Counter-Currents
Trad Queen Story Hour Part I: Papa Francesco vs. Steve Bannon’s Army of Cath-Boys
James J. O'Meara4,296 words
Frédéric Martel
In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy
Translated by Shaun Whiteside
New York: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2019
Don’t put make-up on your soul, because the Lord won’t recognize you. Let us ask for this grace, during this Lent: the coherence between formality and the reality, between who we are and how we want to appear.
Those who are in authority rightly tolerate certain evils, lest certain goods be lost, or certain evils be incurred: thus Augustine says [De ordine 2.4]: “If you do away with harlots, the world will be convulsed with lust.”
This is one of the most infuriating books I’ve ever read, quite apart from the contents. If a Coleman Francis movie could be said to “dare you to watch it,” [1] this is one of those books that dares you to read it.
And you should, or at least try to. Martel addresses one of the great conundrums of our time: how is it that the Roman Catholic Church is the great synecdoche of “tradition” and “orthodoxy” and “conservatism,” a veritable bulwark of resistance to liberalism and “globohomo,” while at the same time being the world headquarters of pederasty?
Of course, the E. Michael Joneses and Nick Fuentes of the Dissident Right have a ready, convenient explanation: the homos took over during Vatican II! And of course, this is historical nonsense: the Church has been known for its randy priests (and nuns) back to the times of Luther and beyond. [2] Indeed, while some illiterates think “the Bible condemns sodomy,” the word — and sin — was actually invented in the 9th century by Peter Damien; among its interesting characteristics, it was “characteristic of the clergy.” [3]
The truth, as always, is far more complex — paradoxical, even — and far more interesting:
The omnipresence of homosexuals in the Vatican isn’t just a matter of a few black sheep, [4] or the “net that caught the bad fish’, as Josef Ratzinger put it. It isn’t a ‘lobby’ or a dissident movement; neither is it a sect of a Freemasonry inside the holy see: it’s a system. It isn’t a tiny minority; it’s a big majority.
Martel’s informants coalesce around the informed guestimate that “upwards of 80% of the clergy are homosexual, ‘all tendencies included.’” We’ll see what those “tendencies” encompass.
To his credit, rather than engage in comforting, self-satisfying historical fantasy, Martel sets out to document the current situation and the secret history of how it came about; he wants us to take him as some kind of cultural anthropologist, exploring and explaining a remote and seemingly bizarre tribe; this perhaps accounts for the Brobdingnagian dimensions of this field report. Martel conducted more than 1,500 interviews over four years, including no fewer than “41 cardinals, 52 bishops and Monsignori, 45 apostolic nuncios, secretaries of nunciatures or foreign ambassadors, 11 Swiss Guards, and over 200 Catholic priests and seminarians.” The result is an unwieldy 555 pages — without an index — and there are another 300 pages available online.
Martel as amateur anthropologist sets out as a kind of “participant/observer” of a very special kind; while he is no Catholic, not even “culturally” — he is very much a secularist, or, as the French village atheist or metropolitan sophisticate would proudly say, an exponent of laïcité — he is openly, proudly — I would say flamboyantly, indeed irritatingly — gay, with all the stereotypical features you might imagine: his text is over-written, precious, catty, [5] and indeed addicted to that species of gossiping known as dishing. [6]
As luck would have it, the Vatican is filled with Martels-in-cassocks, and once Martel’s “gaydar” locks on a target, and the target is satisfied that he is indeed “of the parish” — the Vatican equivalent of “friend of Dorothy” — the floodgates are opened, as if this is just the opportunity they’ve been waiting decades for to unload their spleen. [7]
Periodically, he provides us with pretentiously pseudo-scientific “Rules of the Closet” that he has supposedly deduced from this evidence; ultimately thirteen or so, which, in a final “Fuck You” to the reader, are never referred back to, summarized, systematized, or even brought together in one place (remember, there’s no index, either).
Dispensing with the Great White Hunter pose, it would be more helpful to think of Martel as providing an abductive argument [8] to explain a series of puzzling phenomena:
The secret motivations that led Paul VI to confirm the prohibition on artificial contraception, the rejection of condoms and the strict obligation of celibacy on the priesthood; the war against “liberation theology”; . . . the decision to forbid condoms as a way of battling AIDS, even when the pandemic would lead to more than thirty-five million deaths; the VatiLeaks I and II affairs; the recurrent and often unfathomable misogyny of many cardinals and bishops; the resignation of Benedict XVI; the current rebellion against Pope Francis. . .
And what is the key?
Every time, homosexuality plays a central part that many people can only guess at, and the truth of which has never really been told.
Please, do tell:
The “culture of secrecy,” which was necessary to maintain silence about the huge presence of homosexuality inside the Church, has made it possible to hide sexual abuse, and for predators to benefit from this system of protection within the institution.
Without this key for understanding, the recent history of the Vatican and the Roman Church remains opaque. By failing to recognize the broadly homosexual dimension, we deprive ourselves of one of the keys to a greater understanding of most of the facts that have stained the history of the Vatican for decades.
You can buy James O’Meara’s book Green Nazis in Space! here.
