Shared Secretarial Services

Two days ago, I wrote a post about the case of Stephen Kiesle, a child molester and priest who was convicted in 1978 of tying up two boys and having sex with them. Kiesle then wanted out of the priesthood, and the bishop of Oakland, California, couldn’t have agreed more. And so a correspondence with Rome began.

Correspondence may not be the word—it was really a written monologue directed at Rome. True, there was an early response asking for more documents, but then… nothing. Oakland wrote several letters over the years, pointing out the conviction, stressing the potential for scandal. Finally, the answer came. Evoking the good of the church, the common good, the need for pastoral care for the priest / molester, Ratzinger said no deal.

Two years later, the priest was finally defrocked. He then went on to molest again, and eventually served prison time. He lives now as a registered sex offender.

I am, as you can see, fascinated by the character of this man, Joseph Ratzinger, whose life story seems to be one of finding himself in events or times saturated with evil, and dealing ambiguously with it.

His biographer points out that he grew up in a heavily Catholic town with virulent anti-Semitism. He is inducted into the Hitler Youth—it was mandatory—and also, later, into the army. He doesn’t fire a shot in the army, nor was he particularly active in the Hitler Youth. Nor does he resist, though the Nazis had seized and murdered his cousin, a 14 year-old child with Down’s syndrome.

Later, he’s teaching at the same university as Hans Küng, the prominent theologian who has at times been a thorn in the Catholic Church’s side. Küng describes Ratzinger as initially liberal, until the student turmoil of the sixties. Students rushed in protest into his classroom; the rigid German, Ratzinger, was appalled by their demands, their conduct, their clothes and grooming.

He steps onto a path that will take him into an increasingly more rigid, repressed, authoritarian, absolute world. Finally, at the end of his life, he confronts evil again, as each week he reads the reports of the sex abuse in his church. And he knows, better than anyone, the magnitude of the problem because he’s given the order: all cases of sexual abuse come to his desk.

Given this fascinating, if rigid, man, I was of course watching via YouTube Ratzinger boarding the helicopter that would take him to Castel Gandolfo. And I was reading the comments as well, one of which was adulatory: you’ve been the best pope ever, thank you, Benedict, for your wonderful service to the church.

I had just written of the Kiesle affair, and had spent the morning reading the letters the diocese had sent and the reply that—after years of silence—Ratzinger had sent. So I posted a comment back, disagreeing, and giving as much of the Kiesle story as I could, in 150 characters or less (I used all but three).

There was—you’re expecting this, right?—the predictable response. I was accused of spreading lies and distortions. That I expected. What lifted the eyebrows was the sentence, “nobody has done more for ridding the Catholic Church of homosexual filth than Benedict.”

True, in a way. Very early on, Ratzinger made it clear to the seminaries—check out those guys. Any seminarian who won’t toe the line, who won’t play by the rules, who comes out and says, “hey, I’m gay—so?” is out. It was back to the fifties—a time of clear, unambiguous repression. 

I could have responded, pointing out that I had spent most of the morning reading the documents of the Kiesle affair, but instead I deleted the comment—from my computer, at least. Mentally, it rankled for a day or two.

Today, I read that the redoubtable Andrew Sullivan has blogged that Ratzinger is gay. No, not that he’s acting on it, but that he is innately gay, and has spent a lifetime repressing it. And he offers several clues that this may be true—Ratzinger’s voice, his scrupulous… but wait, Sullivan does it much better than I. Here he is on the subject.

At times, it seems to me, his gayness is almost wince-inducing. The prissy fastidiousness, the effeminate voice, the fixation on liturgy and ritual, and the over-the-top clothing accessories are one thing. But what resonates with me the most is a theology that seems crafted from solitary introspection into a perfect, abstract unity of belief. It is so perfect it reflects a life of withdrawal from the world of human relationship, rather than an interaction with it.

Sullivan wrote these words in 2010. Today, in 2013, he writes:

The damage Benedict XVI has done to the Catholic church and the papacy may be far from over. All I can say about yesterday’s developments is that they seem potentially disastrous and also indicative to me of something truly weird going on underneath all of this.

Well, it has to be said, there is something strange about a man who, reportedly, has never much liked the Vatican and—equally reportedly—misses his family and native land who then decides to stay in the Vatican. Why? His will be a life of seclusion and prayer; he is withdrawing and giving his absolute obedience to the new pope. Wouldn’t it be prudent to do that many hundred miles away, in a land that speaks his language, where his brother is at hand to chat with, to reminisce, to remember the happy days of a Nazi childhood?

