Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, who resigned from his position as general secretary for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops after the gay dating app Grindr allegedly provided data to third parties, has filed a lawsuit accusing the app of privacy violations and deception.
According to legal news outlet the Daily Journal, Msgr. Burrill’s lawyers filed the lawsuit on his behalf in Los Angeles County Superior Court on July 18.
The lawsuit alleges that Grindr sold Msgr. Burrill’s personal data, including information about Msgr. Burrill’s location, after misleadingly advertising that the app would not do so. The lawsuit also alleges that Grindr concealed from Msgr. Burrill that the personal data could be used to identify him.
Andrew Friedman and Gregory Helmer of Friedman LLP, and James Carr are representing Msgr. Burrill in the suit.
According to the Daily Journal, Grindr issued a statement expressing that the company intends to “vigorously” respond to the lawsuit’s allegations.
In July 2021, the Pillar published an investigative report allegedly using Grindr data to accuse Msgr. Burrill of sexual misconduct in 2021. The Pillar did not state where it received the data from.
Before publishing the report, The Pillar claims it presented the data to the USCCB. Just a day before the report was published, Msgr. Burrill resigned from his position as general secretary of the USCCB, which he had held since November 2020, and withdrew from public ministry. He was reinstated to ministry in the diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin, in June 2022.
The Pillar’s 2021 publication on the scandal sparked a debate not only within the Catholic Church but also in secular media circles about the use of private data.
The Atlantic ran an article on the issue in August 2021, highlighting questions around invasions of privacy and journalistic ethics. The Washington Post published an article in July 2021 highlighting various responses to the story, with one accusing The Pillar of “McCarthyism,” and others more understanding of the Pillar’s decision to publish the story.
According to the Post, Grindr has previously faced penalties over sharing private information. In January 2021, Norwegian officials fined Grindr more than $11 million for sharing user information with advertising companies.
After the Pillar’s report was published, the Post also reported that “Grindr… initially denied it was even possible for such data to become public, saying in a statement that the incident [regarding Msgr. Burrill] was ‘infeasible from a technical standpoint and incredibly unlikely to occur.’”
According to the Post, Grindr later updated its statement regarding the Pillar’s publication about Msgr. Burrill, stating: “We do not believe Grindr is the source of the data,” and the Post noted that Grindr also “claimed the ‘pieces simply do not add up.’”
The Pope’s reported use of derogatory language about gay people has been branded “disappointing” by a London-based LGBT+ Catholic group.
Italian media reported that Pope Francis used the term “frociaggine” when answering no to a question on whether gay men should be admitted to seminaries to train for the priesthood.
The Vatican has not commented on the remark – believed to translate to an offensive slur – reported to have been made in a meeting behind closed doors earlier this month.
If it is as it has been reported it is offensive. I think it is disappointing. He should be more careful about how he phrases things, particularly in these kind of off-the-cuff remarks
— Martin Pendergast, LGBT+ Catholics Westminster
Martin Pendergast, secretary of LGBT+ Catholics Westminster Pastoral Council, told the PA news agency: “If it is as it has been reported it is offensive. I think it is disappointing. He should be more careful about how he phrases things, particularly in these kind of off-the-cuff remarks.
“I think he tends to use these slang words without understanding the ramifications they can have.”
But, asked whether he feels the remark will be a step back for relations for the church and its gay members, Mr Pendergast replied “certainly not” and questioned the way in which the comment had emerged from the private meeting.
He said: “I just wonder what the rationale was for whoever released this to the media – was it used to weaponise against the Pope’s more consistent LGBT+ welcoming approach?
“It would have been better to have challenged the comment within the meeting (rather than leaking it).”
Asked about the comment, a spokesman from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales (CBCEW) said: “Echoing the consistent message of the Synod and this papacy, the Catholic Church is a place of welcome for all.”
In 2013, Pope Francis was reported to have indicated he would not judge priests for their sexual orientation, saying: “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”<
In December last year he formally approved allowing priests to bless same-sex couples, as long as such blessings do not give the impression of a marriage ceremony, reversing a 2021 policy by the Vatican’s doctrine office, which barred such blessings on the grounds that God “does not and cannot bless sin”.
🌈 🙏”Making the impossible, possible”
“25 years ago we changed the world, slightly.”
These were the words that we heard at our 25th anniversary conference, marking 25 years from the date of the first masses welcoming LGBT+ Catholics in a little convent church in Islington. pic.twitter.com/39iJnE2Q70
— LGBT+ Catholics Westminster (@LGBTCathWestmin) May 27, 2024
The Pope’s most recent reported comment came as LGBT+ Catholics Westminster marked its 25th anniversary, with a celebratory Mass on Sunday.