More particularly (and the text is all about providing particulars), while theologues like Jones and ideologues like Fuentes like to think of, and present, the Church as a timeless institution passing on timeless moral laws, it is actually a human institution with a unique history. [9] Mandatory celibacy has made the Church an ideal destination for young men of confused or decidedly homophile inclinations.
Even more particularly, the leadership — Popes, cardinals, bishops — is elderly (the trio of cardinals Benedict chose to investigate the last financial scandal were all in their late 90s); the intellectual formation of these “impossibly old” antiques [10] is not merely pre-Stonewall but pre-War (World War Two, not One, to be fair). Faced with the challenges of birth control, abortion, gay liberation, and revelations of systematic clerical pederasty, their instinctive reaction has been to double-down, making the conservative positions on sexuality the only non-negotiable feature left of Catholicism.
So, in a bass-ackward way, the TradCaths are right, but as per usual, they’ve grabbed the wrong end of the shit stick: [11] the Church is full of homos, but they’ve been there for centuries, and these are the fossils promoting your “conservative family values,” while the handful of straight clergymen have been trying to bring the Church’s teaching on sex back to something approaching the reality of human sexuality.
Francis today is the object of a violent campaign, precisely because of his supposed liberalism on questions of sexual morality, by conservative cardinals who are . . . most of them, secretly homosexual. . . . Those conservatives, those traditionalists, those “dubias,” [12] are in many cases the famous “rigid people leading of double life” of whom Francis speaks so often.
The Argentinian has overturned the little games of connivance and the homosexual fraternity that developed clandestinely after Paul VI, and were amplified under John Paul II, before becoming ungovernable under Benedict XVI, leading to his downfall.
On the principle of “fool me once,” Francis has set himself the task of cleaning out the Vatican closet, both personnel and the twisted “conservative” theology (actually, the misogynistic fantasies of spiteful old queens) they have wrought. Opposing him is what we might call, in contemporary terms, the Resistance. When Francis suggested — on solid theological basis — that sexual sins were only some of many, and that the Church had spent far too much time on these to the exclusion of the other 6 deadly sins, the reeeeee-ing began. “He’s a heretic!” “He’s a fag!” [13] “He’s not my Pope!” Indeed, Francis Derangement Syndrome among hysterical conservative Catholics was something of a dress rehearsal for the Trump Derangement Syndrome manifested by the progressive Left.
Martel starts in media res; the first of four parts is devoted to Francis and the current situation. And almost immediately we are gifted with one of those “stranger-than-fiction” real-life figures that somehow summarize an entire epoch: the American Cardinal Raymond Burke. [14] Leader of the Resistance, recurrent target of Francis’ demotions and dressings-down, an ally of Steve Bannon in promoting “Traditionalism” . . .
. . . and drag queen. But since this paraphilia manifests itself in wearing elaborate archaic vestments, long since shunned by the rest of his colleagues, this is interpreted as “conservatism” and “traditionalism.” Perhaps a better term would be LARPing; he LARPs as a Borgia-era cardinal, including the “cappa magna” that Francis has officially discouraged:
Burke is well-known for wearing this garb from another era. The photographs of him wearing this big ceremonial altar-boy outfit are famous. He’s a big man; in his cappa magna he becomes a giant — he looks like a Viking bride! Performance. Happening. In his long robe (he could be wearing a curtain), Burke shows himself in his full plumage. This billowing jacket is a cape of red moiré silk, with a hood buttoned by the neck and fastened at the front (the hands emerge from a slit) and involving a train which is said to vary according to the solemnity of the occasion. Burke’s train can reach a length of 12 metres. Is this ‘larger-than-life’ cardinal trying to enlarge himself at the same time as the pope is trying to shrink him?”
He could show up looking like Carol Channing in Hello Dolly, and traditionalists would say he’s “delivering another well-aimed rebuke to the modernizing Francis.” See how that works? Genius!
The discovery of Burke is worth the price of admission: a real-life Pope Hadrian VII:
How often we see him surrounded by young seminarians kissing his hand — also magnificent in that our Hadrian [15] seems to follow the cult of Greek beauty, which, as we know, was always more male than female. Winning both the admiration and laughter of Rome, Burke always appears surrounded by obsequious chaperones, Antinous-like figures kneeling in front of him or page boys carrying the long red train of his cappa magna, as choirboys might for a bride.
. . . and whose portrait, dominating his ornate private apartments, seems to have been painted by Frederick Rolfe himself:
The 70-year-old cardinal [is] sitting on an asparagus-green throne twice as large as he is, surrounded by silvery drapery. He wears a fluorescent yellow mitre in the shape of a tall Tower of Pisa, and long turquoise gloves that look like iron hands; his mozzetta is cabbage-green, embroidered with yellow, lined with a leek-green hood revealing a bow of crimson and pomegranate lace.