Or is he staying around because of this?

Yes, this hunk, Padre Georg, has been the personal secretary of the previous pope for some time—they met when Ratzinger was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. And now, it seems that this ex-pope, who is now in seclusion, praying for the welfare of his beloved church, still feels the need to have a secretary. So Padre Georg will spend the evenings and nights with Ratzinger, and then trot over to fulfill his other secretarial duties with the new pope.

See?

And here is Sullivan quoting Padre Georg—wicked tongues call him gay.org—giving us a little peep into the day of a pontiff:

The pope’s day begins with the seven o’clock Mass, then he says prayers with his breviary, followed by a period of silent contemplation before our Lord. Then we have breakfast together, and so I begin the day’s work by going through the correspondence. Then I exchange ideas with the Holy Father, then I accompany him to the ‘Second Loggia’ for the private midday audiences. Then we have lunch together; after the meal we go for a little walk before taking a nap. In the afternoon I again take care of the correspondence. I take the most important stuff which needs his signature to the Holy Father.

Well, that’s a cozy picture—the breakfast and lunches together, the exchange of ideas, that afternoon nap.

Dear Reader, please believe me—I accuse the Holy Father of absolutely no impropriety. Yes, in the presence of such a sex-god, I would be stripping and kneeling as fast as I could, but I think the pope has / does not.

Twin thoughts on Ratzinger—he must keep this man as a constant and terrible reminder of what he has given up, what he has repressed, what he loves and what he cannot express or especially possess. He is a man in love who has never loved and who—obviously—cannot give up the man to whom he has never given himself. It’s a fascinating, religious / erotic hair shirt; a spiritual / psychosexual session with the scourge. He cannot tear himself away.

Could you?

And incredibly, he expects the whole world to believe this.

Second thought—what in hell is the next pope gonna do about this?

Sacred Headwaters

I am living in a place that is a paradox: Puerto Rico is the poorest by far of any of the fifty states in terms on annual income. Despite that, we also consume an insane amount of goods and energy.

Each day I walk between the walls of the fort, El Morro, and the entrance to the harbor. The walls of El Morro are impressive, of course, soaring as they do hundreds of feet above me. No less impressive are the three or four ships containing scores of 46 feet trailers I see entering the harbor daily, all jammed with stuff that we need, we think.

And what do we produce?

Junk metals, says my friend Harry, and nothing else. Nothing Puerto Rico produces can compete with the same item produced somewhere else. Specialty items such as gourmet coffee, yes. A farm down in the southeast owned by Israelis grows wonderful mangos to be sold at 10 pounds each in Fortnum and Mason. The pharmaceutical industry that was our lifeblood—all of that Valium that kept those stay-at-home-moms smiling in the fifties and sixties came from Puerto Rico—is moribund. The only thing we produce is trash. Our only industry is junk metal.

There are other places in the world, of course—places that have never been touched by man, or if they have, have been touched only lightly: a paddle in a river, a camp fire on its shore, a wolf killed by bow and arrow.

I’m thinking this morning of such a place, the Sacred Headwaters of northwest British Columbia. I knew vaguely about it but didn’t. I have, in a sense, eaten from it, since the three major rivers that flow from the headwaters are the source of wild salmon.

As you’ll see from the clip of author / photographer / anthropologist Wade Davis below—I can well believe that John Muir, exploring just a third of it, came away stunned. It’s vast as well, isolated, and…

…rich in minerals, metals, and energy sources.

You’ll see where this is going, so let me tell you at once, the story ends both happily and uncertainly. Or put it this way—one battle has been won, the war continues.

The battle won took place between Shell Canada and the native people inhabiting the land, the Tahltan. (It does occur to me that the computer is quick to criticize—that famous red squiggle—but never actually thanks me when I teach it a new word….) Shell had a little project—it covered only a million acres or so—to extract “coal bed methane gas.”

Into this group steps the First Nations, which to my shame I knew nothing about. But I can tell you now that it’s a coalition of roughly 630 aboriginal peoples of Canada who are not Inuit or Métis. Altogether, there are some 700,000 First Nations people in Canada, and not many of them were enthused about Shell’s proposed project. In addition, the Pembina Institute released a report indicating that no one had ever done this on salmon-bearing headwaters. Was it really a good idea to go ahead with the project and wait and see what happens?

Well, apparently the government of British Columbia thought not, and on 18 December 2012, the government announced that Shell would relinquish it tenure on the land and also that oil and natural / methane gas development would be banned.

