Posted on 10/14/2007 9:38:53 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
VATICAN CITY - A Vatican official suspended after being caught on hidden camera making advances to a young man says he is not gay and was only pretending to be gay as part of his work.
In an interview published Sunday, Monsignor Tommaso Stenico told La Repubblica daily he frequented online gay chat rooms and met with gay men as part of his work as a psychoanalyst. He said that he pretended to be gay in order to gather information about "those who damage the image of the Church with homosexual activity."
Vatican teaching holds that gays and lesbians should be treated with compassion and dignity but that homosexual acts are "intrinsically disordered."
The Vatican said Saturday it was suspending Stenico after he was secretly filmed making advances to a young man and asserting that gay sex was not sinful during a television program on gay priests broadcast Oct. 1 on La7, a private Italian television network.
While Stenico's face was blurred in the footage, church officials recognized his Vatican office in the background and suspended him pending a church investigation.
There have long been allegations that there are gays in the Roman Catholic priesthood, but the Stenico case is unusual because he is a relatively high-ranking Vatican official. He heads an office in the Vatican's Congregation for Clergy — the main office overseeing all the world's priests.
The case comes at a particularly sensitive time, just two years after the Vatican issued tough new guidelines effectively barring gays from the priesthood — seen in large part as a response to complaints about a "gay subculture" in U.S. seminaries.
The guidelines say the church cannot admit men to the priesthood who practice homosexuality, or have "deeply rooted homosexual tendencies or support so-called gay culture." However, the document said that if the gay tendencies were just a "transitory problem," the men can be ordained deacons if they successfully overcome those tendencies for three years.
In the Repubblica interview, Stenico said he had never been gay and was heterosexual, but remained faithful to his vow of celibacy. He said he expected to be fully exonerated after a review.
"It's all false; it was a trap. I was a victim of my own attempts to contribute to cleaning up the church with my psychoanalyst work," La Repubblica quoted Stenico as saying.
Stenico said he had met with the young man and pretended to talk about homosexuality "to better understand this mysterious and faraway world which, by the fault of a few people — among them some priests — is doing so much harm to the church," La Repubblica quoted him as saying.
Italy's Sky TG24 said Stenico had written a letter to his superiors with a similar defense.
Calls placed to Stenico's home and office went unanswered Sunday.
In 2006, the Vatican denied Italian newspaper reports that an official in the office of the Secretary of State had been involved in a fight with police after he was stopped in a neighborhood frequented by transvestites and male prostitutes.
In 2002, a former official in the papal household, Archbishop Juliusz Paetz, resigned as archbishop of the Polish city of Poznan over accusations that he had made sexual advances toward young clerics. He denied the accusations.
Throw in Ted Haggard and make it a threesome.
Amen.
If the messenger is spreading lies, then he should be rebuked. If the messenger is slandering others, in this case, the majority of priests who are faithful to their vows of celibacy, then he should be rebuked. If the messenger is trying to discourage lay Catholics by bashing the Church and its clergy, then he should be rebuked.
Unam Sanctam is 100% right. You, Alex Murphy, and several others on this forum seize on any scandal that involves the Catholic Church in order to discredit it. It doesn’t matter what the scandal is or how many people are involved, you trumpet any negative news about the Church as “proof” of its illegitimacy. Frankly, it’s becoming tiresome and offensive.
Yeah, if we look at the circumstances, I would wager the Vatican corroborated his activity to some extent. After all, he was “anonymous” on this television show, so the Church could have simply said, “well, we don’t know who it is.” The fact that they went to the trouble to hunt him down and then publicly banish him seems convincing enough that he’s not play-acting.
Let ‘em come.
We can handle it. If the gates of hell will not prevail against us, then we should be okay now.
You see my FRiend, Alex is a fan of the Trail of Baloney
Excuse me, I mean the "trail of blood". Read the link and be AMAZED at how some Baptists, who really are historically Protestant, reject the label "protestant". :)
Warning: .pdf link above, but it's not that big, and you'll probably find it useful in refuting those who really are protestant, yet insist they are not.
Unfortunately, it does not apply to the PROTESTANT Episcopal Church of the USA--then again, it perhaps is owing to its Roman Catholic heritage in liturgy and worship!
Touche' Especially in the ECUSA. However, there IS a way to discourage gays in the priesthood: Allow priests to marry (some churches are already guided by married priests--most, formerly Anglican/Episcopal) while confining celibacy to the monasteries and convents (that was indeed the practice in the early church, after all).
Well he might not be gay but he is a liar. So to me that is quite enough to make him unsuitable for his post.
When I posted a thread about a child molesting presbyterian preacher a few years ago, I ended up on a Catholic ping list.
Feel free to post threads about protestant pervs. I won't get defensive or offended.
There are two types of Catholics on FR: Those that are in DENIAL about the disproportionate number of homosexual clergy and also see priests as near saintlike, rather than as just human beings, and those who are PISSED OFF and want them flushed out of their church.
Bzzzzzt. Assuming facts not in evidence. Ten yard penalty...repeat the down.
BTW: Lots of gay ministers, rabbis, and imams as well. The difference is that "middle management" (aka the bishops) tolerated this BS starting in the mid-60s, and only recently do we see these folks finally getting flushed out.
Wow - I don't think I've ever seen a post that pegs me so perfectly wrong. Bearing false witness is a sin, you know.
I’m not defending homosexuals in the clergy, especially active ones or those who embrace the gay ideology instead of the Catholic teachings on morality. I’m just objecting to the way certain Protestants on FR seem to revel in posting news items that puts the Catholic Church in a bad light. I feel the same way about foreigners’ criticizing America — there’s plenty about American culture that I often criticize, but it sticks in my craw hearing Europeans or other foreigners criticize my homeland.
I think I saw this guy on Dateline's "To Catch a Predator".
ROTFL! Can you imagine reading the job posting for the recently open "Vatican Official" job in the National Catholic Register? According to the Monsignor, one of the job requirements is that the applicant must act gay!
The first step to resolving the matter begins with admitting that the RC church with its human tradition of a "celibate" priesthood has a morals problem involving sodomy among other things.
Which reminds me of the story about a man who goes to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist suggests that they start off with a Rorschach test. So he holds up the first picture and asks the man what he sees. "A man and a woman making love in a park," the man replies.
The psychiatrist holds up the second picture and asks the man what he sees. "A man and a woman making love in a boat."
He holds up the third picture. "A man and a woman making love at the beach."
This goes on for the rest of the set of pictures; with the man saying he sees a couple making love in every one of the pictures. At the end of the test, the psychiatrist looks over his notes and says, "It seems like you have a preoccupation with sex."
"Me?" says the patient. "You're the one with the dirty pictures!"
The first step to resolving the matter begins with admitting that the RC church with its human tradition of a "celibate" priesthood has a morals problem involving sodomy among other things.
Which reminds me of the story about a man who goes to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist suggests that they start off with a Rorschach test. So he holds up the first picture and asks the man what he sees. "A man and a woman making love in a park," the man replies.
The psychiatrist holds up the second picture and asks the man what he sees. "A man and a woman making love in a boat."
He holds up the third picture. "A man and a woman making love at the beach."
This goes on for the rest of the set of pictures; with the man saying he sees a couple making love in every one of the pictures. At the end of the test, the psychiatrist looks over his notes and says, "It seems like you have a preoccupation with sex."
"Me?" says the patient. "You're the one with the dirty pictures!"
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