All this might possibly be overlooked as, if not a praiseworthy invocation of “Tradition,” merely just a somewhat embarrassing personal foible — even his nickname among the curia: “The Wicked Witch of the Midwest,” or his preference to be spoken of in the feminine: “Votre Éminence peut être fière”; “Votre Éminence est grande”; “Votre Éminence est trop bonne” (“Your Eminence can be proud”; “Your Eminence is great”; “Your Eminence is too kind”) — all, perhaps, forgivable, if it were not for the state of Burke’s American church:
Most of the Catholic hierarchy in his country — the cardinals, the bishops — are homosexual: the famous and powerful cardinal and Archbishop of New York, Francis Spellman, was a “sexually voracious homosexual,” if we are to believe his biographers. . . . [16] Similarly, Cardinal Wakefield Baum of Washington, recently deceased, lived for many years with his personal assistant — a classic of the genre. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, former Archbishop of Washington, was also a practicing homosexual: he was well-known for his “sleeping arrangements” with seminarians and young priests whom he called his “nephews” (finally accused of sexual abuse, he was forbidden to hold public office by the pope in 2018). Archbishop Rembert Weakland was “outed” by a former boyfriend (he has since described his journey as a homophile in his memoirs). One American cardinal has been banned from the Vatican [!] and sent back to the United States for his improper conduct with a Swiss Guard. Another American cardinal, the bishop of a large city in the United States, “has lived for years with his boyfriend, a former priest,” while an archbishop of another city, a devotee of the Latin mass and a man much given to cruising, “lives surrounded by a flock of young seminarians,” a fact confirmed to me by Robert Carl Mickens, an American Vaticanologist familiar with the gay lifestyle of the senior Catholic hierarchy in the United States. The Archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis, John Clayton Nienstedt, is also a homophile, and was investigated by his Archdiocese in connection with allegations that he had inappropriate sexual contact with adult men (allegations he categorically denies). He subsequently resigned when criminal charges were brought against the Archdiocese concerning its handling of allegations of inappropriate behavior by a priest who was later convicted of molesting two boys; another resignation that was accepted by Pope Francis.
And so on. Martell goes on to note with alarm that “an objective alliance has formed between the American ultra-right and the ultra-right of the Vatican,” in particular between the drag queen traditionalist Cardinal and the Catholic capital-T Traditionalist Steve Bannon: “the understanding between the two men was instant.” [17]
Alas, no sooner did the book come out than Bannon and Burke were no longer BFF’s:
Cardinal Raymond Burke has severed ties with his once-ally, former White House adviser Steve Bannon, and his institute designed to train future populist leaders. The apparent cause of discontent was Mr. Bannon’s desire to make a film about the Vatican’s homosexual subculture, according to Inside the Vatican.
The pair had been close allies, meeting in person in recent years and collaborating over the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, Bannon’s “gladiator school“ which was meant to instill alt-right values in its students, and where Cardinal Burke had been honorary chairman.
Burke released a statement Tuesday in which he emphatically severed relations Bannon and the Institute. The final straw seems to have been a report on conservative LifeSiteNews in which Bannon hinted, among other things, that he wanted to make a film of Frederic Martel’s book, “In the Closet of the Vatican.”
The idea of converting the book into a film was enough for Burke to distance himself considerably from Bannon. “I have never worked with Mr. Bannon in his organisation and am not presently doing so,” explained the 70-year-old.
Bannon also said, in the LifeSiteNews article which has been subsequently taken down, that he believed priests should be able to marry. Burke was clear in his statement: “I disagree completely with a number of Mr. Bannon’s statements regarding the doctrine and discipline of the Roman Catholic Church,” Burke explained, as he also stood back from Bannon’s alt-right Institute, that in recent years the project had become increasingly identified with “the political programme of Mr. Bannon” and had moved away from its “original purpose.”
Bannon’s school, set up in the millennium-old monastery in Trisulti, near Frosinone, was intended to teach students how to defend the “Judaeo-Christian West.” Bannon, 65, who is a long-time admirer of Italian politics, designed most of the curriculum for the “sovereignty school.”
Burke and Bannon originally bonded over their conservative opposition to Pope Francis. While Bannon’s criticisms concerned the Pope’s stance on migration, Burke opposed Papa Franceso on doctrinal grounds, including the status of divorced and remarried Catholics. Pope Francis removed Burke as head of the Vatican’s Supreme Court in 2014 and he has been repeatedly sidelined since.
You can buy James O’Meara’s book The Eldritch Evola here.
And so another alt-right conglomerate bites the dust. But wait: there’s more!
“We stood by the monastery, the community, and Italy during this pandemic when it would have been easy to walk away,” Bannon said in a statement. But while they still enjoy support from Italian right-wing politicians such as former interior minister Matteo Salvini, Bannon and Harnwell have lost key supporters within the Church.
Last year, American Cardinal Raymond Burke, who for years strongly backed Bannon and was an honorary president of the institute, yanked his support after Bannon said he wanted to make a film from a book alleging widespread homosexuality in Vatican.
Burke’s withdrawal was a major setback for Bannon because the cardinal, one of Pope Francis’ fiercest critics, is a point of reference for Catholic conservatives worldwide.