That’s the victory—and a true victory it was.

But it’s just the first battle, because there are over 40 projects—some OK, some terrible—proposed for the region, according to Davis. There’s the Red Chris Mine, about which the company has to say:

Imperial is working towards development of a 30,000 ton per day open pit mine to commence operations upon completion of the Northwest Transmission Line [www.highway37.com]. Red Chris anticipates being able to connect to the Northwest Transmission Line at the Bob Quinn hydro station approx. 120 km from the proposed mill site by early 2014. Provincial and Federal environmental approvals for the project have been received. Mines Act permitting through the Northwest Mine Development Review Committee is underway.

Sounds great, hunh? Curious, though, that nothing is being said about all the soil removed, and all the toxic byproducts that will be generated by the process. What’s Imperial gonna do about all that?

Well, Imperial has stated that it will follow traditional—I can’t say time-honored—practice. Which means…

…dump it in the river.

Given that there are a proposed thirty years of this, how soon will it be that the Sacred Headwaters becomes New Jersey?

And yes, nice that there is no gas and petroleum to be “developed.” But what about coal? The very day after the British Columbia government announced the ban on petroleum and methane gas, Fortune Minerals said they were going through with their project, into which they have sunk over $100 million. According to one source, the company has “undertaken the British Columbian Environmental Assessment,” but what does that verb “undertaken” mean? Has the project been approved or not? They company, of course, claims the project will be “sustainable,” but look at the picture below, their pilot plant from 1985.

Guys? I think you know my answer….

At the end of the clip, Davis finally says the obvious. Rushing around trying to figure out the merits of over 40 projects and then fighting the deep corporate pockets of multinational behemoths is crazy. There are some places so beautiful, so unspoiled, so rich in spiritual and ecological worth that they are not to be touched. There needs to be protection for the Sacred Headwaters.

Davis, in another clip, talks about the days when passenger pigeons darkened the sky, and could topple a tree with their weight. Or the buffalo, which completely covered the Dakota landscape. I could add the accounts of the first European settlers to North America, who didn’t need to fish but to scoop up the fish on board that were jumping onto the ship.

Three or four years ago, I stepped on to a small patch of pristine prairie that had remarkably survived being incorporated into Wisconsin cornfield. The experience was unremarkable—three feet or so of prairie doesn’t have much to say.

Three hundred million acres—an amount I am cheerfully making up—of prairie would tell another story.

Click on the link below. Do it yes, for the Sacred Headwaters, and yes for the Tahltan peoples….

…but especially for us all.

  http://www.sacredheadwaters.com/

The Case Against Cardinal Ratzinger

I had read about it in my days at Wal-Mart, when I spent a lot of time on the Internet, ostensibly cruising for articles for the students to read, really just killing time. Everybody could see the train hurtling towards us, and most of us were tied with fear to the tracks. I would run through the office at class-time, rounding up the students, who promised to come to class, and variably did. It left a lot of time for reading.

So I had stumbled across the Minnesota lawyer, Jeff Anderson, who has made it his business—in both senses—to represent victims of sexual abuse. And today, he’s telling, via CNN, the next pope the sensible steps that need to be taken to protect kids from their priests.

Anderson, of course, comes at the question with—if not bias—at least a definite point of view. But even so, I was surprised by this statement:

He issued Vatican orders directing cardinals, archbishops and bishops to keep credibly accused priests in ministry, to move them to a different parish or to keep them in the priesthood because they were too young, too infirm or their removal would cause too much scandal for the church.

Well, that’s pretty strong. The question, of course, is whether it’s true.

Short answer—yes.

The church’s own evidence hangs them.

The paper trail begins in 1981, when the Church of the Good Shepherd writes a letter to the then head of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (strongly thought about omitting capitals, as well as putting in quotes…) concerning a priest who wants out. Seems he had—remember that old demon?—a dominant, and very Catholic mother, who pushed her kid into the seminary, and then gloated about and basked in it in social circles.

The son, Stephen Kiesle, had a curious habit. It was almost impossible, the letter states, to get him to do stuff like visit the sick, counsel families or individuals, or any of the other little jobs that priests are supposed to do. Instead, he wants to…

…do I have to finish that sentence?

Right, so he was working in the CCD program with children and teens. But curiously, it’s only mentioned in the sixth paragraph that he’s committed some “improprieties” with the kids.

