If the Pope really wants to cut back on the bureacracy, all power to him. He'll definitely need a lot of prayers if he ever hopes to accomplish so gargatuan a task.
My anti-bureaucratic Church dream would be the end of episcopal conferences. They should be transformed only in national/regional synods, conveyed strictly when necessary and when called by the Roman Pontiff.
There are some useful things which can be done nationally (for instance, the national coordination of Catholic Charities), but there is certainly no need for these permanent episcopal conferences, which have been gravely prejudicial to the two main DIVINELY established institutions in the Church: the Papacy and the Episcopate.
Nothing could be better for the Catholic Church in the first world than for these pathetic clerical rump parliaments to be booted into the dumpster, especially that big fat pantspslitter, the USCCB.
"Cardinal" Law is a member of the following Congregations:
1. The Congregation for Bishops, which recommends new bishops to the pope and oversees the performance of bishops and bishops’ conferences;
2. The Congregation for Clergy, which handles clerical discipline and oversees the financial management of dioceses (including the prospect of bankruptcy);
3. The Congregation for Consecrated Life, which has the same responsibility for religious orders;
4. The Congregation for Catholic Education, which oversees seminaries and priestly formation;
5. The Congregation for Divine Worship, which handles cases of laicization of priests.
This gives strong evidence that these Congregations serve no real purpose and should be disbanded.
Katrina showed the impotence of bureaucracy and the general indifference people feel toward the Roman Curia shows this too. Any ideas on the proposed investigation of seminaries? Is that not just more bureaucratic red tape? Someone quipped that looking for evidence of homosexuality in seminaries is like looking for evidence of coffee in cafes. Where is David Lodge when we need him?
Convergent:
I'm not entirely sure I follow you. Is your point that since Cardinal Law is a discredited man, any committee (congregation) on which he serves is shown to be useless?
I would guess that his point is that because of Cardinal Law's well-known and serious failures in matters of episcopal and priestly governance and discipline, it is inappropriate for him to serve on those Roman congregations.
He's still a cardinal, though, Convergent, so the scare quotes are out of place.
"Someone quipped that looking for evidence of homosexuality in seminaries is like looking for evidence of coffee in cafes."
Is looking for evidence adultery in marriages also like looking for evidence of coffee in cafes?
Father, you have previously indicated (I'm thinking of something I've read at your own weblog) that, in your experience at least, Catholic seminaries are typically and naturally places where homosexuality exists or even flourishes. I'm probably mischaracterising what you've said, but hopefully I'm not too far off. For my part, I've also heard and read things about certain seminaries that are disappointing, even disturbing (the revelations about that seminary in Austria and the bishop's suspected involvement and/or cover-up were simply revolting). Those things don't seem to disturb you, however.
Homosexuality -- the orientation, not sexual activity -- has probably always been a significant presence in all-male environments. This is likely to be more the case in seminaries today, I think. The Vatican inquiry is not directed as homosexual activity but at the orientation itself (if I have not misread the NY Times report). It is motivated not by any doctrinal or ethical considerations but by the hope that a reduction in the gay component in seminarians' psychology (through expulsion of those perceived to be gay) will make the priesthood more attractive to heterosexual men and will lessen the risk of scandal caused by sexual connections between priests and male minors or children. But quis custodet ipsos custodes? Will the commissions of inquiry themselves have faced the truth in this area? Will they have read and understood the penetrating analyses of Eugen Drewermann, Richard Sipe and Mark Jordan?
On the Austrian seminary scandal, I heard novelist Joseph Winckler dismiss it as just the usual extravagances of sexually deprives youths in an all-male environment, much as one had in older seminary life when at some events students would dress in drag etc. Winkler found that the bishop involved was unfairly slated by the sensational media.