Indeed, Bannon appears to support Francis’ tactic of switching to a few non-sexual issues that may be more important to the general public (and the Dissident Right):
Martel told BuzzFeed News that Bannon invited him to lunch in Paris on May 19 to discuss his book. During the lunch, Martel said, it was suggested that Bannon’s allies in Rome were probably gay, and Bannon agreed that was likely true. Martel said Bannon endorsed allowing priests to marry and other changes to the church’s sexual doctrine so that the church can focus on “the important issues: China, Islam, immigration and so on.”
Speaking of immigration and Islam; the survey of the contemporary scene ends with a chapter on the Roman street boys who provide services for Vatican officials. It’s not really necessary, but journalists seem compelled to use their expense accounts to spend time among the “real people” of the streets, with, in this case, an added opportunity to express solidarity with those “oppressed” immigrants. For indeed, one thing we do learn is that, just as the most homophobic clergy are the most sexually active, the conservative clergy that most vociferously oppose Francis’ policies on immigration are, by night, delighted to have a smorgasbord of immigrants to prey on.
In fact, the clergy prefer either Moslems (illegal immigrants) or what they charmingly call “orientals,” i.e., Orthodox Romanians (legal immigrants from the EU). The boys themselves “don’t lumber themselves with morality or guilt”:
If an imam was gay, the Muslims would have been shocked; if an orthodox pope [sic; he means a patriarch] was homosexual the Romanians would have thought it was strange; but it strikes them as “normal” for Catholic priests to indulge in prostitution.
By this time, the reader will share that perception. We also learn that no less than two restaurants in Rome serve as memorials to Pasolini — one where he met up with his soon-to-be killer, the other where they had dinner that evening; Italians do seem to enjoy dining places associated with famous murders.
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Notes
[1] Mystery Science Theater, Episode 619, “Red Zone Cuba.”
[2] A bird’s eye view from the book under review:
As early as the Middle Ages, Popes John XII and Benedict IX committed the “abominable sin,” and everyone in the Vatican knows the name of the boyfriend of Pope Adrian IV (the famous John of Salisbury), and of the lovers of Pope Boniface VIII. The marvelously scandalous life of Pope Paul II is equally famous: he is said to have died of a heart attack in the arms of a page [As we’ll see, a modern-day cardinal will do the same]. As for Pope Sixtus IV, he appointed several of his lovers cardinal, including his nephew Raphael, who was made cardinal at the age of 17 (the expression “cardinal-nephew” has been passed down to posterity). Julius II and Leo X, both patrons of Michelangelo, and Julius III, are also generally presented as bisexual popes. Sometimes, as Oscar Wilde observed, some popes were called Innocent by antiphrasis!
[3] Hence the name, coined on the model of simony, the purchase of holy orders. Damien was an early reformer, and this new sin gave him — he thought — a powerful weapon to wield against his conservative opponents; since then, silencing opponents, from the Third Reich to the Army/McCarthy hearings, has been its main use. Alas, his plans went awry: the Pope accepted his treatise, and then burned it. See Mark D. Jordan, The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (University of Chicago Press, 1997). The original French title of Martel’s book is Sodoma: Enquete au coeur du Vatican.
[4] Dat be raszist!
[5] He tut-tuts the luxury of several cardinal residences, while secretly enjoying it all, then when entering a modest, indeed poverty-stricken, apartment sneers “The furniture is horrible, as it often is in the Vatican.”
[6] Defined as “a conversational style including retorts, vicious putdowns, and/or malicious gossip, and showing disrespect, associated with the entertainment industry and also called ‘chit chat.’” Martel says that “they make me think of the regulars at those shady homophilic clubs in the 1950s who cruelly mocked everyone, worldly and poisonous. . . . The ‘closet’ is the place of the most incredible cruelty. And the Vatican is one huge ‘closet.’” For more, if you must, see my “Sour Cream: The Decline of Wit into Camp in Michael Nelson’s A Room in Chelsea Square,” reprinted in The Eldritch Evola . . . & Others: Traditionalist Meditations on Literature, Art, & Culture; ed. Greg Johnson (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2014).
[7] Compare: “Members of the gay community, far from being insulted by the book’s use of the word ‘fag,’ were thrilled to find themselves, at long last, unleashed with such gusto onto an international stage. . . . The . . . message was gay-positive and validating. So what if we’re a tad bitchy? We are everywhere.” Simon Doonan, “Valley of the Dolls at 50” in Jacqueline Susann, Valley of the Dolls Fiftieth Anniversary Edition (Grove Press, 2016).
[8] See Ben Novak, Hitler and Abductive Logic: The Strategy of a Tyrant (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2014) and Greg Johnson’s review here.
[9] I am reminded of, and would refer the reader to, the central chapters of Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game, where this dialectic is brought out, ironically, in the conversations of Fr. Jacobus, Benedictine monk but also a profoundly learned historian, and Joseph Knecht, the naïve, equally celibate scholar who will soon take the leadership of what he thinks is a timeless and purely intellectual institution.
