"The part about institutionally rejecting homosexuality in the face of what must be tremendous pressure to change the historic rule with so many priests and bishops part of either the practicing culture or the "see no evil" culture that had to have existed."
Ah, now I understand...just the simple grandson of simple Greek peasants, you know! :
As a sidelight to all of this, there are some writings by the Desert Fathers which deal with the struggle some of the their monks or novices had with same sex attraction which were written in the very early centuries of The Church. Neither temptation unacted upon nor apparently sexual orientation seemed to disqualify those men from their vocation.
Interesting...do you remember which, Kolo? I'd be curious to read those.
And then of course, the East also had the Emperor, who took a rather different tack:
"In that year [A.D. 528] some of the bishops from various provinces were accused of living immorally in matters of the flesh and of homosexual practices. Amongst them was Isaiah, bishop of Rhodes, an ex-praefectus vigilum at Constantinople, and likewise the bishop from Diospolis in Thrace, named Alexander. In accordance with a sacred ordinance they were brought to Constantinople and were examined and condemned by Victor, the city prefect, who punished them: he tortured Isaiah severely and exiled him and he amputated Alexander's genitals and paraded him around on a litter. The emperor [Justinian] immediately decreed that those detected in pederasty should have their genitals amputated. At that time, many homosexuals were arrested and died after having their genitals amputated. From then on there was fear amongst those afflicted with homosexual lust."(tip o' the hat to Antoninus who dug this up from the Chronicle of John Malalas)
The pursuit of wealth & power corrupted the medieval church and led to the protestant reformation. That corruption went to the top, apparently.
When corruption gets to certain levels one can only wonder at what prevents it from going higher. The apathy surrounding the homosexual issue was well known in Cincinnati (my home area) when the accusations against Bernardin, later to be Cardinal, became public. No one ever denied the culture, and it became evident that it was known by the powerful what was going on.
Northern Kentucky, just across the river from Cincy, is in the process of paying victims hundreds of millions of dollars BECAUSE their culture of paderasty was known about and apathetically shrugged off. We've recently been subjected to advertisements on TV & radio by law firms telling of the court award. The lawfirms, of course, are seeking to identify more victims, so they, too, can get their fingers into this huge financial payoff.
One can only wonder what prevented this from going to the highest levels and changing the church's historic objection to homosexuality.