Is clerical homosexuality intrinsically "disturbing"? Perhaps the only people it disturbs are people disturbed by homosexuality per se, that it, by people who have a problem. Is the preponderance of homosexuality over heterosexuality in the clerical caste disturbing? Only to those who want to cling at any cost to the institution of celibacy. There are plenty of things to be disturbed about (the sexual abuse of children for exampe) without scrutinizing the secret stirrings of young seminarians' hearts. I note that the sexuality inquiry is being linked with yet another inquiry into faculty orthodoxy such as was held 25 years ago. Sexual voyeurism once again joins forces with inquisitorial spying; see John Cooney's life of Archbishop John McQuaid for another example of that line-up -- it is classic! That is surely more disturbing than normal homosexual affectivity -- and more amusing, from a distance.
The idea of Vatican bureaucrats, clutching their own secrets in their bosom and armored with the benighted curial documents of recent years, conducting an inquisition into the tender secrets of the ultra-conservative youths who currently inhabit their seminaries, strikes me as primarily a very amusing scenario, though undoubtedly it will be a source of pain for all those involved.
"Is clerical homosexuality intrinsically 'disturbing'? Perhaps the only people it disturbs are people disturbed by homosexuality per se, that it, by people who have a problem."
Um, that would be all people, wouldn't it? Aren't we all sinners, wounded by original sin? Therefore, we all have a problem, don't we?
What Christian wouldn't be disturbed by "homosexuality per se"? I find drug addiction, alcoholism, and gambling addiction disturbing too.
Did you find the photographs of the abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib disturbing? So, in a different way, I find the photographs from the Austrian seminary scandal to be pretty disturbing. Not exactly young men praying the rosary, you know.
"It is motivated not by any doctrinal or ethical considerations but by the hope that a reduction in the gay component in seminarians' psychology (through expulsion of those perceived to be gay) will make the priesthood more attractive to heterosexual men and will lessen the risk of scandal caused by sexual connections between priests and male minors or children."
I suppose you disagree, but the hope that one might lessen the risk of scandal caused by homosexual or pedophiliac priests preying on teenage and younger boys sounds rather like an ethical consideration to me. We now have the data that shows just how disastrous it is when we disregard the Church's wisdom in discouraging the ordination of homosexuals.
"normal homosexual affectivity"
There's an oxymoron for you. . . .
"Young men praying the rosary". All honor to the rosary, but isn't that pretty picture somehow redolent of homoeroticism?
The American prelate overseeing the Vatican inquiry, Abp Edwin O'Brien, said to the National Catholic Register that men with "strong homosexual inclinations" should not be enrolled, even if they have remained celibate for years. "I think anyone who has engaged in homosexual activity, or has strong homosexual inclinations, would be best not to apply to a seminary and not to be accepted into a seminary." He said that even gays who have been celibate for a decade or more should not be admitted.
To find homosexual affectivity per se disturbing is like finding Judaism or being black disturbing. It is a kind of racism in fact. The figleaf of mistaken Vatican documents won't be a very good excuse when you are called to account for this by your rightly angered gay brothers and sisters.
Homophobia has a remarkably symbiosis with closet homosexuality. The two go together. This applies at the highest level in the Roman Catholic Church.
The cult of altar boys, of the puer mirabilis, angelic in his innocence, is innocuous in itself, but it has the most intimate links with pedophilia. It is the royal road from pedophilia to priesthood. Narcissistic identification with oneself as an innocent boy leads many to choose the priesthood as perpetuating this self-image, which has close links with the pedophile disposition.
The cult of the male celibate priesthood, a band of angels, has the most intimate links with homoeroticism.
In an age more open to sexual experience than past ages were, heterosexual men have left the priesthood in droves in order to marry. This is the main reason for the greater proportion of gays in the priesthoods just now. There has always been a certain proportion.
Perhaps the Vatican should bring in some kind of quota system, setting an upper limit to the percentage of gay clergy. Of course any such proposal comes to grief on the conspiracy of silence surrounding homosexuality and priestly sexuality, which the Vatican itself has encouraged. Having trained the clergy in silence, it is impossible for them to now get the clergy to express themselves frankly on these topics. The entire situation is riddled with the most excruciating ironies.