[10] “Impossibly old” was a writer’s description of The Simpson’s Mr. Burns, although I cannot locate it at the present moment. If Martel were not French, he might have been able to make a number of amusing parallels between Mr. Burns and the inhabitants of the Vatican; apart from being absurdly old, they are surrounded by fawning, Smithers-like acolytes, and technologically backward: “few cardinals use email in 2019; many still prefer to use the mail, and some the fax. Sometimes their assistants print out the emails they receive for them; they reply by hand on paper; scanned and mailed instantly to their addressees!” One cardinal’s Smithers tells Martel that “he doesn’t read his emails, he doesn’t know how to use the internet and he has no mobile phone;” she suggests sending him a fax. Younger, more active cardinals do use mobile phones, the Grindr app being key to setting up assignations and sex parties, and sometimes accidentally outing a “member of the parish” sitting few feet away. In general, I imagine intimate gatherings of these homophile cardinals to resemble the various gatherings of old Mafia “fossils” in Scorsese’s Casino.
[11] An all-too-frequent occurrence during today’s toilet paper shortages.
[12] Four cardinals expressing written doubts about Francis’ teachings on sexual morality in 2016; we will soon meet their leader, Cardinal Burke. In typical fashion, Martel uses this word on page xiv and does not define it until p. 113; again, no index, so unless you have a kindle, or know Latin, you are out of luck. He partially redeems himself with this passage: “The ‘dubia’ have a style of their own: apparent humility and extravagant vanity; obsequious explosions of laughter from their handsome young companions and book burnings; sacristy hangers-on, liturgy queens, well-combed choirboys with their straight partings from the Jesuit schools and the Inquisition; a tortuous and, indeed, tortured language and medieval positions on sexual morality. And on top of that, what a lack of enthusiasm for the fair sex! Such misogyny! Such divine gaiety, such virile rigidity — or vice versa. ‘The Lady doth protest too much, methinks.’” Sounds like an IRL meetup of the manosphere!
[13] What Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano — whose August 2018 “Tentimonianza” was what the Watergate coverup calls a “limited hangout,” in which the far-right Vigano, disappointed to not be named a cardinal, attempts to name names in order to put the blame on Francis — calls the “corrento filoomosessuale” (the “pro-homosexual trend”) in the Vatican. The vengeful little queen’s plan backfired when he wildly included allies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, thus cutting himself off from the conservatives themselves (where, as we will see, the homosexuals predominantly lurk). As always, They accuse You of what They are doing.
[14] Not to be confused with the late American actor Raymond Burr, although looking at them you might be forgiven if you did.
[15] Amusingly, Martel’s reference is to Emperor Hadrian, not Rolfe’s fictional Pope Hadrian VII. “‘Your Holiness would perhaps prefer to be called Leo, or Pius, or Gregory, as is the modern manner?’” the Cardinal-Dean inquired with imperious suavity. ‘The previous English pontiff was Hadrian the Fourth. The present English pontiff is Hadrian the Seventh. It pleases us; and so, by Our own impulse, We command.’” Ironically, John Paul II would be the first non-Italian Pope in 455 years, since the Dutchman Hadrian VI (1522-1523).
[16] One of the great Homo Heroes of the Old Right, along with fellow homophiles Roy Cohn, Whittaker Chambers, and J. Edgar Hoover.
[17] See Benjamin Teitelbaum, War for Eternity: Inside Bannon’s Far-Right Circle of Global Power Brokers (New York: HarperCollins, 2020).
17 comments
It would be a shame to alienate sympathetic readers based upon a book of gossip…
Yes, something to be wary of. I agree with the premise of this article, but I think we should be putting all of our energy at this moment into building bridges and focusing only on those ideas which unite us.
People on the Right love purity. I’ve even seen it said that attraction to the concept of purity is the single greatest indicator of where someone will fall on the political spectrum. We also have tremendous pride. Those are unalterable, positive aspects of our character as men of the Right, but they also make mass organizing quite difficult. The Left is able to cast a big tent because they’re nihilistic at the core. It’s harder for us to do the same and to avoid infighting, but we must make a concerted effort. What does focusing on wedge issues ever accomplish?
I was raised Catholic, attended Catholic grade school, but I lost the faith when I was about 16 after I read Tom Paine’s “The Age of reason” and Bertrand Russell’s “Why I am not a Christian”. However, after my dad died in 1994, I started going with my Mom to Sunday Mass. This was around the time that the Pedofile priest scandal became public. I thought this was just a glitch. I didn’t know it had been going on for centuries. I truly think that despise great thinkers like Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, etc., I can never consider myself a Catholic again.
Just because ChiComm Joe and who-knows-how-many-others are corrupt politicians, does that make the Constitution and the government which it formed “corrupt”? So now, because you discover that not only twinks but satanists and freemasons were and are in the Vatican hierarchy, you will reject The Deposit of Faith, The Magisterium, and the Mystical Body of Christ? You do know that there were 40-or-so anti-popes during our history? And yet the One True Faith remains.
On Holy Saturday, there was Only One Faithful Adherent to the Church He had established: His mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. The entire Church was contained within her because she alone NEVER lost Faith. She was the first Remnant and there will always be a Remnant.
Seek and you will find.
