empowered legislative authority, and if we truly believe that our gay friends and relatives are good people who deserve respect, and if we refuse to accept a cynical bid to shift the blame for decades of child abuse from where it really lies, then maybe it is time he was called in for a little chat.
