First Andrew Sullivan and others call out the Pope for his boyfriend (which I reported on yesterday) and now this from Newsweek:
For residents of Rome, the sight of courting priests is hardly an anomaly. But a recent exposé is rocking the Catholic Church
In the basement dining room of Le Mani In Pasta, a trattoria in central Rome, a young, glossy-eyed couple stare at each other across a table for two. They smile and blush over a private joke. There is no handholding or kissing, but they are clearly more than friends, even though they are both wearing dark shirts and the telltale white clerical collar.
For residents of Rome, the sight of courting priests is hardly an anomaly. The phenomenon is a well-known secret here, and one that was largely ignored until last weekend, when the Italian weekly magazine Panorama published a shocking exposé called “Le Notti Brave Dei Preti Gay,” or “Good Nights Out for Gay Priests.” Investigative journalist Carmelo Abbate spent 20 days undercover posing as the boyfriend of a man who ran in gay clerical circles, secretly videotaping the sexual escapades of three Rome-based priests. Abbate caught the priests on hidden camera dirty dancing at private parties and engaging in sex acts with male escorts on church property. He also caught them emerging from dark bedrooms in time to celebrate mass. In one postcoital scene, “Father Carlo” parades around seminaked, wearing only his clerical vestments. Abbate’s “date” even had sex with one of the priests to corroborate the story. “This is not about homosexuality,” Abbate, who is not gay, told NEWSWEEK. “This is about private vices and public virtues. This is about serious hypocrisy in the Catholic Church.”
If you read the entire
Newsweek article, you'll find it pretty fascinating.
Not to be done there, amazingly enough, there's another, too:
Of all the rumors floating around about just why Pope Benedict XVI is hanging up his camauro, one has taken on a life of its own. According to several well-placed vaticanisti—or Vatican experts—in Rome, Benedict is resigning after being handed a secret red-covered dossier that included details about a network of gay priests who work inside the Vatican, but who play in secular Rome. The priests, it seems, are allegedly being blackmailed by a network of male prostitutes who worked at a sauna in Rome’s Quarto Miglio district, a health spa in the city center, and a private residence once entrusted to a prominent archbishop. The evidence reportedly includes compromising photos and videos of the prelates—sometimes caught on film in drag, and, in some cases, caught “in the act.”
If you're Catholic, you'll likely find both articles shocking and surprising.
One of my favorite quotes from these articles and that keeps getting repeated is this:
“This is not about homosexuality,” Abbate told The Daily Beast when he published the exposé. “This is about private vices and public virtues. This is about serious hypocrisy in the Catholic Church.”
That second article. above, gets even more provocative in its description of what may have taken place even than the first.
Someone by the pseudonym "gardgengirl" wrote the following comment after the 2nd article
:
the catholic church...
quite possibly the single, most corrupt organization on the planet.
highly cunning, they created a facade to hide their double lives behind.
raised a catholic, i saw the sham at about age 14.
at its core, it's a secret society for sexually perverted, greedy men.
hello?
virgin birth? ruby slippers & brocade gowns? women excluded from the hierarchy? altar boys galore?
a sovereign country unto itself? stolen riches, properties, & art? tax-exempt status?
a genius, tho evil, concept that lasted for centuries, until the internet came along.
And who, at this point, can be certain she's completely wrong?
In case you're not done there, there is another article here:
And then there's this, too, that broke last evening:
Curiouser and couriouser, indeed.
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