I've written in the past about the insane rush to declare the less than saintly John Paul II a saint of the Roman Catholic Church and the ridiculous claim that those who oppose gay rights - even protections against violence - as being victims. The latter batshitery was most recently uttered by Vatican representative Archbishop Silvano Tomasi. Now Newsweek has a timely article that looks at the inappropriateness of sainthood for John Paul II and Religion Dispatches looks at the scientifically reputed "natural law" machinations used by the Church - Benedict XVI in particular - to maintain the Church's anti-knowledge and anti-gay propaganda. The Newsweek article asks the question that is being ignored by the untethered old queens in Rome: Why is the Vatican rushing the beatification of a pope who oversaw its worst scandal in centuries? Part of the answer lies in the "saint making factory" process John Paul II put into place. The other, in my view, is a bizarre effort to counter all of the misdeeds and misrule that occurred on John Paul II's watch. In short, it's an attempt to rewrite history much as the Christianists try to rewrite American history to alter inconvenient facts. Here are highlights from Newsweek:*
John Paul notoriously presided over what wags called a “saint-making factory” during his almost 27 years atop the Catholic Church. He produced more beatifications (1,338) and canonizations (482) than all previous popes combined—and since Catholic tradition acknowledges 263 previous popes stretching back nearly 2,000 years, that’s no mean feat.
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A substantial share of John Paul’s picks lived in the 20th century, from Padre Pio to Mother Teresa to Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei. In that sense, John Paul’s fast-track beatification is a natural byproduct of his own policies, which have been largely upheld by his successor and erstwhile right-hand man, Pope Benedict XVI.
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[E]nthusiasm [for John Paul II's canonization] has been tempered by revelations about the role of the late pope and his aides in the sexual-abuse crisis—by any reckoning, the most destructive Catholic scandal in centuries, and one that critics say metastasized on John Paul’s watch.
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The signature case is that of the late Mexican priest Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the controversial conservative religious order the Legionaries of Christ. . . . . Maciel had sexually abused a number of former members of the order. That case was tabled until late 2001, and no action was taken until after John Paul’s death.
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Even when Ratzinger’s staff began to become convinced there was fire behind the smoke, other senior figures in John Paul’s regime gave Maciel aid and comfort. Maciel accompanied John Paul II on several foreign voyages and was extolled by top church officials as a role model for his work with youth.
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[T]he Maciel case illustrates a pattern of denial and obstruction of justice on sex abuse during the John Paul years. In cases where local bishops attempted to formally expel abusers from the priesthood, in a process known as “laicization,” Rome often counseled caution. Vatican authorities until very recently turned a blind eye to “mandatory reporter” policies that would have obligated bishops to report these crimes to police and civil prosecutors.
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Vatican spin no longer carries the weight it once did, and in many quarters critics will still see the beatification as an attempt to whitewash John Paul’s record on the crisis.
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Meanwhile, even as story after story continues to surface about the Church's protection of child rapists, the attacks on gays such as the bullshit put out by Archbishop Silvano Tomasi continues unabated. As Religion Dispatches notes, underlying the Church's jihad against gays is the farcical "natural law" argument that dates back hundreds of years before the advent of modern science and knowledge on sexual orientation. Here's a sampling:
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According to this logic the recognition of LGBT identity would “undermine his/her ontological dignity” — meaning that since gays, lesbians, and transgender persons are by their nature “intrinsically morally disordered” claiming sexual orientation identity is, by nature, false. Tomasi then likened homosexual behavior to pedophilia and incest: “But states can, and must, regulate behaviors, including various sexual behaviors.
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Since the early 1980s and the ascendency of Cardinal Ratzinger as head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the moral theology of the Church has become increasingly locked into a framework of natural law anthropology, which is a logic based on male and female roles as pro-creators in the natural order of a biologistic social order emphasizing the nuclear family as the first cell of society.
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More problematic in Tomasi’s understanding of sexual orientation is the non-recognition of LGBT persons resulting in the Church’s negation of the social, psychological, cultural, and political realities in which they live.
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Prior to Ratzinger’s emphasis on natural law anthropology as foundational to contemporary moral and social issues, the Church’s social justice doctrine might have had tremendous influence in the creation of a positive Catholic LGBT human rights agenda.
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The [United Nations] Human Rights Council’s recent statement was signed by all of the Catholic countries of Europe and Latin America. Civil marriage for same-sex couples has been ratified in the Catholic countries of Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Argentina, and Mexico. Acceptance of LGBT persons is not just an American phenomenon, it’s a broadly international one with a strong Catholic character.
Of course, is precisely these trends that are most disturbing to the Vatican, especially as younger Catholics around the world are even more accepting of homosexuality and the legitimacy of sexual orientation and gender identity than their parents and grandparents. Sadly, in the fight against LGBT rights the Vatican and the U.S. hierarchy is throwing its hat in the ring with some of the most powerful and well-funded voices of religious fundamentalism in the U.S., Africa, and Latin America.
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There is an easy solution to the hierarchy’s increasing distance from the laity and ordinary clergy: just as the Church finally acknowledged slavery and racial segregation to be wrong and finally recognized full equality for black people, it can acknowledge that homophobia and sexual orientation discrimination and violence are wrong and recognize that sexual orientation and gender identity are social realities in our complex world. Otherwise, the Church lends legitimacy to violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The Church is not the victim.
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Will the Church come into the modern world and end its anti-gay agenda? Personally, I doubt it. At least not until thousands and thousands of Catholics walk away from the Church either for other denominations that increasingly accept modern knowledge or to join those in the category of no religious affiliation.
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