Really fascinating that an organization whose core personnel are homosexuals is vehemently against abortion. Certainly the bible can be mined for quotes for or against but that is immaterial to the doctrine since it can be whatever they set it as. It is as if biology has to have the last say in all things, whether culture wants it to or not. The Church cannot sustain itself without birth, and while pregnancy may be the last concern of the priesthood, it is perhaps first in the collective subconscious
I am curious as to where in the Bible these quotes for abortion might be mined
It will become clearer in Part Two that the Church’s opposition to abortion, birth control etc. has nothing to do with promoting fertility to preserve the White race, but rather derives from closeted homosexuals who hide themselves by promoting celibacy (for married couples!) as a spiritual ideal. Abortion and birth control are deadly sins because they allow married couples to have more sex. Don’t want more children? Don’t have sex, your filthy breeders!
Maritain and Guitton (see Part Two), like Tolstoy, believe that the lack of offspring is no problem, because this would show that mankind had become purely spiritual; race is meaningless to them. Compare evangelicals who care not for reproduction or ecology because “the end is coming soon.” This gnostic heresy, encratism, was stamped out in the early Church, but infiltrated the Church via Maritain.
” the Church has been known for its randy priests (and nuns) back to the times of Luther and beyond.” CF foot note 2:
Excuse me sir, but does this information come from Martel’s book? If so, what [scholarly] source does the book reference for this claim? You never provided this info in your essay as you seem to be quoting only the book under review and no other sources. Hence, my doubt about such claims being factual.
Are you calling Martin Luther a liar?
“I do not wish to mention the pope, but since the knaves will not repent, but condemn the gospel, blaspheme and revile God’s word, and excuse their vices, they, in turn, will have to take a whiff of their own terrible filth. This vice is so prevalent among them that recently a pope caused his own death by means of this sin and vice. In fact, he died on the spot. All right now, you popes, cardinals, papists, spiritual lords, keep on persecuting God’s word and defending your doctrine and your churches! I could easily mention more examples of such abominations, but it is too shameful; I fear that our German soil would have to tremble before it. But if an impudent popish ass should come along and dispute this, he will find me ready to do him battle, and it will be quite a battle!” (Luther’s Works Volume 47, p.38)
Oh, I see, THE most virulent Anti Catholic like martin luther said that?
Well, we better correct our history books because an anti catholic said so. /sarcasm
Typical of WN to side with protestants who succeeded in destroying catholic unity in Europe [which is why you’re being invaded by africans] and stole church property during the reformation, and yes I’m calling him a liar on this point. How is that paragraph above any different than the modern fear porn you get from the same evangelical filth that you would hear today?
Case in point:
“I could easily mention more examples of such abominations, but it is too shameful”
Oh please, Herr doktor Luder, do mention those examples, you coward!
Bah, bollocks! Imagine taking the word of a man who himself was compromised and could not control his passions.
Folks, here is the real deal on the nasty herr doktor from a based Catholic priest:
(he also mentions the scholarly sources on this evil, evil man)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaVfyIfi3O4
This is really just an aside, as I’m focused here on the claim that the Church was “taken over by homos” around Vatican II, and the next part will discuss the actual influences that entered the Church in the 1930s, That clergy were “known” to be randy is obvious from an acquaintance with history or literature. However, it’s a fair point to demand documentation, lest this be mere myth. These guys will provide it, from the Church’s own records.
Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church’s 2,000 Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse
by A.W. Richard Sipe, Thomas P. Doyle, Patrick J. Wall Crux, 2016
https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Priests-Secret-Codes-Catholic-ebook/dp/B01JTH9ARS/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1592080959&sr=8-2
“Drawing on their skills as canonists and researchers, the authors construct a compelling forensic account to support their thesis.” — The National Catholic Reporter
Although the focus is on abuse, it documents the sexual habits of clergy in general; e.g., the common ignoring of celibacy for concubinage.
The idea that widespread clerical non-celibacy is so outrageous a claim as to require forensic evidence is an example of kind of hiding in plain sight discussed throughout the book, and a good way to divert attention from the issue at hand; God’s little angels are above suspicion. As long as people held such views the priesthood was the perfect place for a sexual predator to lurk.
The idea that this is an attack on Catholicism, “siding with Protestants,” followed by an attack on Protestantism (as if it were somehow solely responsible for mass immigration), is a wonderful example of the principle that They cry out when THEY hit YOU.
Your review was as infuriating. It draws impossible parallels between the “church society” and the society at large, which have irreconcilable differences to begin with – starting with celibacy – in order to point out the supposed superfluousness of sexual chastity. You are neither ignorant or naive to indulge in such blunders.
Then the worn-out quasi-Darwinian trope of “the reality of sexuality” – The only “reality of sexuality” applying to humanity is that sex urge fulfills the purpose of procreation, and that mates seek out for themselves the best partner they can get . Thank you for clarifying this. However, we, as political motivated individuals, are more interested in the “reality of society”, which designates behaviors as either pro-social or anti-social. Sexual liberation ideology, free sex, sex as the dominant narrative of life, sex as identity – are all decidedly anti-social.