Bishop Paul McAleenan, who is Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster and was representing Cardinal Vincent Nichols at the service, told those gathered that the church “must never be closed, it must always be a church that includes and makes room for all”.
He thanked the LGBT+ group for its “value” and “contribution to the life of the church”.
— Most Catholics have little sense of the liberal archbishop behind the Vatican’s pronouncements. But critics of the pope see Víctor Manuel Fernández as Enemy No. 2.
Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández visits the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace after his appointment in September.
When Pope Francis first asked if he would be willing to take one of the loftiest jobs at the Vatican, heading the office that sets the policies of the Roman Catholic Church, Víctor Manuel Fernández said no. The liberal Argentine archbishop worried hisappointment might make things worse for a pope facing historic internal dissent.
“I knew that there were groups that did not love me, some willing to do anything — judging by the expressions they used on social networks and even in messages they wrote on my Facebook page — and I was afraid of causing problems for Francis,” Fernández said in an interview with The Washington Post.
When the pope called again last June, from a hospital where he’d just undergone intestinal surgery, Fernández relented. He moved to Vatican City, was named a cardinal and became the pope’s right-hand man, helping to translate the changes in tone and style Francis brought to the papacy into concrete new guidelines for 1.4 billion Catholics.
“Fernández’s appointment was the most consequential of [Francis’s] pontificate,” said Massimo Faggioli, a Catholic theologian at Villanova University. “After one year of Fernández, we’ve witnessed a series … of frequent, specific, out-of-the-ordinary actions the likes of which have never been observed. And this from a prefect who knows full well that he’s Francis’s own alter ego and enjoys the pope’s complete trust.”
Most Catholics have little sense of the man behind the Vatican’s recent major pronouncements, including blessings for people in same-sex relationships. But the church conservatives opposed to Francis see Fernández as Enemy No. 2. Within the walls of Vatican City, the machinations against the 61-year old cardinal have risen to the level of high palace intrigue, complete with photos snapped surreptitiously in the night and in the night and private threats to “destroy” him.
A new era for an old office
Fernández’s arrival marked the end of an era of conservative leadership in the Vatican department known as the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith. The office is most famous for the tribunals of the Roman Inquisition in the 16th century. In more recent decades, it has managed — critics say mismanaged — cases of clerical abuse; reinforced the “immorality” of premarital sex, abortion and euthanasia; and disciplined bishops, priests and nuns for not toeing the Vatican line.
Through Fernández,Pope Francis set out to reinvent the office.
“The dicastery that you will preside over in other epochs came to use immoral methods,” he wrote in a letter to Fernández in July. “Those were times when more than promoting theological knowledge they chased after possible doctrinal errors. What I expect from you is something without doubt much different.”
Like Francis, Fernández — known widely by his nickname “Tucho” — has ushered in a change in tone. In news conferences, his extended digressions and elaborate anecdotes can feel like falling “into a short story by Borges,” a writer for the Catholic Herald assessed. In one session, he uttered a mild profanity. “Tucho, the cardinal prefect with a sinful penchant for swear words,” a scandalized Italian news outlet declared.
Last month, he released a new ruling that took some of the magic out of the Catholic Church, removing a bishop’s right to declare unexplained phenomena — such as claimed apparitions of the Virgin Mary — as “supernatural” events. And last week his office took its most decisive action yet against the pope’s critics, launching a trial of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò on charges of fomenting schism and denying the pope’s legitimacy.
Senior church critics insist it is no coincidence that Francis waited to place Fernández in the rulemaking post until after the death of Benedict XVI, the traditionalist pope emeritus.
“I think Pope Francis felt himself now freer to realize his ideas,” said Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, an ally of Benedict who ran the dicastery from 2012 to 2017. “And therefore, he asked [Cardinal] Fernández to come [to] his side, and to promote this program, this agenda.”
Not all of Fernández’s work has come off as “liberal.” LGBTQ+ activists were taken aback in April when he unveiled a document, also signed by the pope, that said “sex-change intervention” threatened “human dignity.” Fernández told The Post that a version drafted before his arrival had focused more heavily on gender identity, and part of his contribution had been to bring its contents in line with the pope’s broadly inclusive message toward migrants, the poor and others. The final document, he noted, also explicitly denounced persecution based on sexual orientation.