Meanwhile the success of gay civil unions and gay marriage reveal that the world is getting on with its business without the unnecessary headaches caused by the Church's mistaken teaching on homosexuality. The terrific agonies inflicted by church teaching on young people, leading to nervous breakdown, suicide and a poisoning of normal happy relationships constitute a crime every bit as evil as what we now apologize for with respect to the Jews.
Some bishops here and there have already begun to apologize to gays. It is only a matter of time before the Vatican does as well.
Meanwhile, the much-heralded document on clerical homosexuality that is expected from Rome suddenly seems to have been put on the back-burner. Benedict XVI may have decided that it would be a no-wind intervention.
Jordan Potter equipates homosexuality and alcoholicism. The latter is a destructive disease that brings grief to many families. The former is no such thing. It is the homophobic mentality, that encourages clandestinity and promiscuity by discouraging stable and accepted relationships, that causes destruction in so many young gay lives. The survivors of Christian "cure yourselves of gayness" programs tell a grim tale.
" 'Young men praying the rosary'. All honor to the rosary, but isn't that pretty picture somehow redolent of homoeroticism?"
Only in a perverted mind like yours.
Nothing gets Fr Joe's digits atwitter like an occasion to outrage the bourgeosie with his droll "sophistication". This is an odd pose for a priest. He knows he's unlikely to convince anyone at this blog that the longing for anal sex among men is "normal", in the seminaries or out of them. But he shows up anyway, because his addiction to the thrill of being the daring Voltaire of the clerical wine and cheese set is insuperable. I doubt that his championing of those who long for the barren pleasure of anal penetration of their fellow men is anything more than proper liberal form: the real point is to launch a few jolly good monocle-poppers.
The idea of Ratzinger as an enemy of bureaucracy is as odd as the idea of Bush as an enemy of bureaucracy. It is the essence of a bureaucratic elite to be entirely out of touch with conditions on the ground, as we saw in the Katrina debacle. Ratzinger ran the most dysfunctional bureaucratic apparatus imaginable with his forty colleagues in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. When Jacques Dupuis SJ was summoned to a hearing about his book, he was told by his interrogators that the book contained inaccuracies; on asking what these were, he was told that this would be clarified the next day; the next day he faced a barrage of vague statements, and on asking which passages of his text were being incriminated he again met an inability to give a clear answer; it seems that the interrogators had not read the book at all! Dupuis believed too much in the Roman system and its disillusioning treatment of him broke his heart and caused his death.
Under Ratzinger the CDF, meant to ENCOURAGE Catholic theology according to the prescriptions of Paul VI, sabotaged the work of hundreds of leading theologians and cast a pall over the entire Catholic theological world. Indeed many would rather be seen dead than teaching theology in a Catholic institution. Catholic University of America, for example, had never recovered its reputation since the dismissal of Curran.
At the root of all this lies not a sense of orthodoxy but precisely the occupation vices of bureaucrats: out-of-touchness, an obsession with tidiness, an urge to control, a fear of dialogue and questions, movement within a choreographed debate that consists in circling within the bureaucratic elite and that is closed to other input.
Ratzinger is every inch a bureaucrat in this sense and bureaucracy has devoured his theology, making it obstructionist and sterile, and replaced his spirituality with a neat cult of the tidy report sheet. As a Pope we can expect precisely nothing from him. His only virtues are negative -- he will tone down the extravagances that flourished under his predecessor. One possible saving grace is his dialogal outreach to Judaism (and perhaps Islam) -- I expect his first encyclical to be on Judaism.
More poisoned bigotry from Roister -- he can find only Voltairean sophistication in the cry for justice of gay people -- who are his own brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and whose lives have been devastated by precisely the bigotry he shamelessly glories in.
