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.
I don't blame you...If my religion had as many skeletons in the closet as yours does, I wouldn't want people shining a searchlight on it either...
Alex, stop it...
Gays are allowed to get married in the secular world and it does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to stop them from their proclivities.
You know Iscool, just last February I was asked if I would censor the news for Lent...
Well they do have a point...Things haven't been the same in Babylon since Johnny Gutenburg got that bright idea of his...
Yes it is if intentional. This surprises me (kinda) given our conversation about the "invisible church" and how I distinctly remember you insisting (by implication) that Baptists were not Protestants. But now, you say they are.
Okie dokie.
Choices, choices...hmmmm...Proverbs 26:4, or Proverbs 26:5?
Ping me the next time you plan on reading my mind, please.
Good question. I think I’ll take the advice of 26:4 regarding you.
No, it just means that clergy, like the laity, can be sinners and need to repent of sin. Our Lord, St. Paul and countless saints have been celibate, and it is a sign of contradiction to a world that places sexual gratification as the highest good. Religious deny themselves for the sake of the kingdom, and clergy are to be singleminded Alter Christi married to the Church. It is not a "human" tradition, but a divine one involving an evangelical counsel of chastity.
Alex, stop it...
You know what? Humans are sinful, including Catholics and Protestants alike -- all suffer from the effects of original sin. Alex Murphy is not helpfully pointing out anything that is not pointed out by Catholics and the secular media ad infinitum, but is in uncharitable bad faith pointing out the mote in his brother's eye while ignoring the beam in his own. I am not calling for censorship of anyone. I just am questioning Mr. Murphy's motivation and sincerity. He obviously is not charitable and tolerant toward other Christians, but merely gets a thrill out of mudslinging and negative propaganda. Protestants have committed countless sins, and with their doctrine of private judgment have split the body of Christ into countless sects and have basically allowed the mainstream of Protestantism to be highjacked by non-Christian leftwing believers. I certainly as a Catholic could post a thread on every negative Protestant development, but frankly it does not seem charitable and seems a waste of time. Unlike Mr. Murphy, it would seem, I have better things to do with my time.
Paul's celibacy was entirely voluntary, and was not necessary for him to pursue his vocation. Indeed, the "first pope" was married and functioned quite well in his position as leader among the apostles.
Of course there are many celibate Christians, but that is not the issue.
The purely human RC tradition of an enforced celibate priesthood is unhealthy and contributes to the significant sexual problems within the ranks of your clergy.
As it is with the Catholic priesthood. No one is forced to become a priest, and it is not an entitlement.
Sophistry. And odd that the RC denomination would make Paul (rather than married Peter) the norm for its strange traditions.
Paul made it clear that the elders of the Church had a right to marry.
"Do we have no right to take along a believing wife, as do also the other apostles, the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas?" (1 Cor. 9:5)
"A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober-minded, of good behavior, hospitable, able to teach;" (Titus 3:2)
The abnormality and degenerative effect of the RC priesthood requirement is evident.
Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
It is not “sophistry” to say that no one is forced to become a priest, and that it is not an entitlement. That is a simple statement of fact.
It is certainly sophistry in light of the fact that neither the Bible nor the ancient church held to the unholy tradition of the RC denomination. To place requirements on God’s undershepherds other than what we find in Holy Scripture contributes in large measure to the sexual immorality rampant among the RC clergy.
I never said the Bible requires celibacy of priests. That is a disciplinary rule, which the legitimate authority in the Church is entitled to adopt. What I am saying is the objective truth, which even you Protestants cannot deny if you are honest, that there is in both Scripture and Tradition a strong positive value placed on the witness of the evangelical counsel of chastity and its purest form, celibacy. Our Lord, the Apostles Paul and John, and countless saints have pursued this holy course, which you Protestants sneer at and have tossed out the window, and denigrate by saying that no one can remain celibate, which is pure falsehood. An ancient disclipline in the Church favoring celibacy for clergymen led to the disciplinary rule of celibacy for bishops in the Eastern rites and for bishops and priests in the Western rite. These are ancient disciplinary rules, not doctrinal, but they express strong Christian values found in tradition and are important for the Church, not the least in this sex-saturated modern culture. Breaches of vows of celibacy deserve discipline, and that has been too little forthcoming, but that doesn't mean one should toss out the baby with the bathwater by eliminating this most holy discipline for the clergy.
Respectfully asked...Why, in your words, do clergy have to be celibate? Scripture tells us that most if not all of the apostles were married and in all likelihood had relations with their wives (maybe they didn’t after becoming apostles but we don’t know for sure). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against those who choose to remain celibate as it is a noble thing to do and something which is commended by Paul and Christ for those who can handle it but is not a requirement. Rather, I don’t understand the concept that the only people who can be good and faithful servants to the Lord are those who are single and celibate.
I’m just trying to understand your point of view in context to what we know from scripture.
Blessings in Christ.
A great deal of sophistry in these words.
First of all the church is nowhere charged with making demands on God's servants beyond what is given to us in the Holy Scriptures. Such an attempt is example where men think they can be holier than God.
Second, a faithful monogamous marriage relationship is just as chaste as a life of celibacy. While there may be expedient reasons for certain minister of God to remain unmarried (as we see from the explicit example of Paul outlined in 1 Cor. 7), it has nothing to do with the false superiority of sexual mortification put forward by the RC denominations.
But this level of self-justification regarding the RC clergy goes a long way to explaining why they have always had a significant morals issues among their own.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.