A Vatican Love Affair - Pope Leo Opens The Sexual Vault

St. Paul was not exactly a misogynist, but he warned men against women in his letters to the Corinthians and Ephesians.  Marry if you must, he said, but far better to remain celibate. 

Although these letters have been parsed, deconstructed, and interpreted for centuries with most Catholic apologists focusing on celibacy and its importance for clerical obedience to Christ, there is unmistakable evidence for a focus on women.  Watch out, said Paul, women are maneaters and will rob you of your soul; or at least that was the interpretation of Aloysius P Harrington, former Archbishop of Buffalo but more importantly adviser to Cardinal Ratzinger in his office of Doctrinal Faith at the Vatican.  In an official treatise Harrington wrote: 

St. Paul in his letters to the Ephesians expressed his concern that young men were turning away from Christ.  The other cheek was reserved for the kisses and caresses of women who, in the mold and tradition of Eve, betrayed Adam and defied God in the world's first feminine duplicity.  Marry if you must, said Paul, mindful of the need to populate the world with Christians, but be aware of the rocky journey to come. 

Now, because after his death the longtime love affair with 'Bruce', a Franciscan friar and attendant in the Buffalo episcopate was exposed, his scholarly essays on Paul, women, and the gospels were reviewed in a new light.  The man had obviously had no use for women and had chosen the priesthood to get away from them and to live happily in a confraternity of brothers. 

When the sexual scandal of the Catholic Church finally came out in the open, the Vatican at first reacted in a not-surprising desultory way.  These men were ordained ministers of Christ, had received the Sacrament of Ordination and as such were in a direct line to Jesus Christ and while not above the law should be assessed from a distinctly divine perspective.  Shades of Henry VIII and Pope Clement VII. 

It was only when the Vatican admitted that the homosexuality in its ranks was not a simple consensual affair among priests but an abusive sexual predation on young boys, did it finally act.  The Catholic Church had become one gay jamboree, a happy-go-lucky affair of sexual hijinks with some bad apples, and that had to stop. 

When the Boston Globe's damning series on the Catholic Church exposed the complicity of Cardinal Law, and the extent of a horrific epidemic of child molestation, rape, and abuse, the Church could no longer pretend that only some rotten fruit was to blame.  Pope Benedict quit rather than face the scandal directly, leaving the mess to his successor, Francis, who made some desultory moves to address the issue, but no one outside the Church seems to know exactly what happened and whether or not the priest giving you communion had just buggered some child. 

 

Enter the new Pope Leo XIV who has turned his attention to spiritual matters, reversing the overtly political nature of his predecessor.  There are enough climate activists in the world, he said, and too much sin, so let us get back to the work of Our Savior and leave global warming to idealists. 

Conservatives applauded this statement and were hopeful that the Vatican would indeed return to its missionary roots; but a few offhanded statements by Leo clearly criticizing the 'inhumane treatment' of the world's desperate and needy suggested otherwise. The new pope was, after only a few weeks on the throne, banging away at conservative indifference. 

And so it was that Leo turned to his advisers and asked what the Church had done to address the issue of homosexuality within the ranks.  'Why, Holy Father, we can assure you that it is well in hand', to which the American pope chuckled at the double-entendre and smiling, admonished his adviser for his inappropriate reference. 

 

The adviser, however, a gay man who had enjoyed many intimate friendships all through his ecclesiastical career from seminary to Rome, was not being ironic.  Without the gay clergy, the entire administrative structure of the Church would collapse, and then where would we be?  The new pope could not 'do a DOGE' and ransack the ranks of the Church.  He needed to be more forgiving and understanding. 

'Wrong, wrong, and wrong again', said Archbishop of Lagos Obo N'gomo Kan.  The only approved, God-ordained, Christian sexual relationship was between a man and a woman, a fact with which the Archbishop was very familiar.  He, like most African men, could not last a week without frequent, serial sex with women, and because of that cultural ethos, his dalliances in and out of vestments, were overlooked and in fact applauded.  He is a man of the people, the people of Nigeria said. 

Kan, however, was a voice crying in the wilderness. The gay thing was simply too universal, too endemic, and too much now an integral part of the Church to counteract; yet he felt an obligation to his faith and to Jesus Christ himself to speak out. 

'We have a problem here', said Leo - not so much the homosexuality but the divisions within Catholic cadres.  The priests of Africa were rutting like goats with the local women, and the gay boys of Buffalo, Ames, and Bozeman were having it off with each other in the sacristy.  'We must bring them together', said Leo, 'in a brotherhood of love'; but then, quickly realizing his own sexual double-entendre replaced the phrase with 'a community of Christian love'. 

 

'What we need is a balance, Holy Father', suggested a papal adviser. 'Remove celibacy, rethink the censure of homosexuality, and let nature take its course.' 

At his Leo rubbed his forehead, frowned, but said only that he would take the idea under advisement. To be honest, celibacy had never been a problem for the young Robert Prevost whose religious devotion was the perfect cover for his sexual indifference. Unlike most of his mates, girls for him were simply distractions to his calling and of no intellectual or spiritual weight.  Paul was right to center new Catholics on the only intimacy which mattered - love of Jesus Christ. 

Now that he was Pope, and all classified material was available to him, he quickly found out that the 'celibate' Catholic Church was nothing of the kind.  There were the rutting, rooting, sexually insatiable Africans, and the buggering Americans and Europeans. Asian clerics were desultory in their sexual pursuits, take it or leave it, but no Manila parish was without its drama. 

 'The sexual vault should be opened', said the Vatican Treasury Secretary with some wit of his own; but he felt the metaphor was appropriate.  Inflation is a function of the money supply and the overheated sexual market was because of a tight moral market.  Open up, the Secretary advised the Pope, and you will see a return to normalcy - sexual temperance and a return to Christ. 

And so it was that Leo helped move a bill through Congress....or whatever the legislative machinery of the Vatican is called...which would moderate Vatican policy on both celibacy and homosexuality and calm the fevered sexuality now rampant throughout the Church. 

'Good luck', said one Washington political observer who knew that the Cardinals and Archbishops in Rome were no more logical and objective in their opinions than the representatives of the American Congress and that one big food fight was about to happen behind closed doors. 

He was right, and the bill went nowhere with outraged Cardinals hooting and hollering 'foul', wanting to keep the status quo and keep their boyfriends and girlfriends without disturbance. 

'God bless Pope Leo', shouted one woman from Chillicothe waving at the pope from St. Peter's square as he readied himself for his daily homily from the balcony of the Vatican.  Of all the random noise from the crowd Leo heard this, and smiled.  'Jesus Christ, I'll need it', he said.