I have just spend ten days in the USA, in Boston and New York. I found it a kindler, gentler nation than it used to be. I found a disciplined society, courtesy on every side. I found lively and good-natured discussion. I found the deep imprint of the Gospel in the Anglican, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Greek Orthodox communities -- a veritable religious revival. I found no Bush-supporters, even among taxi-drivers. Frankly, this is not the America this discussion forum had preconditioned me to find...
What pathology is it that thrives on knocking gays? What's eating Roister, Potter, Garton-Zavesky, New Catholic, the Blossers? What is their constant obscene obsessiveness about anal intercourse about? Do they not realize that their talk kills, and kills their own children?
Bureaucrats appreciate only one type of human beings -- namely, their fellow bureaucrats. Ratzinger's shameless promotion of Law speaks volumes on this score.
Law is obviously prized by Ratziner for his bureaucratic skills. As Convergent noted he is working in the Congregation for Bishops; the Congregation for Clergy; the Congregation for Consecrated Life; the Congregation for Catholic Education; the Congregation for Divine Worship.
Someone voiced the hope that Ratzinger would promote creative bishops instead of the duds and yesmen of the previous pontificate. This is to forget that Ratzinger had huge influence on those appointments. Under the same bureacratic management we will see the same kind of bishops being appointed.
This gives strong evidence that these Congregations serve no real purpose and should be disbanded.
Oops, last line there was from Convergent's letters.
He is right, btw. The Roman Curia has become incredibly dysfunctional. Bishops everywhere simply humor it and give token lip service to its expectations. The inquisition of seminaries will be another exercise in the same genre. Its operations have almost nothing to do with the real life of the people of God, except to block whatever it can block. The crisis in Catholicism is overwhelmingly the work of the Roman Curia.
Bravo, Fr Joe! You launch a multi-note jihad on the subject of anal penetration, call it a "cry for justice", and then accuse everyone else of obsessiveness!
Every time the subject of homosexuality appears on this blog, it is your notes, full of thrashing and bawling, which dominate the board. If your spigot of wisdom on this subject were to suddenly run dry, there would be tons more room on the Blossers' server.
Very true, Ralph. The first four comments were very reasonable ones regarding the Church's bureaucratizaton.
But then came the "Spirit" with his obsession with sexual perversions... It seems like a subject which interests him very much.
I guess that if Dr. Blosser makes some comment on chocolate or on the weather, the "Spirit" will be able to put sodomy in the comments once again.
And the solution? Open up the priesthood to all those qualified.
Childish gibes from Roister and New Cath as usual. Roister pretends to forget that it was he himself, as always, who introduced anal penetration as the essence of homosexuality. I suppose he sees vaginal penetration as the essence of heterosexuality? Like many homophobes he seems as nervous about anal penetration as a Victorian virgin would be about vaginal penetration. The same fear leads many men to abstain from health checks involving colonoscopy. But gayness is a far vaster matter than a given sexual act, as Roister very well knows, just as heterosexuality is a vaster matter than vaginal intercourse. The love poetry of the human race has actually quite little to say about vaginal intercourse, just as the discourse of gays has actually quite little to say about anal intercourse.
Roister shed light on one of the paralogisms underlying Ratzinger's discourse on homosexuality. Beginning from the premise that sodomy is disordered he argues that the homosexual orientation itself must be so. Equally logical is the argument that since the homosexual orientation is NOT disordered, sexual acts that give it full, unitive expression cannot be so either. The clerical-closet tenor of Vatican argumentation excludes consideration of this line of thought. Roister also sheds a chilling light on the mentality of Catholic parents who send their gay kids to psychiatrists or push them out on the streets. When junior tells dad that he thinks he might be gay, dad instantly thinks of anal intercourse, the demonized projection of his own homosexual panic.
The solution is to open the priesthood to those who are qualified -- notably educated women.