The mission of inclusion led by Francis and Fernández took a hit as a result of the pope’s repeated use of a slur in closed-door discussions about upholding the ban on openly gay men studying for the priesthood.
“Certainly it has done damage to the relationship that was created with the LGBTQ+ community,” Faggioli said.
Fernández argued that in clerical circles, the word the pope used — “frociaggine,” or “faggotness” — is not “a synonym for homosexuality” but refers to “some groups in seminaries and in priestly environments that lobby in search of power” and “see all heterosexuals as potential enemies.”
“It is true that it would be advisable to find another word to express that reality, because it can seem homophobic,” Fernández said. “But I have seen gays themselves use similar expressions.”
He also left open the door to a recasting of official church teaching — or catechism — that states homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.”
“All subjects can be refined,” he said. “And the language we use can always be much better. In this way there is a chance of greater clarity.”
Pushback and threats
The changes brought about by Fernández and the pope have deepened rifts within the church. The ruling on same-sex blessings prompted a rebellion by Catholic bishops and cardinals in Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia. There was grumbling inside the Vatican, too.
Fernández declined to comment on specific threats and intrigues. But in January, he told the Italian outlet La Stampa that “three times I received threats [saying], ‘we shall destroy you.’”
In one previously undisclosed incident, Fernández went to the pope over concerns he was being surveilled, according to a person familiar with the events who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential Vatican matters.
Those concerns were based on a photograph published in November by a conservative Spanish-language Catholic blog. In that nighttime photo, which accompanied an article critical of Fernández, he is seen talking on the phone at a distance through a window of his home on restricted Vatican grounds. The photo identifies the location of his private quarters, and Fernández took that as both an invasion of privacy and a veiled threat, the person said.
Opponents have additionally unearthed and circulated two esoteric tomes — “Heal Me with Your Mouth: The Art of Kissing” and “Mystical Passion: Spirituality and Sensuality” — that Fernández wrote in the 1990s, and in which he mused in detail on the spiritual aspects of sexual orgasms and recounted a sensual encounter with Jesus as imagined by a 16-year-old girl.
Decrying them as “scandalous books of an erotic nature which border on pornography,” one arch-conservative Catholic group — the John Paul II Academy for Human Life and Family — has demanded Fernández’s resignation.
In retrospect, Fernández said, the books reflected less maturity than he would have liked, but he maintained the topics should not be off-limits in spiritual discourse: “I don’t have any shame of the subjects,” he said. “If I had to write them today, they would be richer and more complete.”
A long history with Francis
The campaign against Fernández, and by default, against the pope, has also revived old claims that the Argentine cardinal long served as Francis’s secret “ghost writer” on important papal documents. In his office just south of the colonnades of St. Peter’s Square, Fernández declined to discuss the topic. But there is no question that he is a longtime friend of Francis.
In 2007, Francis — then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires — invited Fernández to a major Latin American Episcopal conference and ended up having him work on the gathering’s concluding document. They sat together on the flight home and engaged in deep conversation, Fernández said.
“We all know that the pope is a very austere man in his personal life,” said Alberto Bochatey, an auxiliary bishop in Fernández’s former diocese of La Plata, Argentina. “In Buenos Aires, he cooked for himself, washed his dishes and had a Tupperware with his vegetables. In that sense, [Fernández] is very similar, and there may have been a human as well as a theological affinity.”
In 2009, the future pope asked Fernández to be rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina. Fernández has publicly recounted how his detractors sought to undermine him by resurfacing magazine pieces he’d written. In one, he tried to explain the church’s stance against same-sex marriage while offering no moral condemnation.
After his local critics sent those pieces to the Vatican, the dicastery opened a file on him, Fernández has said. He felt as if he were wandering “among the wolves,” he recalled to reporters in April. But Francis had inspired him to stay and fight.
That seems his approach now, too.
The pope’s defender
Fernández has been criticized as a choice for his role by survivors of clerical abuse, who point to instances in Argentina where he allegedly sought to protect accused priests. Fernández has admitted to mistakes, and in a Facebook post last year, said his initial reluctance to accept the Vatican job was also based on the fact that he “felt unqualified” to manage the sensitive cases of clerical abuse within the dicastery. The pope was so bent on hiring Fernández, however, that he navigated that issue by ring-fencing the dicastery’s work on abuse cases under autonomous investigators.
More than anything, Fernández has emerged as the pope’s chief defender, repeatedly reminding the pontiff’s Catholic critics of their obligation to papal fealty.