Two weeks later, the Diocese of Oakland writes, also recommending that the priest request for dispensation from his holy vow of becoming a priest. In this letter, the same “improper” behaviors are mentioned, as well as the fact that they were publicized and attracted great attention.

A month later, the bishop writes to the pope, and for the first time drops the news—in 1978 he was arrested and charged with “having sex with at least six young men between the ages of eleven and thirteen.”

Young men? How about teenagers, minimally, if not children?

So Kiesle fights nails and teeth (uñas y dientes) to clear his name, right? Wrong—“like Jesus,” he decides not to answer the charges against him, and pleads nolo contendere. So he’s given a three-year suspended sentence, and told to go into therapy.

Remember—there’s no evidence that anyone writes to the Vatican in 1978 with this news that has been so widely reported. The diocese first writes—apparently—when Kiesle decides he wants out.

Well then, the letters send the Vatican into a fluster of activity, right?

You’re not batting too high, today. In November, the Vatican writes back, asking for documents, but not, if my aged Latin serves me, anything more than ordination papers and the like.

Well, it’s a new year, 1982—four years after his conviction—and nothing is happening. John Cummins, Bishop of Oakland, writes first in February, then in September.

No response. Oh, except that in an interoffice memo it seems that the Vatican did write, saying that the “matter would be addressed at the appropriate time.” More damning, the Vatican apparently has received the case of the sexual abuse filed against Kiesle, which Oakland had sent on July 15, 1983.

So it’s another new year and Cummins writes again, mentioning the case and asking for “any information you can give.”

For eighteen months, nothing happens. Then Cummins writes directly to Ratzinger—who had, you remember, requested those documents four years ago—asking what’s up. And in November of 1985—eight years after Kiesle’s conviction, four years after the matter was brought to the attention of the Vatican—Ratzinger writes back:

Most Excellent Bishop

Having received your letter of September 13 of this year, regarding the matter of the removal from all priestly burdens pertaining to Rev. Stephen Miller Kiesle in your diocese, it is my duty to share with you the following:

This court, although it regards the arguments presented in favor of removal in this case to be of grave significance, nevertheless deems it necessary to consider the good of the Universal Church together with that of the petitioner, and it is also unable to make light of the detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke with the community of Christ's faithful, particularly regarding the young age of the petitioner.

It is necessary for this Congregation to submit incidents of this sort to very careful consideration, which necessitates a longer period of time.

In the meantime your Excellency must not fail to provide the petitioner with as much paternal care as possible and in addition to explain to same the rationale of this court, which is accustomed to proceed keeping the common good especially before its eyes.

Let me take this occasion to convey sentiments of the highest regard always to you.

Your most Reverend Excellency

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

(Text of 1985 Letter From Future Pope Benedict)

Following is the text of a November 1985 letter in Latin signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to Oakland Bishop John S. Cummins. It was translated for The Associated Press by Thomas Habinek, chairman of the University of Southern California Classics Department.

Well, the boys in Oakland are scratching their heads over this one, but as an interoffice memo in the diocese states, it seems that “they (the Vatican) are basically going to sit on it until Steve gets quite a bit older.” So what to do?

Let me not make the same mistake as Ratzinger.

And that is, you ask?

Lose sight of the fact that we’re talking about kids. The good of the Universal Church is considered, his Excellency mustn’t be lacking in giving a child molester “pastoral care,” the common good is invoked, but none of them can get it into their heads—we got a priest fucking around with kids.

Oh, wait—finally someone does. And guess what? It’s a woman.

Who doesn’t write so much as snort and snarl.

She tries to be civil: “I need to inform you of my concern that a convicted child molester is currently the youth ministry coordinator at St. Joseph’s Parish in Pinole.”

She loses it, however, when she considers that she has been waving the red flag for eight months, and now Steve is planning his participation for Youth Day NEXT YEAR (her caps, not mine). 

Finally, in 1987, Kiesle was defrocked. In 2002, he was again arrested and charged with 13 counts of child molestation. In 2004, he was again arrested, and convicted to 6 years for a molestation in 1995.

He’s now living as a registered sex offender in Walnut Creek.

No Frigging Way

OK—a guy I don‘t know wrote a comment on my Facebook page to Taí, who had posted the piece I wrote on Ratzinger yesterday. And the unknown guy suggested that “the same people who made homosexuality a sexual orientation are now declaring pedophilia a sexual orientation.”

Say what?

Seems like a slur, doesn’t it, on a par with suggesting that allowing gay men to marry will inevitably lead to men marrying their dogs? But it’s an unimpeachable source—The Guardian—and so worth looking up.