In addition the priesthood should be closed to those who are not qualified. Many seminarians are of low intellectual caliber, do not believe in study, and are so bloated with callow vanity that they imagine the world is waiting eagerly for their messianic deliverances. As to the spiritual and pastoral formation of Catholic ministers, that would be a more suitable topic for investigation than the intimate stirrings of sexual desire or fantasy. The church is so screwed up about sexuality that any investigation bearing on that should begin with the investigators themselves. I suggest that we have a lot to learn from our sister churches about sexuality and the Gospel but in our incredible hubris we scorn to consult them. The only groups with which the Vatican seems to feel any affinity on sex and reproduction issues are the Islamic fundamentalists and the US Christian fundamentalists. There is NO adult discussion of sexuality in the Catholic bureaucracy, so the idea of them interviewing seminarians about intimate matters is quite ludicrous.
The solution is to open the priesthood to those who are qualified -- notably educated women.
In addition the priesthood should be closed to those who are not qualified. Many seminarians are of low intellectual caliber, do not believe in study, and are so bloated with callow vanity that they imagine the world is waiting eagerly for their messianic deliverances. As to the spiritual and pastoral formation of Catholic ministers, that would be a more suitable topic for investigation than the intimate stirrings of sexual desire or fantasy. The church is so screwed up about sexuality that any investigation bearing on that should begin with the investigators themselves. I suggest that we have a lot to learn from our sister churches about sexuality and the Gospel but in our incredible hubris we scorn to consult them. The only groups with which the Vatican seems to feel any affinity on sex and reproduction issues are the Islamic fundamentalists and the US Christian fundamentalists. There is NO adult discussion of sexuality in the Catholic bureaucracy, so the idea of them interviewing seminarians about intimate matters is quite ludicrous.
Anal penetration is both the logical and physical terminus of "gay" infatuation. "Gay" culture is nothing more or less than encouragement and support for the journey to that terminus.
Use whatever adjective you wish to describe me, Fr Joe -- obsessive, childish, etc -- none of it really changes the fact that you are embracing behavior that your Church, and most other human beings in most other cultures, find disordered. One wonders why, but one does not wonder that the same mind has nothing but scorn and vitriol for the last two popes [and for how many others?]. It could hardly be otherwise.
As the proverb says, take what you want, and pay for it.
As to Bishops' Conferences, their teaching role was exemplified in the varied reception of Humanae Vitae in 1968. Paul VI did not reject them. But Ratzinger put them in his sights in the 1970s and effectively destroyed the one voice that could allay the destructiveness of the Vatican's discourse on ethical issues -- destructiveness due to the out-of-touchness of a bureaucratic elite. The Roman Synods were similarly destroyed. This bureaucratic usurpation by the Roman Curia ironically condemns the Curia itself to irrelevance. It is a bureaucracy talking to itself and humored tokenistically by those forced to have dealings with it. To be sure Neocaths can drum up a selective enthusiasm for those of its performances that seem ideologically attractive, but that is not enough to give substance to them. There are liberal and well-meaning factions within the Curia, no doubt, but the structure that excludes true dialogue with the world's bishops, not to mention the faithful, guarantees powerlessness and paralysis all round.
"Anal penetration is both the logical and physical terminus of "gay" infatuation." INFATUATION is an absurd put-down of a person's sexuality. Would one call heterosexuality an "infatuation? And much "infatuation" finds expression in many other ways than in vaginal or anal penetration.
""Gay" culture is nothing more or less than encouragement and support for the journey to that terminus. NOPE -- it is support for PEOPLE." Would you say that Jewish culture is nothing more or less than encouragement of the denial of Christ?
"Use whatever adjective you wish to describe me, Fr Joe -- obsessive, childish, etc -- POT, KETTLE none of it really changes the fact that you are embracing behavior that your Church, and most other human beings in most other cultures, find disordered. One wonders why, but one does not wonder that the same mind has nothing but scorn and vitriol for the last two popes [and for how many others?]. It could hardly be otherwise." The record of the Church's errors and failures with regard to Jewish people should make us all much more sensitive about possible injustices to gay people inscribed in church teaching itself. When I see a church that encourages homophobic rhetoric such as your own I cannot help remembering the Judeophobic rhetoric which the same church fed to us so recently. The human and decent and just perspective on homosexuality is currently available to all those who take the trouble to inform themselves. A church that closes down discussion here well deserves the fate that overtakes it when its hypocrisies come home to roost. "As the proverb says, take what you want, and pay for it."