“Religious assent of mind and will must be shown,” Fernández said during one news conference in which he read aloud from a page of canon law.
>No, he told senior church figures who were in revolt, the pope’s pronouncement on blessings for same-sex couples was not “heretical” or “blasphemous.”
He has expressed an understanding of cultural differences on gender and sexuality in various countries but pushed back against critics of Francis’s LGBTQ+ outreach.
“What they want [the church] to say is that homosexuals are going to hell, they have to convert, if they don’t, they can’t come to church less have a blessing. This is what they want,” Fernández said.
— The pope used homophobic slang and cautioned prelates about admitting gay men into seminaries. But ordination has also long been a refuge for gay faithful.
Pope Francis speaking on Wednesday during the weekly general audience at the Vatican.
When reports spread that Pope Francis had used an offensive anti-gay slur while speaking to Italian bishops at a conference last month, many Catholics were both shocked and baffled. How could a pope known for his openness to and acceptance of L.G.B.T.Q. people use homophobic slang and caution prelates about admitting gay men into seminaries?
But the question, and the apparent inconsistency in Francis’ messaging, reflect the deep contradictions and tensions that underlie the Roman Catholic Church’s and Francis’ relationship to homosexuality.
The church holds that “homosexual tendencies” are “intrinsically disordered.” When it comes to ordination, the church’s guidelines state that people with “deep-seated” gay tendencies should not become priests.
Yet ordination has also long been a refuge of sorts for homosexual Catholic men, according to researchers and priests, who say that at least thousands of clergymen are gay, though only a few are public about their sexual orientation because of the stigma it still carries in the church.
While in the past all of these contradictions were muffled by an aura of taboo, Francis’ recent off-the-cuff comments have thrown them into the open.
Despite evolutions in society, and Francis’ embrace of a more progressive approach, church teachings still describe homosexuality as a deviance and have enshrined that view in regulations and restrictions that critics say perpetuate a widespread homophobic outlook and fuel tensions.
“Until they change the law, as long as homosexuality is viewed as a deviance and an illness, nothing will change under St. Peter’s cupola,” said Luciano Tirinnanzi, who wrote a book about L.G.B.T.Q. people and the church.
Yet the presence of gay clergy has been a constant throughout history. St. Peter Damian, an 11th-century monk, fought against “sins of sodomy” in the church. Dante Alighieri punished gay clerics by plunging them into hell in his “Divine Comedy,” and there are documented cases dating to the 16th century of prelates who were accused of performing homosexual acts and killed. (Records of priests, and even cardinals and popes, who were unchaste with women and even had children are also abundant.)
Academics and prelates who promote L.G.B.T.Q. rights said that for gay Catholic men, becoming a priest was long viewed as a way to neutralize and overcome the stigma once associated with their sexual orientation, and perhaps even suppress it through celibacy.
“A large quantity of young religious men with homosexual tendencies looked for the sublimation of celibacy,” said Alberto Melloni, an Italian church historian.
It is hard to know exactly how many priests are gay, as there are no trustworthy statistics, but in the United States, gay men probably make up at least 30 to 40 percent of the American Catholic clergy, according to dozens of estimates from researchers and gay priests gathered in a 2019 investigation by The New York Times. Some priests and activists say the number is closer to 75 percent.
Demonstrators supporting changes in the Roman Catholic Church in Frankfurt, Germany, in 2022.
Last month, Francis said that there was already too much gayness, though he used a pejorative to describe it, according to two bishops who attended the conference and confirmed the Italian media reports that triggered an apology from the Vatican. Asked about Francis’ usage of a slur, bishops blamed it on Francis’ relaxed and colorful conversation style.
“When there are official speeches, he studies, but when he speaks off the cuff, a word that is not entirely ideal can also slip out,” said Luigi Mansi, the bishop of the Italian city of Andria. Bishop Francesco Savino, a vice president for the Italian bishops’ conference, blamed it on the fact that Francis is not a native Italian speaker. “When he talks, he uses terms that are a mix of Spanish, Argentine, Italian,” he said.
Yet despite the surprising use of the slur, it is not the first time Francis has reflected the church’s opposition to having homosexual men enter the ministry.
While he has acknowledged that many homosexual priests are good and holy, Francis has repeatedly expressed concern that homosexual candidates for priesthood can end up having relationships and living double lives.
In another closed-door session in 2018, reported by the Italian news media, he said men with “deep-rooted” homosexual tendencies should not be allowed to enter into seminaries.