Confession—I have nothing to confess. I have never knowingly had sex with a minor, even when I was, in fact, a minor. I say this with no pride—this is not a matter of heroic efforts at self-control. I’m just not into it.

I am into guys—I know that’s a shocker—however, and I spent seven years at Wal-Mart and thirteen years at Inlingua teaching them. And in all of that time, how many of those students did I bed?

Zero.

And why not? They were of age, there was no coercion, the question of a grade didn’t really enter into the equation. Why not, after class, have a beer or two, and then slip down Highway 1—famous for its motels that rent by the hour, not the day—and have a good time?

I hate to say it, but there’s some stuff you just don’t do. What about Raf, sitting at home, wondering where I am? What about me, washing up afterward, feeling guilty and stupid? What about the student, who I will see in two days—how’s that class gonna go?

There was, in fact, a student who put the make on me. “You have beautiful eyes,” he told me, and went on to ask my home phone number. I ignored both the comment and the question, and Ofelia transferred him to a female teacher.

OK—so I read the article. The question, it seems, is both whether pedophilia is harmful to the victim / recipient and whether the perpetuator / predator can change.

Now then—I am technically a victim of pedophilia, since I was 17-and-a-half when my uncle put the make on me. And of course I went along with it—I didn’t know any other gay men, I couldn’t imagine that there were other gay men, this was probably going to be the only sex I would have in my life.

Yes, that’s how naïve I was.

Which may be the issue I have with it. It is, on the face of it, silly to assume that something happens on the eve of an 18^th birthday, and that the child who is vulnerable and prone to predation goes to bed and wakes up an adult capable of making mature decisions. Silly—but also necessary. And we make the same arbitrary judgments about drinking, driving, and going off to war.

Now then—did it harm me, that tryst in a public park with an older man, my uncle?

At the time I felt no, later I felt yes, now I’m not sure.

However much I “consented,” it can’t be said that we were both equal partners. He was older, smarter, and wore the mantle of an adult. I was a kid—and a pretty stupid one.

Not like Raf, who takes a very different view of the pedophile cases. In Latin culture, you assume the priest is gay. And your big brother tells you—Padre Pablo is gonna put the make on you, if you let him. So he touches you anywhere, or tries to, you come to me, and I’ll deal with him.

To Raf, it’s as inconceivable that a kid wouldn’t know that the priest was gay as a kid growing up in the country not knowing about sex. I mean, you live on a farm—what do you see all day? A lot of animals humping.

So he doesn’t buy it—the trauma, the anguish, the life-long effects of betrayal and pain.

It may be a cultural thing. Whatever effect the “victimization” had on the 17 year-old Marc, it certainly wouldn’t have been the same if I had been seven. I was traumatized in second grade by having library fines I couldn’t pay—how would I have reacted to knowing that I had done something bad, evil, something I could never tell anyone? And something that I couldn’t stop, and that would happen again?

So yeah—I like my life simple. It’s easier to tell the truth, and not have to remember a lie. It’s simpler to keep your dick in your pants unless you’re with your spouse, in which case…whee! And at Wal-Mart, I worried when inadvertently I walked home with a pen that I had absentmindedly stuck in my shirt pocket. Am I gonna lose my job over a “stolen” pen?

But here’s my question—when did we decide that a compulsion / behavior that you cannot stop becomes an “orientation?” I freely grant that most pedophiles return to their pedophile behavior. But if some men are serial rapists, is rape a sexual orientation? All the guys who have a fetish for stiletto heels—is that a sexual orientation?

I might give you a pass on a relationship with a 17-year-old. But a seven-year-old?

No frigging way.

The Last Thing Needed

There’s a moment in the movie The Queen when “Tony Blair” is watching the royal family on television. “Somebody has got to save these people,” he says, “from themselves.”

Which is a little like how I feel about Joe Ratzinger, as he prepares to leave his church in an absolute mess.

Consider it—we have a secret report that only the pope knows about and only the next pope will see. This couldn’t be more made-for-television.

Nor does the response from the Vatican do anything to calm the waters. They come out swinging, accusing the media and other enemies of the church of attempting to influence the election of the next pope.

Things settle down for a day and then BAM! A top Catholic in Great Britain, a cardinal, steps down after four people came forward with allegations of abuse from the 1980’s. So he’s out, and cancels his trip to Rome to elect the next pope.