Ralph Roister-Doister | 09.19.05 - 11:40 am | #
Get some sleep, Father.
To return to the comedy from which Roister's excursion into panic about anal penetration distracted us, the marvellous scenario is now unfolding in which senior churchmen are supposed to inquire into the "presence of homosexuality" -- the orientation, notice, not any specific acts -- among groups of young men. Up to now these same churchmen have been as silent as clams on sexuality, apart from some laconic rulings on specific acts such as masturbation. Have you ever heard a bishop or cardinal speak frankly about his sexual feelings or desires? They vie to present themselves as asexual freaks. Now they are to put the most intimate questions to their youthful interrogatees, expecting a level of transparency for the public record that would rarely be found even in the private gloom of the confessional. The indelicacy of the matter is hilarious. Psychoanalysts, who deal with sexuality in great depth, must be blanching at the idea of these bureaucrats thinking they can get to the truth by crude inquisition.
Ironically, these same bureaucrats did all in their power to squash the scientific work of scholars who did conduct inquiries into the very issue now being investigated. If they are serious they should now do some preparatory reading -- Richard Sipe, Eugen Drewermann, Mark Jordan and many others could enlighten them. Indeed, they might learn more from an open-minded reading of such literature than from what promises to be a useless, protracted and expensive exercise in absurdity.
Would it be uncharitable of me to quote Ecclesiates 10:12-14 or Proverbs 10:19-21? There's nothing more dull than listening to someone who loves hearing himself talk.
Fr. O'Leary: please try to be succinct and to the point, and we'll all be grateful and more willing to interact with your thoughts. As Elvis said, a little less conversation, a little more action, please. Don't bother chastising us for agreeing with dogmatic Church teaching. Maybe you'd prefer for us to join you in dissent, but you'll have to do more than wag your finger at our so-called homophobia for that to happen.
I'm sorry that you think it's worth your time to spend hours on the Internet, causing scandal by your open and unapologetic dissent. I'm sorry that you're offended by the presence of young fogeys who vociferously reject your theological standards as relics of a dying age. I'm sorry that you see anal sex as something gay rather than as physical violence. I'm sorry that you can't accept the Church's ruling on women priests. I'm sorry you think that Church teaching on homosexuality is the equivalent of Nazi death camps.
And most of all I'm sorry that you're cutting yourself off from the Christ in this way. You are meant to be an alter Christus, but you appear more like an anti-Christ, whose "spirit" is present in every age. Perhaps it's inappropriate for a layman to chastise a priest, but I cannot think of you as a spiritual father in any way, except as an abusive father. Please stop, or just leave the Church altogether and end the spiritual confusion you're spreading. You're hurting your children.
Count 'em, folks -- that SEVENTEEN (17) new posts from Fr. O'Leary from 2:49 a.m. to 12:11 p.m. Fr. O'Leary is back with a vengeance.
I haven't had a chance to read them all yet, and don't know when I will get a chance (or if it will even be worth the trouble to do so), but I did see the filthy statement with which he began his reply to my last comment -- the claim that young men praying the rosary is in some way homoerotic. This just goes to show better than anything how orthodox Catholics and people like Fr. O'Leary live in two completely different worlds. How could anyone suggest there was something sexually perverted about a young man seeking the intercession of his spiritual mother Mary, mother of our Lord Jesus! What could be homosexual about a group of young men kneel together and praying the rosary?
Sorry, but after that outrageous, revolting statement of yours, Father, on top of so many other things you've said here about homosexuality, I just have to come right out and ask: are you a homosexual, Father? If that question is out of line, Dr. Blosser can delete this comment and you won't have to answer.