Two years earlier, the pope greenlighted a document on priestly vocations that stated just the same, reprising a 2005 document approved by Benedict XVI.
The clergy has interpreted these instructions in different ways. The church states that “homosexual men should not be admitted to the orders,” said Piero Delbosco, the bishop of Cuneo, Italy, adding that there could be some leeway to determine whether a candidate might overcome homosexual tendencies.
Others, like Monsignor Mansi, say that “the church doesn’t say that gay people can’t be ordained.” But, he added, the church believes ordination should be avoided because it is harder for gay men to “observe and live celibate for their entire lives.” Experts and prelates who promote L.G.B.T.Q. rights strongly deny this claim.
“There are three ways that that’s being interpreted,” said the Rev. James Martin, a high-profile supporter of making the church more welcoming to gay Catholics. It is either no to homosexual seminarians, no to people who cannot maintain celibacy or no to anyone for whom that is the most important thing in their life, he said.
Francis’ messaging just added to the confusion, some said.
“He needs to clarify his message a little better because it does get confusing,” said Mr. DeBernardo. “It doesn’t help the situation. It problematizes the situation.”
>The confusion, critics said, blurs the line between celibacy and homosexuality, shifting the focus from a legitimate preoccupation with priests who are not chaste to a blanket stigmatization of all gay clergy. This, they say, can cause some potentially celibate gay men to be barred from ordination, and many more to simply hide their sexuality.
The Italian bishops’ conference has adopted new rules that deal specifically with ordaining gay priests in Italy, said Monsignor Savino. The rules, which are awaiting approval from the Vatican, are not yet public.
Italian bishops gathered in May in Vatican City. After the meeting, reports spread that the pope had used an offensive anti-gay slur while speaking to bishops.
Pope Francis’ use of the slur was prompted by a question from an Italian bishop about the issue, bishops said.
The topic of homosexuality, Monsignor Savino said, is “very debated” at the moment, as bishops with a more “pragmatic” and “dynamic” approach would like to update the rules. But progressive pushes inside the church often face blowback and prejudice.
Francis must play a delicate balancing act between a message of openness and inclusivity while recognizing the more conservative sensibilities of the church that remain firmly anti-gay.
When Francis last year allowed priests to bless same-sex couples, some bishops in conservative corners of the church pushed back. To placate them, the Vatican issued a statement that said that “local culture” should be taken into account when it came to applying the declaration, but that it would remain church policy.
When interviewed on this topic, some bishops referred to homosexuality as a “pathological” condition, a “problem” or used expressions like “normal sexuality” to refer to heterosexuality as opposed to homosexuality.
Even the church’s guidelines referring to “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” are “offensive,” Mr. Lepore said, because they convey the message that homosexuality can be transitory, healed and overcome.
He added that Francis’ effective messages of openness would inevitably be undercut if church teachings and a large parts of the clergy continued to consider homosexuality a disorder and not a sexual orientation.
“The difficulties, the rifts that the church lives,” he said. “It all comes from there.”
— During a meeting with priests directly under his care in Rome, Pope Francis used for the second time in less than a month, an Italian homophobic slur.
Emmanuel Macron, President of France and Pope Francis. Social media of the French Presidency.
By Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez
Pope Francis’s use of the homophobic slur reveals the deep contradictions marring the Church’s understanding the clergy sexual abuse crisis.
The Pope’s new use of the homophobic slur happened before a meeting with comedians from all over the world, some of them with a known position regarding their own gender identity.
Despite the damage brought by his use of the Italian word frociaggine, a homophobic slur, during an allegedly private meeting with Italian bishops on May 20th, Pope Francis used it again, on June 10th, during a not so private meeting with priests in the diocese of Rome, the religious district directly under the Pope’s authority.
The meeting at the Salesian Pontifical University of Rome was with priests having between eleven and 39 years of service. It was a celebration of sorts, with an exchange of ideas between the Pontiff and the 160 priests or so in attendance, although there were questions about housing and sustenance issues it was the second pontifical use of the frociaggine slur what stole the headlines.
The Pope stuck to the approach already known by now that gained him sympathy in the civil and secular media of dismissing the more authoritarian and intolerant attitudes of his fellow Catholic clerics to offer a friendlier approach to human sexuality.
And yet, when dealing with the issue of the discipline of the clergy in his diocese, Francis went for the Italian slur that has turned into a sort of synonym for the many contradictions shaping the Catholic Church and the sort of civil war that said Church and Christianity at large lives now because of its understanding of sexuality.