That sex is fundamentally anarchic, whimsical, dominant and hedonistic, and that such disposition can even be regarded as a new “morality”, that is to say, as a “sexually liberated morality”, does not even apply to savages, which anthropology eminently confirms, let alone the pagan world which was notoriously stern in such morality, and in which the cult of family was exalted to such an extent that it would make your friendly neighborhood Mormon blush for shame. Where liberal mating customs are to be found in the savage world, it is usually among the few negroid matriarchal tribes.
This narrative is getting tedious. What kind of colossal denialism is necessary to be convinced that this world suffers from repression of sexual urges?
I’m afraid the only ignorance or naivete on display are in your comment, which attributes to me views nowhere to be found in my review; having achieved, at no little effort, a Zarathustra-like maturity myself, your reply fails to infuriate me. Had you the maturity to hold your response — your “infuriation” — until Part 3, you would have found me criticizing Martel for failing to understand the seriousness of the Church’s theological position, and for instead demanding that it simply “get with the times.” There I also briefly discuss various ways for the Church to amend its ways while remaining within its real traditions. But that would require study and patience: much better to just spout cliches about sex.
In Part Two I discuss the actual source of the Church’s doctrine of sexuality: The French Jansenist convert (and homosexual) Jacques Maritain and his Jewish wife. Maritain reconciled his homosexuality to the Church’s teaching by promoting the ancient heresy of Encratism — that all sex is intrinsically evil, and one can only be holy by complete celibacy (and yes, his “marriage” was celibate). This — the twisted idea of a closeted homosexual, despising women and procreation, and desperately trying to hide and justify his own preferences — is what I would contrast with “the reality of human sexuality.” His star pupil: the man who would become Paul VI, who would overrule his own theologians and unilaterally proclaim positions on birth control, abortion, divorce that indeed ignore the reality of human sexuality, but no doubt led to no little glee as he contemplated the difficulties of filthy breeders unable to remain as pure and holy as himself. He and Maritain must have shared many a chuckle over their prank.
Like you, their latter-day disciples claim to infer that any modification — in a liberal direction, they’ve already “relented” by allowing marriage for the inferior — would lead to the view that “sex is fundamentally anarchic, whimsical, dominant and hedonistic, and that such disposition can even be regarded as a new “morality”, that is to say, as a “sexually liberated morality,” so kudos for absorbing the doctrine of Maritain; talk about the homos taking over! They did, IN THE 30s. Your mind is their closet. It reminds me of a story Alan Watts tells, of a vicar overhearing two boys boasting of their atheism. “Well, why aren’t you out having a high old time? That’s what I would do!”
Talking about “pagan times” (unless it’s a new theme restaurant) is the worst kind of intellectual laziness — it refers to, what, everyone other than St. Paul? Talk about a broad brush. It’s when you bother to look at the details that the problems arise. Did St. Paul praise their “family values”? (Hint: no). The Romans were so lax about the “cult of the family” that Augustus had to pass laws demanding people get marry and have children!
Yes, every society regulates sexuality (and everything else) in some way. But WHAT WAY? Maritain’s? Too bad Amazon has banned my books as hate speech (so much for my promoting swinging liberalism, eh?) else I could point you to my little kindle discussing James Neil’s “The Role of Same-Sex Relationships in Human Societies” which establishes that “pagan societies” were indeed patriarchal: primitive societies where a small group of men monopolized the women, leaving the rest of the men to seek satisfaction among themselves; or, more developed societies, in which women were confined to the home, boys fooled around with each other, then married and produced children. (Think: Athens, Rome, Florence (Dante and Beatrice), Sicily (Michael in exile). Are these “cults of the family” that would make a Mormon blush? (Well, polygamy, that sounds OK…).
All this hysterical response to someone who dares question compulsory celibacy, as if that was a sexually normal view today or in the past.
Like another commentator above, rather than looking within, you use my review as an excuse to bash Protestantism. Your comment typifies the smug, “colossal denialism” that preens itself on how holy its Catholic world is, what with all its rules and regulation, so very strict! — while the rest of the world sees it as having become a crime syndicate, like the Mafia. As Martel suggests, priestly celibacy has made the Church a destination for homosexuals, who in turn hide themselves by promoting ultra-conservative doctrines, while constructing a system of secrecy that enables mass pedophilia. But by all means, continue your dream that your Church is a bulwark of morality, standing amidst the pagan/modernist tide.
What exactly in my response is “hysterical”? Where exactly did I profess the idea that all sex is sinful? My comment was never at any place directed at your critique of Catholicism. This is no coincidence. I was neither born a Catholic, nor did I at any point become one, certainly not its apologist. I was clearly discussing principles here: priestly celibacy was neither invented nor championed exclusively by Catholicism – it is nearly universal phenomenon. The same applies to the Catholic dogma of sanctity of the marriage. Married couples make a vow that they will be sealed in marriage until “death do them part”. Breaking vows made before a deity (or before mortals, for that matter) is frowned upon in every normal society. It is regarded as a sacrament. (Evola made a much more informed observation – that since the Church believes in afterlife, that it is unusual for it to allow remarriage after death of the spouse).
