Homosexuality and pedophilia in the Church: whose fault is it?

Readers of this blog will know that I have no love and little respect for Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State and pope wannabe. Bertone is the chief liar and denier of the Message of Fatima, as well as being principal apologist for the mess that is the modern (post-Vatican II) Roman Catholic Church.

Every once in a while, though, the "Prime Minister of the Holy See" says something that is dead right, and according to the traditional teaching of the Church. More's the pity that his flashes of insight don't occur more often.

Last week His Eminence said at a news conference in Chile that the crisis of clerical sex abuse is due more to the homosexuality of large numbers of priests and bishops, rather than the discipline of clerical celibacy.

“Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and pedophilia but many others have shown, I have recently been told, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true,” he said. “The behaviour of the priests in this case, the negative behaviour, is very serious, is scandalous.”

In the last sentence quoted, the cardinal displays his remarkable facility for stating the obvious. But the point of the message -- that there is a relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia -- begs the question of how it is that so many homosexuals and pedophiles come to be wearing Roman collars.

Please read or reread Paedophilia in the Church - the effect of the Sixties, which I wrote here on March 25th. I venture the opinion that, up until the 60s and Vatican II, the Church had no greater proportion of homosexuals in Her priesthood and laity than any other institution or segment of the population. There is...or was...nothing about Catholicism that would lead one to decide to be queer!

Then came the sexual revolution. Nothing was wrong any more. The Church stopped preaching about sin and hell. Catholics no longer got straight answers (in Confession) to questions about sex and moral behaviour. Instead, when we asked "Father, is that a sin?", the answer we got was "How do you feel about it?" (Not kidding. I personally heard those very words.)

As might have been foreseen, the seminaries -- at least some of them -- became hotbeds of homosexuality. Just one example was in the Archdiocese of Toronto where the Cardinal Archbishop felt compelled to have the seminar closed because it had become a den of iniquity.

Who is to blame for opening the doors of the Church to "the smoke of Satan"? I'm quoting Pope Paul VI, who now must realize the answer to the question. If not, let's hope that, wherever he is now, there's a mirror for him to look in! For it is the Church hierarchy, at the highest levels, including Cardinal Bertone and Cardinal Ratzinger, as he then was, who did nothing to stop -- even encouraged -- the erosion of the traditional teachings of the Church and the immorality of growing numbers of priests.

The Chinese have a saying, "The fish always rots from the head down." So it is with large institutions, including the Church. When the leaders, who should be giving firm and proper guidance and direction to those below them, are more concerned with winning popularity contests and chasing the fashions of the times, one cannot expect other than the decline and fall of the institution.

So it was with the Roman empire. So it was with the British empire. So it is today with the American empire. And so it will be with the Roman Catholic Church unless the clear warnings of Scripture and Our Lady of Fatima are not heeded.