Now that the Vatican has been forced to acknowledge a scandal involving three of its priests videotaped by a magazine having The Gay Sex, is the Catholic Church about to embark on a witch hunt to oust homos of the cloth?
While the Vatican’s vicar, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, has called on gay priests to come out and leave the church, it remains to be seen whether church officials will embark on their own search to seek and destroy gay clergy. It all started when reporter Carmelo Abbate of Panorama Magazine – owned by Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi — claimed in an article preview it had videotape of two Italian and one French priest having sex and partying with other men. The Vatican’s response? Get the gays out of here.
While the Vatican’s predictable reaction is to blame the report and not its own culture — the magazine is out to “defame” the church, apparently — it remains to be seen whether, behind the scenes, they’ll work to actually remove any priests they suspect or know to be gay. Which could be a whole lot, as the Irish Times summarizes:
Abbate, who introduced himself into the community thanks to an (unnamed) gay friend, begins his latter-day Decameron with a party in the Testaccio area of Rome. He and his friend were invited to the party by a French priest, referred to as Paul, whom the friend claims he first met in a sauna. After watching two semi-naked, oiled and muscular gay dancers go through their routine, Fr Paul climbed up on stage for what the reporter calls a session of “Dirty Dancing For Three”.
That first night ended with Fr Paul spending the night with Abbate’s friend. The Panorama article is accompanied by clandestine photos allegedly depicting the said Fr Paul in striped boxer shorts in the friend’s bedroom on the morning after. The article goes on to detail homosexual encounters with two other Rome-based priests, “Carlo” and “Luca”, passionate encounters that are also photographically documented. After sex, Fr Luca, for example, proudly shows off his clerical vestments, walking around the bedroom half-naked. Fr Carlo claims that “98 per cent” of the priests he knows are homosexuals.
The reporter’s friend says he knows many priests who frequent gay spots such as the Coming Out bar near the Coliseum. Fr Paul and the friend begin a relationship via affectionate text messages. At one point the priest explains he has “to say Mass this evening at six o’clock but I’ll say a prayer for you, if you like”. At the Testaccio party, a Sardinian claims he has come to Rome just for the party, and asks: “Did you meet Fr Paul when you went to confession?”
Forget that calendar of hot priests — this sex tape is the new hotness! But for me, I’m just waiting for Bill Donohue to weigh in on this one.
How about we take this to the next level?
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Michael
Queerty – You’re not serious about looking for an answer to the title of this story, are you?
Dominik
Shocking. What would Jesus do.
Shaun
I’m sure a lot [and by ‘a lot’ I mean ‘A LOT’] of priests are homosexuals, especially the ones ordained before the 21st Century, but no one has any reason to assume they are all sexually active. If the Cardinal harbours that kind of bigotry he should be laughed at, but I’m assuming the best of him and assuming he doesn’t and that his words were exaggerated and/or taken of context.
Furthermore I haven’t found any quotes attributed to that Cardinal regarding this story, so I’m just going to go ahead and assume that he wasn’t talking about all homosexual priests, but rather about all priests who consciously, consistently and without any repentance break their celibacy vows by being sexually active.
Which is not a frightfully bigoted thing to demand of them. They’re not adhering to the ethos of their job.
Mike L.
@Dominik: Join the party arccording to Elton XD
james_from_the_great_city_of_cambridge
@Dominik: If Jesus is anything like the rest of his church, he’ll join in on the gay orgy then diddle some kids.
james_from_the_great_city_of_cambridge
I just saw the tape; not explicit enough! Show me penetration or it didn’t happen!!
L.
In the Unsurprising News Dept., the Rome diocese had this to say: “(they should resign because) we cannot accept that the honor of all the others is dragged through the mud because of their behavior.”
Damn right. We can’t allow some consensual adult gay sex to tarnish the hard-earned repute of pedophiles, padre.
Peter
There are so many straight priests that have been involved with women, and fathered children, that there is even an organization of these women called “Glad Tidings”. Are the straights who also have sex also beign required to “come out.”??????
TampaZeke
All gay Catholic priests are scumbags, regardless of their celibacy status.
PopSnap
This makes me sick, but what also makes me sick are the guys who actually lower themselves to screwing these hypocritical, self-loathing freak shows.
nowliveit
It sounds like they have successfully implemented a Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy better than the military has. At least the gay priests have been able to stay in the cloak while the military kicks homos out.
—-
I sure hope that the Vatican doesn’t decide, like a good politician would, to create a big red herring to divert the world’s attention away from their centuries old, silently condoned, screw the children policy. They could decide to do a witch hunt to look like they are throwing out the gays since they always state that lie that gays are the pedophiles when evidence proves its the hets who screw the children. But doing this policy would probably work since it is always okay in the world to hate on the gays. The church already does hate the gays.
Keep it up. That’s the God I want to worship; NOT.
Like the line in Latter Day Saints where the restaurant owner tells the Mormon hottie that since his church doesn’t like gays or alcohol that isn’t the heaven that she wants to go to.