I will agree with Fr Joe to this extent: if this "inquisition" is ineffectual, if it consists of a nod-nod-wink-wink questionnaire and not much more, then it will do far more harm than good, in that it will leave the impression that something, other than covering-up, is being done. Cover-up, after all, is one of the characteristics of bureaucracy that Fr Joe omitted to mention, and I'm sure he would not have done so had he not been so tired.
To that end, I would suggest that discipline of priests found guilty of sexual transgressions of any sort -- even heterosexual fornication, my dear Father -- be swift, severe, and VERY public. Let the specter of public humiliation do the disciplinary work that blubbering such as Fr Joe's will never accomplish.
"Cover-up, after all, is one of the characteristics of bureaucracy that Fr Joe omitted to mention, and I'm sure he would not have done so had he not been so tired."
Very true; jet-lag in fact. Cover up is the very essence of it all. I did talk about conspiracies of silence and indoctrination in the don't ask don't tell mentality, and of the absurdity of now expecting a Scarlet Letter level of transparency.
Potter and Roister are screaming diva-like today. I did NOT say that young men saying the rosary is homoerotic. I meant that nurturing pretty images of angelic young men saying the rosary together is the sort of thing that appeals to a homoerotic imagination. Just as the cult of altar boys draws on a pedophile account in the collective imagination so the cult of the priest has a strong homoerotic component. Just as Japanese girls flock to gay movies like Maurice or Another Country in order to droll over bishonen, beautiful boys, so the Catholic imagination of traditionalists has a strong homoerotic component, as Mark Jordan suggests in the smells and bells chapter of his remarkable book on The Silence of Sodom.
"I meant that nurturing pretty images of angelic young men saying the rosary together is the sort of thing that appeals to a homoerotic imagination. Just as the cult of altar boys draws on a pedophile account in the collective imagination so the cult of the priest has a strong homoerotic component."
Ah. Nice save there. So you're not saying young men praying the rosary and altar boys are homoerotic, just that perverted and corrupt minds get filthy ideas and suspicions when they see or think of such things. Or are you saying that people who prefer images of young men praying the rosary over images or young men sodomising one another are the kind of folks who go for homoeroticism. Seems it would be the other way around, wouldn't it?
I should also point out that I said nothing about the physical appearance and beauty, or lack thereof, of the hypothetical young men praying the rosary that I contrasted to the young men in the photographs from the Austrian homosexual brothel/seminary.
Fr Joe, I haven't said a word about your "homoerotic" rosary reference, but since you insist that I did, I will add that it is the typical bearbaiting we have all come to expect from you, as is this morning's installment of smirky bon mots and monocle-poppers masquerading as pious learning.
All this tap dancing that you do to maintain the pretence of the faith!
It must make you weary -- it certainly does us! Fr Bo Jangles, celebrated dandy of the wine and cheese party circuit, pirouetting in and out of heresy with gay abandon.
Ralph and Jordan:
You might be interested in my post at Sacramentum Vitae on the Vatican seminary investigation.
Best,
Mike
Physical appearance and beauty are not really what count in the homoerotic projections that the traditionalist image of the Catholic clergy attracts. The sexual magic of the traditionalist priesthood is rooted in a juicy combination of 1. radical exclusion of the female other, a self-contained, narcissistically comfortable, charmed all-male circle; 2. allusive integration of the feminine in the androgynous dress, virginal innocence, demure manners of the clerical caste. A vast number of Catholic gays have thought of becoming priests, and the kind of women who are attracted to gays are particularly attracted to priests as well. Articulating the erotic overtones of the cult of the mythologized priest-figure is quite difficult, but it is important in view of the present crisis.
I never said that seminarians and altar boys are homoerotic -- as again you well know -- but I do think there is an erotic component in the heavy investment of catholics in the mythology of these beings as sexless androgynes in an all-male circle. The clerical-pedophile situation is a product of this traditionalist imagination.