The second rendition of the slur is harder to process because the Pope’s agenda was full of activities where Francis tried to display, once again, the “loving grandfather” attitude that he has tried to cultivate for the last eleven years.
On Thursday June 13th, before meeting with the leaders of the so-called G-7, the top global economies, he had a festive reunion with comedians. Although comedians such as Steven Colbert are known for his sympathy for the Pope, and how he “goes to war” defending the Pontiff on his show, in other cases, it was harder to understand the reasons behind the invitation.
Pope Francis and some of the comedians invited to Rome.
Why inviting comedians who have “come out of the closet” to the meeting? Was it to prove once again that he is not as intolerant as his predecessor? Francis had already established that before the first use of the slur, and yet the Pope was very willing to cross that line again.
And granted, the first time around, during the May 20th meeting with the Italian bishops it could have been a mistake, an honest mistake, from a male who grew up in Latin America in the 1930s and 1940s, when dismissing gay males was not only expected but even rewarded from Buenos Aires to Mexico City.
But then, why do it again? The second instance of the frociaggine slur is harder to understand when one takes into consideration that when he used for the second time he had been forced to issue, through an intermediary, an apology, and more so when considering that when he attended the meeting the Roman clergy, he already knew he was going to meet on Thursday, June 13th with comedians who have come out of the closet.
What lies behind
The issue gets harder to understand when one also takes into consideration how the Holy See’s media dealt with the second instance of the frociaggine slur. If on the first case it was up to La Repubblica and La Stampa, the Italian newspapers, to let the world know about the pontifical use of the slur, by Tuesday 11th the Vatican media had decided to let the Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French worlds know about the new instance of use of the slur not as such, but as part of a broader message about religious life.
However, it decided to pretend that nothing happened in its English- and German-speaking websites, as can be see in the image immediately after this paragraph for English.
Vatican News story about Pope Francis’s meeting with Roman priests.
In the Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian editions, Vatican media excused the Pope’s use of the word as something private. Not part of a public or official address, something related to the internal discipline of the seminaries, as if in doing so the relevance of the slur, was somehow diminished.
In the French edition of Vatican News, the reference is as minimal as possible, only a subordinate phrase of a paragraph, while on Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian the reference shapes a full paragraph of the story, as can be see in the case of the Spanish edition immediately after this paragraph.
The story about Pope Francis’s meeting with priest of the diocese of Rome in Vatican News in Spanish.
Of the Italian major newspapers, only Il Fatto Quotidiano published a story with detailes of the new use of the slur on their June 12th, 2024 edition.
Il Fatto Quotidiano, an Italian newspaper. Tuesday, June 12th, 2024. Front page and page 15.
Main problem with this approach is that it reveals more about the Church’s understanding of the role of LGTBQ persons in the Church than the Church is willing to admit. It proves that the overall idea is that LGTBQ persons are fine if they do not attempt to become clergy or religious.
More specifically, it reveals that the hierarchy keeps blaming gay clergy for the troubles in the Church.
If that is the case, then the Church has learnt nothing from the more than 40 years of clergy sexual abuse crisis. In that regard, the second, most recent use of the frociaggine slur on June 10th, puts the Roman Catholic Church back in 2005, because it validates, once again, the ideas behind the document issued by Benedict XVI that year.
Pope Francis sports the basketball jersey of Fordham University team.
The so-called Instruction concerning the criteria for the discernment of vocations with regard to persons with homosexual tendencies in view of their admission to the seminary and to Holy Orders, indirectly blame gay clergy for the sexual abuse crisis (available here).
The overall assumption, the working hypothesis of that document, and Benedict XVI’s policies and attitudes towards the LGTBQ communities, was that gay clergymen were the culprit for the clergy sexual abuse crisis.
Not a homophobe and yet…
If that is what the second use of the frociaggine slur reveals, then the last twenty years or so of research, probes, debates, commissions, and arguments about the clergy sexual crisis have been nothing but an exercise in spin and public relations.
His use of the slur, the apologies offered, are harder to understand when one takes into account how almost immediately, U.S. Jesuit priest James Martin, the odd American priest with a consistent track of respect for the LGTBQ communities, published a picture of him, on his knees, before Francis, who appears to be blessing Martin.
A post from James Martin SJ at Facebook, June 12th, 2024.
And, once again, it is not as if Pope Francis has a record of attacking LGTBQ persons. Quite the opposite, as the piece linked immediately after this paragraph proves. He has confronted the bishops and priests supporting the criminalization of gay behavior in Africa.
