Mr. Benedict goes to Washington
POPE BENEDICT XVI — aka “God’s rottweiler” — will make his first visit to the United States as pope next week.
There will be carefully orchestrated celebrations, lots of pomp and incense and scarlet robes and adoring crowds. But in all the excitement generated by such a visit — the first papal visit to D.C. since 1979 — it’s important to remember that Pope Benedict is an ambassador of homophobia and public enemy No. 1 for gays and lesbians around the world.
He will be met by muted protests from gay Catholics still clinging to the unrealistic hope that they will one day be welcomed by their pope. It’s a lost cause. Benedict’s record of working against the interests of gays is long and unmistakably hateful. The zeal with which he attacks gay people is most commonly seen in those living in the closet (think Roy Cohn in a flowing robe).
He has tried to ban gays from the priesthood and lobbied against legal recognition for gay couples in Europe and elsewhere. In 1986, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger serving under Pope John Paul II, drafted a letter describing homosexuality as “an intrinsic moral evil.” More recently, in 2003, he drafted instructions for Catholic politicians, urging them to oppose gay marriage and adoption by gay couples.
Kara Speltz, a Catholic lesbian activist for Soulforce, put it best in a 2005 interview with the Blade. “His rhetoric is obscene,” she said. “He wants gays clearly taken care of — it’s almost like the Final Solution.”
BENEDICT WAS JUST months into his papacy when, in November 2005, he issued the “Instruction concerning the criteria for the discernment of vocations with regard to persons with homosexual tendencies in view of their admission to the seminary and to Holy Orders.”
In simpler words: gays need not apply for the priesthood.
According to the instruction, “One cannot ignore the negative consequences that can stem from the ordination of people with deeply rooted homosexual tendencies.”
It further stated that men “who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture’ cannot be admitted to seminaries.”
The exception to the gay ban? Those with only a “transitory problem” who had overcome it for at least three years.
A sampling of Benedict’s own words since the mid-1980s reveals his odd and suspicious fascination with homosexuality.
In 1986, he called homosexuality an “objective disorder.” In 2003, he wrote, “Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children.” Also in 2003, came this gem: “Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law.” In 2005, “Those people find themselves, in fact, in a situation that presents a grave obstacle to a correct relationship with men and women.”
“Those people?” Is he referring to the innumerable gay priests and deacons who preside over so many Catholic churches and fill the seminaries? The same people who inexplicably flock to Mass and fill the collection plate each Sunday? The same people who will overlook all of these grave insults and turn out to catch a glimpse of the pope and celebrate Mass with him next week?
DESPITE A FEW nods to modernity (a concert with washed-up “American Idol” winner Kelly Clarkson and pope bobbleheads for sale), Benedict’s papacy is backward looking and appeals less and less to educated people in developed countries and more and more to uneducated followers in poor countries.
Here in D.C., the Catholic diocese faces a $50 million deficit over the next five years, according to a report in the Washington Post, forcing the closure of at least seven parochial schools that are expected to be converted into taxpayer-funded secular schools. The Catholic Church has suffered from a severe shortage of priests for years. Mass attendance is falling with some inner city churches down to a single, sparsely attended Sunday service. Its influence is waning in developed countries; even Spain ignored the Vatican’s admonitions and re-elected its pro-gay marriage Socialist government earlier this year.
But the church remains influential in Latin America and Africa, despite Benedict’s opposition to condoms, which are so desperately needed to combat infection on the AIDS-ravaged continent.
I was raised Catholic and have seen the good deeds so many adherents perform. From feeding the hungry and caring for the homeless, Catholics are decent, charitable people. Last Christmas, parishioners in my mother’s church were asked to adopt soldiers in Iraq who had no family waiting for them back home. Many, including my mother, did just that, sending care packages, letters and e-mails to complete strangers fighting thousands of miles away.
It’s unfortunate that the good work performed by so many Catholics is overshadowed by the Vatican’s venom. The dirty little secret that the pope doesn’t want to acknowledge is the large number of gays in the pews, especially in inner city churches long ago abandoned by white families escaping to the ’burbs. If only the gay and lesbian outreach that happens in local churches were matched by affirming words from Rome.
But with Benedict in charge, that’s all wishful thinking and the Catholic Church continues on its path to increasing irrelevance in the developed world.