Again, I recommend Jordan, The Silence of Sodom, and Drewermann, Kleriker, for a first attempt to come seriously to terms with these issues. Catholic sexual fantasies are NOT innocent and centuries of drooling over the Priest and of projecting neurotic sexual fears and desires onto him have created a situation that demands fearless analysis.
O'Leary: the sick man of Japan.
I think someone is confusing his own troubled childhood memories and adolescent sinful inclinations with a correct and traditional understanding of Holy Priesthood...
"Physical appearance and beauty are not really what count in the homoerotic projections that the traditionalist image of the Catholic clergy attracts."
Then why do you keep bringing them up?
"The sexual magic of the traditionalist priesthood is rooted in a juicy combination"
Listen to yourself -- "sexual MAGIC," "JUICY combination," "PRETTY images of ANGELIC young men."
"I do think there is an erotic component in the heavy investment of catholics in the mythology of these beings as sexless androgynes in an all-male circle."
I'm not familiar with this mythology to which you refer. Celibate and sexless are not the same thing, and I can assure you that I don't perceive priests as androgynes. Really, how can you have an "all-male circle" if the circle is made up of sexless androgynes? So maybe that's why it would never in a million years occur to me that eros is the sort of love that I or anyone else should direct towards a priest (let alone the sort of love that I or any other man should direct towards another man).
For a tad more rational balance on the case of Jacques Dupuis, see "Further Reflections on Jacques Dupuis," which takes a look at Avery Cardinal Dulles' reflections.
I suppose he sees vaginal penetration as the essence of heterosexuality?
As a matter of fact, it is, Fr. O'Leary. And had you read Theology of the Body, you'd already know that.
You hit that one right on the head, but I guess a stopped clock is right twice a day. 
"Physical appearance and beauty are not really what count in the homoerotic projections that the traditionalist image of the Catholic clergy attracts. The sexual magic of the traditionalist priesthood is rooted in a juicy combination of 1. radical exclusion of the female other, a self-contained, narcissistically comfortable, charmed all-male circle; 2. allusive integration of the feminine in the androgynous dress, virginal innocence, demure manners of the clerical caste"
If the man who write that is a priest, I wonder if he is concretly celibate in fact ?
There are two possibilities :
-either he is non pure and lives in an incredible hypocrisy...
-either he is really pure and he finds he is dressed as an androgynous .
Strange in the two cases !
quaestus, your suppositions are based on failure to understand my point. I am talking about people's fantasies about the priesthood, especially among traditionalist catholics, fantasies which create a priesthood likely to attract pedophiles or self-hating gays. I am not at all saying that these fantasies actually apply to real life priests. Priests are fantasized and imagined as androgynous by the faithful who stubbornly project this image on to them, helped by clerical clothes (they always imagine the priest in dresses, whereas in fact most priests nowadays never wear anything resembling a dress, apart from liturgical garments). This image of the priesthood of course attracts a number of androgynous and pedophile men, but in my experience the vast majority of priests are not in the least androgynous or pedophile in disposition. In short the extremes meet -- the pious idealization of priests as androgynous or sexless rejoins the cynical trashing of priests as pedophiles. Sorry if this is too subtle for you to grasp...
I suppose there are those who see priests as simultaneously man and female, of ambiguous gender, or of no gender at all, but I'm not convinced that that erroneous, indeed perverted, conception of the priesthood is something that "traditionalist" Catholics favor. But I am admittedly at a disadvantage here, since I converted to the Apostolic Faith as an adult, and am not as familiar with several aspects of past Catholic culture.
"I am not at all saying that these fantasies actually apply to real life priests."
Hi SoVII, Ok I understand better what you meant !
I don't completly agree with you about the "tradi" . The ones I know haven't these stanges views of prists.
Ho, thanks for the "Sorry if this is too subtle for you to grasp..."
What a subtle way saying things ! It tells me a lot. I thought priests should be benevolent ! But perhaps, though not a "tradi", did I fantasized the priesthood ?
quaestus, you certainly fantasized the priesthood if you think that priests sit down meekly under insulting insinuations!
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