B
Err, guys, the video proves nothing: no alleged priest in it has been identified (all the faces are blurred out). For all we know, it could have been a scene in a gay club followed by a performance put on by a few actors. There’s simply no way of telling without more information.
While it is well known that their are gay priests (see http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_rcc.htm), estimates vary widely, and although the religioustolerence.org page cited above lists a number of references to articles published in mainstream media sources, all the links I tried were broken. I’m not sure what you can trust when Google searches for original material all seem to fail (I gave up pretty quickly – if someone is interested in doing a search and finds something definitive, please post a link).
Endless Men
JESUS!
axos
People are people. As someone said to me, of course there are more gay men in the Catholic church than elsewhere – you’re not required to sleep with women, you’re surrounded by men and you get to wear a dress. (Disclaimer: Not every gay man wants to wear a dress.) And again, people are people – of course they live it out, either in reality, or on the Internet, or with porn, or in their minds.
There’s nothing wrong with being a gay priest. What’s wrong is the deforming demand that you live in celibacy. What’s wrong is the Vatican’s hypocritical view on homosexuality and their lack of empathy for the victims of pedophile clergy. In other words, the Vatican’s utter contempt for their duty to protect children and their contempt for the gift of sexuality which, from their point of view, they should see as God’s beautiful creation. With (alleged) celibacy, they are going against that.
The Artist
Priest having sex, what a unique concept! One would deem to think they are human. PEACELUVNBWILD!
Xtincta
I know I speak for everyone when I say, where is the uncensored video? Am I right or am I right?!?!
hephaestion
I wish all gays in the Catholic priesthood WOULD quit and leave the church. That would effectively wipe out the entire church.
Pope John Paul I, aka The Smiling Pope, was pro-gay and pro-contraception AND he wanted to give the church’s wealth to the poor. So naturally the Vatican had him killed off within a few months of his becoming the Pope in 1978. Since then the Vatican has been run by greedy right-wing fascist hypocrits and liars and closet cases who wouldn’t know Jesus if he was standing toe-to-toe with them.
axos
@hephaestion:
Huh…? The Vatican first elected him and then killed him?
horus
frutti di tutti della chiesa
David Ehrenstein
I’m waiting for the Bill Donohue sex tape.
You KNOW it’s out there.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
Definatley file this one under the “carefull what you wish for” file………….I tended bar while in college. At least six of my regulars were from Parishes, including three from one single Parish. These guys were actually a lot of fun to have at the bar, good fun and tended to be good tippers (made me get a warm glow inside knowing how many of the strhaters weekly contributions to the plate were going into my tip jar :-p)
When we discussed they said the vast majority of the Priests all the way up the chain were Gay. So Benedick you may want reconsider your demands that all the Gays suddenly come out of their velvet closets and resign……………
L.
@Endless Men: Don’t be too disappointed, but I don’t think that’s Him in the video.
Jimmi
At least they are consenting adults–Bene should be glad!
Carsen Tyler
Once again the Vatican is shooting itself in the foot. I work as a youth minister and most of the kids I know who are looking into joining the clergy are queer. Shit I mean I almost tried to become a nun, but all the lesbian nuns were leaving because of how the Church said that there was something deeply wrong about LGBT people serving in the church. Now my old high school is run by a bunch of ex-clergy LGBT people…it is quite awesome.
Robert in NYC
Peter, No. 8…..no, the Vatican doesn’t go after the straight cleric philanderers or pedophiles. If you recall, the Vatican issued a directive to “weed out” gay seminarians and priests who do not observe the rule of celibacy, but it has NEVER issued a directive to “weed out” the straight perpetrators. I wonder what the criterion would be for [their] ouster. I’ve yet to hear it. How would they determine who among the straight seminarians would be likely to commit pedophilia against females or philander with adult women?
jason
Just because they’re engaging in homosexual activity, it doesn’t mean they are gay. To call someone gay on the basis of a same-sex interaction is a hugely confining paradigm, one that ignores the complexity of human sexuality for many of the men who behave this way.
Beware of using the word “gay” a a noun. It’s very confining, and often incorrect.
jason
I should add that using the word “gay” as an adjective to describe a person can also be very confining and inaccurate. We need to be very careful how we use words because words guide thought.
peteNsfo
It never occurred to me to document my hot-priest sexcapades…
Why can’t our dirty little secrets STAY secret anymore?!!
Jones
Cringe-inducing and embarrassing. Why so many gays can’t keep their dicks in their pants?
sfsilver
I’m not even sure what the point of this expose is. This has nothing to do with the child rape and molestation scandal. These are adults having consensual sex. Now I do think the whole notion of clerical abstinence is sad, and frankly what creates the culture in which sexually repressed people think are forced into situations where the only way they can express their sexuality is to do it in abusive ways against people they think they can control, but this specific tape doesn’t illustrate this point at all.
The Catholic Church would be in big trouble if they purged Gay priests. I think they have relied on their homophobia as a major recruiting tool. The only place in the Church for Gay men is as celibate priests. But hell anything that helps end the church is OK by me.