Unlike the cardinal of Los Angeles, who has been rebuked as well as stripped of his diocesan duties by his successor. Well, he’s in Rome now, having been deposed in a civil case over the weekend.

And he’s fighting—he’s just written in his blog about how hard it is to forgive his enemies, to love them, to take to heart Jesus’ message of love and forgiveness. So screw you to the 10,000 Los Angelinos who have signed a petition saying he’s hardly qualified to select the next pope.

Well, that does seem sensible. Whatever his “diocesan duties” are, they can’t be more important that a papal conclave, right?

He makes, by the way, a good point. Here’s the Los Angeles Times:

"I can't recall a time such as now when people tend to be so judgmental and even self-righteous, so quick to accuse, judge and condemn," Mahony wrote on his personal blog. "And often with scant real facts and information.  Because of news broadcasts now 24/7 there is little or no fact checking; no in-depth analysis; no context or history given.  Rather, everything gets reported as 'news' regardless of the basis for the item being reported -- and passed on by countless other news outlets." 

Well, Jack would agree—he’d be howling in pain at the quality of journalism today. But it is a matter of record that the diocese of Los Angeles has had to cough up 660 million in a settlement with abuse victims. Oh, and Mahony was in charge there for about thirty years.

So we’re in Roman or Vatican fever. What’s really going on, what’s in the secret report, and mostly….

…what’s next?

Because it feels both that the ship is completely rudderless and that the seas have started roiling.

The pope, says a biographer who interviewed the pope’s brother, is losing sleep at night, sweating and tossing in bed as he thinks about the abuse scandals. The ordeal has ruined his health and wrecked his papacy. All he wanted was to retire, get the hell out of town, and go back to academia. He presented his resignation three or four times to John Paul II, and always the resignations were rejected.

Yeah? It may be true. It may also be that the pope is caught in a terrible time trap—he’s living in a world that no longer exists.

There was a time when the Catholic Church ruled—and no, it wasn’t as far back as the Middle Ages. Remember The Bells of St. Mary’s? It was a film from 1945 about a wonderful, dedicated, just a bit unconventional priest who fights to save his inner-city high school, assisted by that wonderful, dedicated, not-quite-so-unconventional Mother Superior. Bing Crosby played the priest, Ingrid Bergman the mother superior—and when Crosby sings the title song, surrounded by all the nuns in the immaculate wimples and veils, you’d better have at least fifty units of insulin in the syringe. It goes through sugary, and travels across saccharine and ends up, finally, nauseating.

The reality was different.

“We’d go to class all day, and then head down to the Gold Coast, where we saw most of our classmates and a lot of the faculty,” said a friend in Chicago, remembering his seminary days.

The Gold Coast was a gay bar.

And it was the seventies—times had changed, the cops were no longer raiding the bars, people were coming out and discovering an amazing truth: it was no big deal. Families got over it. The woman who 30 years ago would call from Puerto Rico wanting to speak to her son and refused to talk to me?

She was reading names on Plaza de Armas last Saturday, supporting a project of mine. And telling me she loved me and was proud of me.

Over fifty percent of the seminarians are gay, says Mark Dowd, himself a former Dominican friar. Here’s what he has to say about the subject:

Building on this, the lesbian writer on queer theology, Elizabeth Stuart, in a fascinating deconstruction of "liturgy queens", made the observation that in her experience it was more often than not the very closeted clergy who deployed an almost neurotic obsession with the size and length of the altar cloth and ecclesiastical protocol as "their own way of dealing with their demons". We have to be careful of a simplistic reductio ad absurdum here. Love of aesthetics in liturgy does not automatically prove anything about one's sexual orientation. But I think Stuart had a point.

Well, I think she had a point too. The more you suppress it, the more you get it, as a friend used to say.

The Catholic Church has always known it—some of it highest officials, including popes, have not been celibate. And no—we’re not talking Medieval Era, but the Modern Era.

Whatever or wherever Ratzinger’s sexuality is or isn’t, his temperament is intellectual and theoretical, not administrative and organizational. His was to be a teaching papacy, and the problem?

It was the last thing needed.

Doña Ilia Charms the Plaza

We’re forty lives short of California.

It took us an hour and 45 minutes to read through Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, and Arkansas.

It felt like a performance—mouth was dry, hands were shaky, my focus had narrowed. Pablo picked up on it, and asked if I was OK.

“Nerves,” I said.

So what was there to be nervous about?

Raf carried the camcorder, I carried the materials: the two books of the 33,050 names; the information flyers; two chairs, one for reading, the other for the 33,050 people who are not there.

