I have always despaired at Cardinal Keith O'Brien's furious raging against homosexuality - it seemed to lack any compassion or understanding for fellow human beings. He did not seem to see gay people as human beings, and seemed to want them excluded from every area of life... I occasionally wondered why he seemed so obsessed with the topic. Now we understand, it is something he himself struggled with, what he hated was his own "sin" - but while we can feel compassion for him, at the same time one feels enormous fury.
"How very dare he!!??"
How was it, that, finding himself to have homosexual tendencies, he did not try to understand, to come to terms, to see that it was simply part of the way human beings are designed? Why instead did he adopt this primitive, almost Victorian attitude? Perhaps it is just being 20 years older than my generation and a devout Catholic that he could not allow himself to admit things, he was young in the era of homosexuality being illegal, and he was young in a seminary. I am sorry for him, but how could he then turn against people who shared his sexuality? Surely it would have been better and wiser to leave well alone - to speak as little as possible on the topic if it troubled him? Instead he opted for the "attack is the best form of defence" strategy - it's so typical it's almost laughable - like all the closeted gay men who wolf-whistle and comment on women's bodies. Surely no one will suspect me?
I am really sad, because last week he actually said something very sensible - that the Pope should review clerical celibacy. I am not sure that allowing married clergy will put an end to all the sexual scandals in the Church - but it might help a bit. But I don't think clergy should marry to put an end to scandal - I think clergy should marry because it is widely recognised that a partner, a domestic situation, loving support, make people's lives better. He said that he "hadn't had time" to think about marriage when he was a young priest - much too busy. Ah, there he is, disingenuous to the last.
Meanwhile, back in the panting heart of Rome it appears that a group of cardinals have bound together into a faction, united by their homosexuality - and have been being blackmailed. It would not surprise me to learn that there were gay cardinals, and that they hung around together (I noticed how the gay clergy used to flock together when I was on the Deanery synod in the CoE) would be almost inevitable. When you have an organisation so tightly "celibate" that no women, apart from supposedly inviolate nuns, are admitted to their quarters, men visiting other men's rooms is totally routine - no one can raise an eyebrow, which would allow gay cardinals easy access to each other. Then again, I don't suppose these cardinals were actually having relationships with each other. That would be too good to be true: like the Greek armies of lovers advancing on the modern world - each as guilty and full of self-loathing as Keith O'Brien - each doing his utmost to retain the Catholic Church's commitment to staying in the Middle Ages - or at the very latest the Counter-Reformation!
I see now that the earnest desire "good Catholics" have to write about nice things - the lives of the saints, the generally wonderful things the church does in relieving suffering and poverty around the world, of educating, of giving healthcare, or writing about Catholic writers, and spirituality, and so on - these are just a way of "rising above" the really dreadful state the Church is in... but really, might it not be more effective if they banded together and used their considerable intellectual forces to examine the church in some detail.
For a long time there was a vague feeling that the child abuse scandals were "just a few bad apples" - but it appears now that child abuse is just one of the outworkings of the church's ludicrous attitude towards sexuality. No one is suggesting promiscuity, or polymorphous perversity should become totally acceptable - but a bit more openness and understanding are likely to prevent quite so many "deeds of darkness".
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