But this is not to discuss the merits of Catholic theology, but rather values. To make laws governing the relationship between men and the divine submit to bourgeoisie mentality – “omfg, its so stupid that people can’t just divorce – its reality!” , means that the sacred is supposed to be brought down to the level of what in the purest sense classifies as vulgus – the crowd, masses, the lowest common denominator, the practical and crafty social animal of today – how can such a thing be still regarded as being divinely inspired? If there is something positive in what secularism brought us, it is certainly choice – no one today forces couples to be wed in a religious ceremony.
I cannot understand in which way did I bash Protestantism? This must be some kind of reflexive response. I have never even alluded to Protestantism anywhere.
“which establishes that “pagan societies” were indeed patriarchal: primitive societies where a small group of men monopolized the women, leaving the rest of the men to seek satisfaction among themselves; or, more developed societies, in which women were confined to the home, boys fooled around with each other, then married and produced children”
Well, talking about broad brushes! This yet another insincere generalization. Surely, the idea of “women being confined to home” is probably a somewhat romanticized American experience, but I’m really struggling to find, except in feminist fantasies, any evidence of there existing in mainstream European society an era where women were confined to homes and didn’t socialize. Well, perhaps in English nobility, perhaps in the merchant classes of Eastern Europe, perhaps among Sicilians. For the rest of the society, socialization was always instrumental to finding a spouse. But of course, I assume the “reality of sexuality” presumes that swing lifestyle is to be tolerated until the hetero-normative sheeple decide to pop drones for the state.
I’m afraid I’m going to have to concur with Arthur on this one. This review smacks of the glib dilletantism of those certain types of cultural critics who despite their incredible knack for recalling various obscure facts and datums, struggle to comprehend basic concepts behind the subject they are critiquing. For example you seem to confuse the body of the clergy with the Church as a historical and more importantly, ideological establishment. This is a prime sign of someone who has such poor grasp of how religious and ideological institutions play a role in the history of human development, that he reduces them to the personal proclivities of certain men who figure in them.
Second you make the absurd claim that the sin of sodomy was invented by some 9th century writer, as if no other church scholar (or for that matter Doctor of the Church or even an Apostle) was aware of or condemned same sex relationships before that.
Then you dismiss Arthur’s perfectly reasonable critique of the central point of this article as if he were some Catholic moral carpetbagger. This is an assumption not backed by the slightest evidence. He was arguing entirely from a practical standpoint. I’ve read his blog at times, and there’s no indication that he’s a follower of that religion.
The Christian moral argument over abortion is really grounded on its different view of human nature and its origin. This requires no Jacques Maritain or any other theologian to demonstrate, because it is clearly laid out in the Bible, as well as the dogmatic doctrines of the Church that date back to its foundation. So your assertion that again, ignorant Christians oppose abortion because some pedo scholar sneakily inserted it into an encyclical address is once again without merit. But even if we disregard the Catholic Christian concept of what constitutes as “living”, this does not negate the entirely worldly and practical aspect of this issue which should be obvious to anyone capable of following a basic chain of thought. I don’t think it can be rationally disputed that the consequences of abortion and contraceptives, as well as associated movements such as womens lib have been absolutely catastrophic to the demographics of the Western societies. Was it anybody but the Christian conservatives who warned us about this crisis unfolding at the incipient stage decades before the slippery slope into which it would eventually slide would become readily apparent?
I’m by no means an apologist for the Catholic clergy. But it is of little importance to me if 80% or even 100% of them were mentally ill deviants. What concerns me is that for good or bad, the Christian tradition was the defining cultural aspect of Western European civilization for over 1500 years. The legal and moral social order that underlies Western society can not be ascribed to the bedroom antics of church officials. This is the problem I have with people who think like you – you are incapable of rising above limbic explanations for social and cultural phenomena. Like Marxists or Freudians you seem to be fixated on the “exposition” of every single aspect of human society as the product of the struggle between power, money and sex. But this is no different from the thinking process of a typical Jew.
Frédéric Martel is either lying or merely exaggerating. For example, as he writes about Raymond Cardinal Burke: “He’s a big man; in his cappa magna he becomes a giant ….”
No, he isn’t. I met him personally last year and spoke with him for several minutes. He is approximately 5′ 9″ or 10″ and was dressed ceremonially after a High Mass.
As for the video linked in the article by the words “drag queen,” it is obviously a homosexual production which splices photos of Cardinal Burke with photos of Liberace: this also known as guilt by association using the flamboyant dress of the latter to insinuate that Cardinal Burke’s traditionalist attire is the equivalent in thought, word, and deed.
While it is impossible for us to know everything about any man, we do discover many hidden truths revealed either intentionally or by accident. For example, Bernardin was a progressive and/or a Modernist; a homosexual; and a satanist. Bergoglio is beloved by Marxists and Freemasons in Italy and Argentina and, more than likely, elsewhere. Hunter Biden smoked crack while getting a massage in China.
The reason that I will give Cardinal Burke the benefit of the doubt is not only because of his traditionalist statements but also because of his devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is the Refuge of Sinners but unrepentent homosexuals, judaeo-protestant heretics, Marxists, and Masons have no genuine or legitimate devotion to her whatosever.
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