“You’re such a drama queen,” said Pablo, as I was clothes-pinning the shirt to the back of the chair, and the blue jeans to the seat. “I love it….”

“Let’s go around the plaza and tell people about the project,” I said. So we did for fifteen minutes or so.

“You know, it’s really important to engage with people—that’s what I’ve been learning,” said Pablo.

He’s a social anthropologist, but that’s incidental. He’s also my Puerto Rican brother, who went away for a while and now is back.

So he started the reading the names—Robert Schneider, Marc Perry, Frederick Hogan…. He read for fifteen minutes, and then went off to his next project or commitment. Just before doing so, I ran into my first, and only, gun rights advocate.

“I wonder if you’d read the list of people whose lives have been saved by guns,” he started out.

“No, but if you want to compile the list, you’re more than welcome to sit on the other side of the plaza and read it….”

I’d been dreading meeting this guy or one of his ilk—a full-fledged, card-carrying member of the NRA who recited the Second Amendment word for word, though transposing the militia clause from front to back.

Which he may have done on purpose, since he immediately asked me why we need guns.

“Protection.”

“Yes, and protection from what?”

“I think you’re gonna tell me…”

“The government,” he exploded. “From a tyrannical government. We need to have guns so that in the event of a tyranny, we can rise up and protect our rights!”

I had forgotten one of the great American crazinesses—this wild belief that the damn Federal government is plotting away back there in Washington to take away my rights and my land and my children but by God they step one foot on my land I’ll blow the brains out of them fuckers!

It’s completely irrational, although maybe not. Thanks to George W. Bush and the war on terror (decided not to cap that term….) we’re probably less free than we’ve ever been as a nation and as citizens. But somehow, I don’t think that was what he meant.

“Hitler killed 30 million people and never fired a gun,” he said.

I didn’t get it.

And still don’t. He said that words kill more people than guns.

So guns don’t kill, words kill!

OK—the talk was cordial, respectful. Did he want to go before the camera and give his point of view? This is all about fostering debate.

“No,” he said quickly. And I wondered—what was he afraid of? Because there were many “noes” yesterday—the “no, I’m shy,” the “no, I’ve got to meet someone,” the “no, this isn’t my thing.”

Into the scene improbably walked Nydia, Raf’s sister, who had completely panned the whole idea two days previously. But there’s a thing about Nydia, she’s totally loyal. So if I’m out making a fool out of myself under the hot Caribbean sun, well, she’ll be there.

“I’m here to read names,” she said, kissing me, and then, having heard a bit of the conversation, dropped the news “but guns kill,” onto the man.

“Go give Raf a break,” I said. Somehow, the combination of a strongly emotional, passionate Nydia and a fearful gun owner didn’t seem like a good idea. So she went off to read.

And then, into the plaza and into the picture stepped doña Ilia, Raf’s indomitable 83-year-old mother. Who is here to read as well, and does so, sitting in her walker.

She’s full of charm, this rheumatoid-arthritis-wracked lady who went, almost seven years ago, into cardiac, pulmonary, and kidney arrest, met God and told him to go to hell—she wasn’t ready yet. And so she was moving about the square, telling little girls “Ay, ¡qué linda, m’hija!” and patting them and beaming at the parents. Or she was standing behind Nydia, and proudly holding the sign that announces the project—“30,000 Lives.” Or she was telling the two visitors from Wisconsin about how many of her children went to the University of Wisconsin—three, plus a grandchild.

Nydia more or less trapped a girl into reading—she did so for five minutes and then joined her friends who would do a flash mob and dance. Then the Wisconsin kids took over, the girl reading, the guy holding the sign. Lastly, there was a guy, don Miguel, walking through the plaza and carrying two signs—one in English, the other in Spanish. So he read some names, and then talked about his project—the proposed plan to sell the airport.

It was hot, we were tired, we were done for the day. People had drifted by, taken pictures of us on their cell phones, stopped to chat. The only person who doesn’t have a picture?

Me—completely forgot to bring the stills camera.

No matter—stay tuned for the YouTube clip that will instantly go viral.

How do I know?

Who can resist an 83-year-old lady who told God to take a hike reading names in the middle of a square in San Juan, Puerto Rico?

If anyone can get a message out, doña Ilia can….

