Former Pope Benedict this week blamed the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church on the sexual revolution of the 1960s and an alleged consequent collapse of moral values. This follows two powerful cardinals blaming the ‘gay agenda’.
Benedict wrote in a 6,000-word essay notable for some rather dubious claims.
“It could be said that in the 20 years from 1960 to 1980, the previously normative standards regarding sexuality collapsed entirely, and a new normalcy arose.
“Paedophilia was diagnosed as allowed and appropriate,” wrote the ex-pope, a statement for which no evidence appears to exist.
Most countries prosecute paedophilia as a crime. While, in recent years, it is more openly discussed and crimes more conscientiously prosecuted, there was no notable allowance post the 1960s.
Benedict went on to complain about sex education. He made a somewhat strange and unsubstantiated assertion that airlines at one time showed sex films on planes. He said they only stopped when the films caused violence to break out among passengers.
The former pontiff appears to defend his own legacy as the pope who he writes himself, “served in a position of responsibility as shepherd of the Church at the time of the public outbreak of the crisis, and during the run-up to it.”
For 23 years before his elevation to the papacy, Benedict headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Formerly known as the Inquisition, it was the church office most criticised for its handling of sexual abuse cases.
Cardinals Burke and Brandmüller
Earlier this year, two of his former colleagues, Cardinals Burke and Brandmüller, attempted to hijack a sexual abuse summit called by the Vatican. They released an open letter blaming the ‘gay agenda’ for the scourge of sexual abuse in the Catholic church.
“The plague of the homosexual agenda has been spread within the church, promoted by organised networks and protected by a climate of complicity and a conspiracy of silence,” wrote Cardinals Raymond Burke and Walter Brandmüller.
The gay agenda
The ‘gay agenda’ theory originated in the 1990s as a reactionary response to the growing momentum for LGBTIQ rights.
Conservative forces fought to impede the decriminalisation of homosexuality. They denounced it as the first phase of a monstrous conspiracy to recruit every man, woman and child on the planet to homosexual practices.
Anti-gay conservatives decreed that ending the persecution of LGBTIQ people would culminate in compulsory homosexuality.
This despite a millennium of compulsory heterosexuality failing to eradicate LGBTIQ people.
Burke, Brandmüller and ex-pope Benedict occupy positions employed throughout history to persecute LGBTIQ people.
The Inquisition
Popes and cardinals presided over the Inquisition which castrated homosexuals and burnt them at the stake. These days apologists like to remind us that the Inquisition wasn’t all that bad.
For all the lives ruined, people scarred for life by torture and property confiscated, only a few thousand, they say, were actually rôtisseried. Oh, that’s okay then.
Burke, Brandmüller, Benedict and their fellow travellers have throughout history opposed every step toward equality for LGBTIQ people.
When they could no longer slaughter us, they wanted us locked up. When they lost that battle, they fought to stop anti-discrimination legislation. Later, they fought same-sex marriage. Now they dispute the right of trans people to live their own truth. They never give up.
The spiritual descendants of people who roasted gays on a stake, now wail persecution is paying someone to bake a cake.
The promoters of the ‘gay agenda’ claim equal rights for other people diminish their own rights. However, the only right diminished is divine right — their centuries long perquisite to dictate. They resist relinquishing power they regard as god-given.
These men have cherry-picked their holy book and from it created a god in their own image. In a stroke of good fortune, he thinks exactly as they do. He demands everyone live exactly as they do or face terrible punishment, in the here and now when possible, but otherwise, in the hereafter.
A thousand-year history of abuse and cover-ups
Writers documented substantial clerical sexual abuse eons before the 1960s sexual revolution or the 1990s ‘gay agenda’.
Around 1050, Cardinal Peter Damien wrote Liber Gomorrhianus. That treatise castigated the church for permitting, and covering up, the many vices of the clergy, including sexual abuse of children.
In 1531, Martin Luther, the father of Protestantism, claimed the pope vetoed a measure to restrict the number of boys cardinals kept for their pleasure. He said the pope feared publicity about “how openly and shamelessly the pope and cardinals practice sodomy.”
No one need bring these facts to Brandmüller’s attention. He knows them. He was previously the church historian.
By speaking out now, ex-pope Benedict puts himself at odds with his successor. It is the acknowledgment by Francis of the church’s failures which enabled some progress.
Benedict argues for a return to the all-powerful non-consultative style of church leadership. That is, for the style of leadership which variously caused, participated in, condoned or covered up child sex abuse.
Over the nearly 1000 years before the sexual revolution or the “gay agenda”, history documented clerical sexual abuse and church cover-ups.
Equal rights for LGBTIQ world citizens have not been responsible for clerical sexual abuse. The problem is the abuse of power by the clergy and the church.
Perhaps if the former pope Benedict and cardinals worked to stop the cover-ups and stop the distractions, it might go some way to stopping the abuse.
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