Quote:


A. W. Richard Sipe, a psychiatrist and former Benedictine monk who has treated scores of sexually abusive priests and has written extensively about the phenomenon, says that the reality of the gay network is well known to clerics and others closely familiar with the workings of the Catholic Church, though difficult to prove from public sources.

"I've reviewed over 100 cases of sexual abuse by priests. In there you get the documentation, which unfortunately often gets sealed by the Church after they settle the cases," says Sipe, who is an expert witness in abuse cases. "It's very clear that you can trace [the network], one person to another, through a sequence of appointments, the sequence of who follows whom in what position, and how they got there. It is a fact, and nobody can sincerely deny it."

A typical pattern involves a priest becoming sexually involved with a seminarian or younger cleric, and then the junior man following his elder up the diocesan hierarchy. Sipe and others interviewed say this "bond of secrecy" introduces the possibility of blackmail: Those in positions of authority are prevented from acting against others because they themselves are compromised. It's a form of mutually assured destruction.

For the last decade, Church officials around the country have been moving quietly, with some success, to reform the worst of the so-called "pink palace" seminaries. "It's not official policy, but it would be very hard for a man with a homosexual orientation to get into the seminary here," says a top administrator in a major archdiocese. "Everybody knows it has been a problem, and bishops are trying to clean it up. But you can't say that officially, because it will blow up in your face."



More . . .


I would rather be honestly blunt than diplomatically untruthful.