Secrecy

Well, he’s getting old, getting tired, he’s not up to the job. So he does what any other guy would do. After all, he doesn’t need the dough, he’s comfortably well off, he’ll have everything he needs. And really, who needs the headache? The politicking and rivalry for power, the machinations in the office, the rat race. Guys call it quits all the time—why shouldn’t he?

Well, Pope Benedict is the first guy in over 700 years to do it. And don’t think, Gentle and Trusting Reader, that Ratzinger had this papacy thrust on him. His elbows were very sharp indeed, so often and so well had he used them to knock the others out of his way. He turned the adage into a lie: the man who enters the conclave as a pope leaves as a cardinal.

One of the things about Latin culture is our love of conspiracy theory. There are Cubans who swear—Fidel died years ago. But not before finding a guy who looked almost identical to him, and happened to be in superb health. Or maybe the real powers behind the regime have consistently identified ever so slightly younger “Fidels” and they keep replacing the fading “Fidel” as needed.

Well, could any culture be more Latin than the Vatican, which actually is the only town where the language is still spoken? (By the way, the resignation was announced in a routine Monday morning meeting, and yes, it was in Latin. Fortunately, one of the Italian press had boned up on the language, and managed to scoop a lot of other more prestigious media….)

So the idea that a pope not particularly known for modernism, innovation, hey-let’s-throw-tradition-to-the-winds was doing something as radical as resigning the position he had spent decades scheming for left a lot of Vatican-watchers scratching their heads. He did WHAT!!!!

Right, so it took a couple of weeks for us all to close our mouths, wobble to our feet, and look dizzily around us, but now the news is in. We figured it out.

Or not.

We’ll know or we won’t know if the conspiracy theory is true, but here’s how it runs, courtesy of the Guardian, which reports that a Rome Newspaper, La Repubblica, is alleging that Benedict is being forced to step down because of twin causes: stealing and gay sex.

You may remember the pope’s butler, who was tried and convicted (and then pardoned by the pope) of stealing important documents and leaking them. The documents, according to the Guardian, painted the Vatican “as a seething hotbed of intrigue and infighting.”

Well, we all knew that, of course. But the pope put together a little threesome to investigate the whole mess, and what turned up—remember, this is theory—was ugly indeed.

Here’s the Guardian again, describing the report:

The newspaper said the cardinals described a number of factions, including one whose members were "united by sexual orientation".

In an apparent quotation from the report, La Repubblica said some Vatican officials had been subject to "external influence" from laymen with whom they had links of a "worldly nature". The paper said this was a clear reference to blackmail.

It quoted a source "very close to those who wrote [the cardinal's report]" as saying: "Everything revolves around the non-observance of the sixth and seventh commandments."

The seventh enjoins against theft. The sixth forbids adultery, but is linked in Catholic doctrine to the proscribing of homosexual acts.

Like so many purportedly happy families, there are a few little secrets. But the world is a different place now, and things that were known but not talked about are now not just talked about but filmed, recorded, spread via the media and the social media.

In 2007, a senior official of the Vatican was filmed in a sting operation making sexual advances to a young man. In 2010, a chorister was found to be arranging for male prostitutes for a papal gentleman-in-waiting. A few months later, priests were filmed in gay bars, as well as filmed having sex in gay clubs.

“Well, darling, you could have knocked me over with a steel girder,” I said to Pablo. (No, it’s not mine, but Dorothy Parker’s…)

“Well, darling, you could have knocked me over with a feather from my boa,” returned Pablo, more originally.

We’re being campy—something I do maybe once a decade. But with Pablo, it’s fun, like having a martini with lunch. Any more than once a decade is dangerous.

And we’re doing it in a drugstore, as Pablo waits for some Motrin to ease the strained shoulder muscles a week of family warfare has afflicted him with. People pass by, observe us, think nothing of it. Of course we’re gay, everybody knows we’re gay… so?

So the great thing about being out and open is that you become invisible. Ordinary, in fact. Boring, which is a good thing to be, at times. None of my family is going to be crushed by any hint that Uncle / Brother Marc is gay.

Secrecy, however, breeds a whole set of problems, of which deception and hypocrisy head the list.

Pablo has a hole in his heart this week, after dealing with serious craziness in the family. He came limping home, bleeding but alive.

“You know, you’ll forgive them because it’ll make you feel better—you’re not gonna want to carry all that hate and hurt around. And you’ll realize, you’re living in a much better world than they are.”

That’s what I told Pablo.

Ratzinger has spent an entire life seeing and acquiescing to evil, going along with it, condoning it, decrying it publicly while practicing it privately. Now, he has been undone by it.