Brody's Notes... Vatican Attempts To Defuse Mounting Criticism Over Homosexuality Claim By Bertone

The Vatican From St. Peter's Square  Photo By Brody Levesque

By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) Apr 14 | Chief Vatican Spokesman Federico Lombardi, in a press conference earlier today told reporters that the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, whose remarks to the press corps in Santiago, Chile outraged Gay advocacy groups, politicians and even the French government, was not talking about paedophilia in society at large, nor making any medical or psychological assertions. Rather, Bertone was "evidently" referring to statistics, recently supplied by the Holy See's own prosecutor handling sex abuse allegations against clergy. 

According to Lombardi, Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican's abuse prosecutor, said the allegations involving "paedophilia in the strict sense" accounted for 10 percent of the cases, 60 percent of cases involved adolescents in homosexual relations, while the other 30 percent of cases involved adolescents in heterosexual relations. In all, Scicluna said;

"300 of some 3,000 cases that his office handled from 2001 to this year involved acts of true and actual paedophilia."

Scicluna is a top prosecutor for sexual abuse cases at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the powerful Vatican office that cracks down on deviance, moral or theological. A powerful Vatican office once occupied by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, whose past work as head of the office has come under attack by abuse victims for allegedly rebuffing or moving slowly on calls to remove molesting priests, essentially granting impunity to them and letting them keep ministering to minors.

Nearly immediately after Cardinal Bertone's comments at the news conference in Santiago, Gay rights advocates denounced what they called;

"A perverse strategy" by the Vatican to shirk its own ethical and legal responsibility with a spurious and disgusting" connection."

The French government bristled at what it saw as an offense to human rights efforts.

"This is an unacceptable association that we condemn," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said in an online briefing. "France reiterates its resolute commitment to the fight against discrimination and prejudice linked to sexual orientation and gender identity,"

Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe also expressed his condemnation Wednesday for what he called "unexpected" and "regrettable" comments. 

He said the cardinal's "shocking link" was all the more dangerous because these positions "deliberately stigmatize an identity and harm the respect for diversity and individual liberty," said Delanoe.

The mayor, who came out as Gay a decade ago, urged the church leadership, the scientific community and the international community to distance themselves from the comments. 

In an Op-Ed published today on The Huffington Post, prominent Catholic scholar, the Rev. James Martin, S.J.  a Jesuit priest and the culture editor of America magazine wrote:

First of all, nearly every reputable psychologist and psychiatrist definitively rejects the conflation of homosexuality with paedophilia, as well as any cause-and-effect relationship. The studies are almost too numerous to mention. Paedophilia, say experts, is more a question of a stunted (or arrested) sexuality, more a question of power, and more a question of proximity (among many other complicated psychological factors). Simply put, being Gay does not make one a paedophile.
Indeed, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned an extensive independent study in the wake of the American abuse crisis in 2002, undertaken by the prestigious John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. Last year, Margaret Smith, a researcher from John Jay, reported to the bishops,

"What we are suggesting is that the idea of sexual identity be separated from the problem of sexual abuse. At this point, we do not find a connection between homosexual identity and the increased likelihood of subsequent abuse from the data that we have right now."

Second, there is an even stronger argument against the conflation of homosexuality and pedophilia: the lived experience of emotionally mature and psychologically healthy Gay men (and women) who have never, ever abused a child; are not tempted to do so; are not attracted to children at all; and would, in short, never think of doing so.

During the Chilean press conference, the Holy See's Secretary of State had remarked to journalists;

"Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and paedophilia, but many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relation between homosexuality and paedophilia. That is true. That is the problem."