Book review

Something Strange With New Book About Perversion Prone Priests by Frederic Martel

The giggly James Martin-wing of the Church is swooning over the new book In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy by Frederic Martel.

Weepy articles are everywhere about it, pitying the poor priests who aren’t allowed to licitly bugger each other and parishioners. Denying them this activity denies who they are! So much is expected from our press.

But there’s something odd about that book, first noticed by Fr John Rickert, who notified me by email.

Here’s the same book in Spanish: SODOMA: Poder y Escandalo en el Vaticano, which is, of course, scarcely like the English.

Here’s the French: Sodoma: Enquête Au Coeur Du Vatican.

And here, in plain simplicity, is Italian: Sodoma.

Quite a difference, no?

Wait. Don’t answer yet, because there’s more.

The book description differences are even more fascinating. Here is the first part of the English (prove to yourself that I’m not selectively quoting by doing the comparisons yourself).

A startling account of corruption and hypocrisy at the heart of the Vatican.

In the Closet of the Vatican exposes the rot at the heart of the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church today. This brilliant piece of investigative writing is based on four years’ authoritative research, including extensive interviews with those in power.

The celibacy of priests, the condemnation of the use of contraceptives, countless cases of sexual abuse, the resignation of Benedict XVI, misogyny among the clergy, the dramatic fall in Europe of the number of vocations to the priesthood, the plotting against Pope Francis – all these issues are clouded in mystery and secrecy.

In the Closet of the Vatican is a book that reveals these secrets and penetrates this enigma. It derives from a system founded on a clerical culture of secrecy which starts in junior seminaries and continues right up to the Vatican itself. It is based on the double lives of priests and on extreme homophobia. The resulting schizophrenia in the Church is hard to fathom. But the more a prelate is homophobic, the more likely it is that he is himself gay.

The more the prelate is against murder, the more likely he’s a murderer!

That’s one of the most frequent, idiotic, sloppy, and just plain dumb arguments we hear. If you’re against it, you’re secretly for it. And if you’re for it, you’re for it. So everybody’s for it; thus, let’s drop the pretence and hand out free laxatives for all.

Let’s compare the English with the Italian (translated: I’ll leave you to do with the similar French and Spanish as homework).

The misogyny of the clergy, the end of priestly vocations, the culture of silence in cases of sexual abuse, the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, the war against Pope Francis: the same secret links all these dark areas of the Church. This secret has long been unspeakable, but today it finally has a name: Sodom. The biblical city of Sodom would have been destroyed by God because of the homosexuality of its inhabitants. Yet, the Vatican is home to one of the largest homosexual communities in the world. A huge network of relationships created around the intimate life of priests, capable of exploiting their deepest fragility and influencing the exercise of the power of the Church, not only in the corridors of the Roman curia.

In other words, the problem is the (what is called) Lavender Mafia, whose members would not have been thought out of place by the denizens of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Now there are also similarities in the editions. The Italian also has the line “the more a prelate is shown homophobic [omofobo] in public, the more likely he is homosexual in private.” French: “plus un prélat est homophobe en public, plus il est probable qu’il soit homosexuel en privé.” Just what omofobo is or means is always left in the minds of readers. To American readers it’s any hint of disapproval of sodomy. In Italy and France, I don’t know.

The American edition ends with this:

“Behind rigidity there is always something hidden, in many cases a double life.” These are the words of Pope Francis himself and with them, the Pope has unlocked the Closet.

No one can claim to really understand the Catholic Church today until they have read this book. It reveals a truth that is extraordinary and disturbing.

The Pope has “unlocked the Closet”? Perhaps he has. Since his elevation, plenty of skeletons, ugly, twisted, and in various stages of decomposition, have come tumbling out of the Church.

The Italian finishes with this:

The gay issue of course does not explain everything, but it is a crucial key to understanding the Vatican and its position in our society. If we ignore this dimension related to homosexuality, we deprive ourselves of an essential element to decipher a large part of the events that have marked the history and politics of the last decades. “Behind stiffness there is always something hidden, in many cases a double life.” In saying these words, Pope Francis gave us a secret that this disconcerting investigation reveals for the first time.

Quite a difference, no?

I have not read the book itself, but I wonder if these same shadings appear in the English translation.

Categories: Book review, Culture

9 replies »

  1. It’s also interesting that the upcoming synod will begin on Feb. 21st, the feast day of St. Peter Damian, who fiercely battled sodomy in his own day.

  2. “The Pope has “unlocked the Closet”? Perhaps he has. Since his elevation, plenty of skeletons, ugly, twisted, and in various stages of decomposition, have come tumbling out of the Church.”

    That’s only so he can fit more perversions back in. If you turn your whole living room into a closet, how much more you can store there!

    America had never, before Obama, had a President who despised her very being. So, too, the Catholic Church has never before had a Pope who so despised the foundations of the church.

  3. Highly recommend MALACHI Martin’s brilliant book on the JESUITS, which explains what happened to the SJ before and after Vatican II. I promise you, it will explain everything–including the current Jesuit who sits (humbly) on the Papal throne.

  4. ‘behind rigidity there is always something hidden, in many cases a double life’
    Evidently Martel is saying that every doctrine (aka rigidity) is covering up the truth and the truth is, in fact, just the opposite. So openly rebellious men are actually the truth-tellers. What a convenient defense. But do they really think it will fly, in the end?

  5. Question: May we conclude that Pope Francis secretly, clandestinely, is a racist, leaves the lights on, and throws his plastic bottles into the Tiber?

  6. Considering Italy’s centuries-long close affiliation with the Catholic Church (and Spain has been similarly, but not so much, intimate relationship with the Church as well), why would one expect an Italian (or Spanish) version of a book exposing Church hypocrisy & abuse to be the more credible?? (regular readers here, including, presumably, Briggs, will recall/note I. Watt invariably notes how such historical relationships seem to have perpetual staying power and influence)

    Centuries ago Shakespeare wrote a line in a play, since co-opted to the mainstream, now being: “Methinks thou dost protest too much.” The modern psychological term for that principle is “Reaction Formation.” Check it out, two keyword search.

    We’ve all seen instances of the “dost protest too much” / Reaction Formation … e.g., the student rejected by a college, the person rejected for a date, or the team, etc. then claiming they didn’t really care or want it in the first place… Noteworthy example: Ted Haggard’s hostile anti-homosexual sermons while he, as a pastor, was living the homo-double-life.

    Which makes this particular effort at pretending this facet of human nature doesn’t really exist curious:

    “But the more a prelate is homophobic, the more likely it is that he is himself gay,” [a clear reference to the ‘dost protest too much’ / Reaction Formation]. But that led to this bit of over-extrapolated nonsense: “The more the prelate is against murder, the more likely he’s a murderer!”

  7. Same old, same old. “There is a lot of sin in the Church! The solution is stop calling sin “sin”!”. So if a school has a bad average grade, the solution is to give everybody an A

  8. Nobody – that solution has already been implemented across America. Please note that the average grade at Harvard is now an A minus.

    Leftism is a religion based wholly on the absolute denial of reality.

  9. Ken,

    I would expect the French version to be more reliable because, well, the author is French. I have no idea why the Spanish or Italian was quoted here, maybe because they were easier to find, but it seems plainly evident that the English-language version was heavily tampered with, something for which there does not seem to be much if any evidence as far as I can see regarding the Spanish or Italian.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *