UNITED STATES
Edge on the Net
by Antoinette Weil
EDGE Contributor
Thursday Jul 4, 2013
News of a so-called “gay hookup site for priests” rocked the right-wing Catholic community last month and provided cause for discussion, if not outright mockery, for all the rest.
Italian press first broke the story of Venerabilis, the “Homosensible Roman Catholic Priests Fraternity,” which not only operates out of the Vatican on a public blogspot platform, but even has its own Twitter account. This controversy, combined with Pope Francis’ recent mention of a “gay lobby” within the Church, has prompted a media frenzy and a shocking look at the LGBT truth of the Roman Catholic Church.
Perhaps what is most shocking about all of this, is that for those close to the Vatican, it is not shocking at all.
“The first thing is you’ve got to know there is a great deal of sexual activity at every level, from the cardinals down,” said Richard Sipe, psychotherapist, sociologist, author, and leading expert in the field of sex, celibacy, and the Catholic Church. “Everyone that has been close to the Vatican knows about the sexual activity and homosexual activity going on.”
This flies in the face of the commonplace notions of celibacy and LGBT exclusion and intolerance in the Catholic Church, almost to a degree of disbelief. But Sipe is pretty convincing: A Benedictine Monk for 18 years, Sipe was trained and acted as counselor, dealing with the mental health issues of Roman Catholic Priests. During this period he conducted research for what became a 25-year ethnographic study of the celibate and sexual behavior of Catholic Priests. The 1990 publication is known as a “classic,” and a reputable reference on the subject.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.