POPE BENEDICT XVI — aka “God’s rottweiler” — will make his first visit to the United States as pope next week.
There will be carefully orchestrated celebrations, lots of pomp and incense and scarlet robes and adoring crowds. But in all the excitement generated by such a visit — the first papal visit to D.C. since 1979 — it’s important to remember that Pope Benedict is an ambassador of homophobia and public enemy No. 1 for gays and lesbians around the world.
He will be met by muted protests from gay Catholics still clinging to the unrealistic hope that they will one day be welcomed by their pope. It’s a lost cause. Benedict’s record of working against the interests of gays is long and unmistakably hateful. The zeal with which he attacks gay people is most commonly seen in those living in the closet (think Roy Cohn in a flowing robe).
He has tried to ban gays from the priesthood and lobbied against legal recognition for gay couples in Europe and elsewhere. In 1986, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger serving under Pope John Paul II, drafted a letter describing homosexuality as “an intrinsic moral evil.” More recently, in 2003, he drafted instructions for Catholic politicians, urging them to oppose gay marriage and adoption by gay couples.
Kara Speltz, a Catholic lesbian activist for Soulforce, put it best in a 2005 interview with the Blade. “His rhetoric is obscene,” she said. “He wants gays clearly taken care of — it’s almost like the Final Solution.”
BENEDICT WAS JUST months into his papacy when, in November 2005, he issued the “Instruction concerning the criteria for the discernment of vocations with regard to persons with homosexual tendencies in view of their admission to the seminary and to Holy Orders.”
In simpler words: gays need not apply for the priesthood.
According to the instruction, “One cannot ignore the negative consequences that can stem from the ordination of people with deeply rooted homosexual tendencies.”
It further stated that men “who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture’ cannot be admitted to seminaries.”
The exception to the gay ban? Those with only a “transitory problem” who had overcome it for at least three years.
A sampling of Benedict’s own words since the mid-1980s reveals his odd and suspicious fascination with homosexuality.
In 1986, he called homosexuality an “objective disorder.” In 2003, he wrote, “Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children.” Also in 2003, came this gem: “Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law.” In 2005, “Those people find themselves, in fact, in a situation that presents a grave obstacle to a correct relationship with men and women.”
“Those people?” Is he referring to the innumerable gay priests and deacons who preside over so many Catholic churches and fill the seminaries? The same people who inexplicably flock to Mass and fill the collection plate each Sunday? The same people who will overlook all of these grave insults and turn out to catch a glimpse of the pope and celebrate Mass with him next week?
DESPITE A FEW nods to modernity (a concert with washed-up “American Idol” winner Kelly Clarkson and pope bobbleheads for sale), Benedict’s papacy is backward looking and appeals less and less to educated people in developed countries and more and more to uneducated followers in poor countries.
Here in D.C., the Catholic diocese faces a $50 million deficit over the next five years, according to a report in the Washington Post, forcing the closure of at least seven parochial schools that are expected to be converted into taxpayer-funded secular schools. The Catholic Church has suffered from a severe shortage of priests for years. Mass attendance is falling with some inner city churches down to a single, sparsely attended Sunday service. Its influence is waning in developed countries; even Spain ignored the Vatican’s admonitions and re-elected its pro-gay marriage Socialist government earlier this year.
But the church remains influential in Latin America and Africa, despite Benedict’s opposition to condoms, which are so desperately needed to combat infection on the AIDS-ravaged continent.
I was raised Catholic and have seen the good deeds so many adherents perform. From feeding the hungry and caring for the homeless, Catholics are decent, charitable people. Last Christmas, parishioners in my mother’s church were asked to adopt soldiers in Iraq who had no family waiting for them back home. Many, including my mother, did just that, sending care packages, letters and e-mails to complete strangers fighting thousands of miles away.
It’s unfortunate that the good work performed by so many Catholics is overshadowed by the Vatican’s venom. The dirty little secret that the pope doesn’t want to acknowledge is the large number of gays in the pews, especially in inner city churches long ago abandoned by white families escaping to the ’burbs. If only the gay and lesbian outreach that happens in local churches were matched by affirming words from Rome.
But with Benedict in charge, that’s all wishful thinking and the Catholic Church continues on its path to increasing irrelevance in the developed world.
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