Vatican Stealth Mode

There is no love lost between Pope John Paul and Saddam Hussein. Much as the Pope meets with dictators–whose regimes, admittedly, tend to collapse not long after he shakes their hands–you may recall that he and Saddam had a falling out two years ago, and have yet to patch things up. John Paul wanted to begin his Holy Land trip where the Bible says that Abraham was born, in Ur, in southern Iraq. Saddam at first thought it was a fab idea, no doubt in part due to the Pope’s opposition to U.S.-led economic sanctions against Iraq and the legitimacy the visit would give him. But then the irascible Iraqi–for reasons no one knows but for which there are more theories than there are special forces soon to be headed to the Persian Gulf–posted a five-page letter to John Paul on his website. He attacked the Pope, accusing him of being anti-Muslim, and made what seemed a threat of suicide bombers if the Pope showed up: "The true believers…are ready to sacrifice themselves for it now and in the future as they did in the past." John Paul got the message pronto, and canceled his plans.

All of that said, Saddam Hussein did John Paul a big, sweet favor by even thinking about producing the dreaded "weapons of mass destruction": The high-pitched media coverage/drumbeat in America over war with Iraq–combined with the media mania over abducted-teenage-girls of early summer and the all-9/11 anniversary bonanza–has taken the American Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal off the front pages. And that has allowed the Vatican to pursue a stealth plan to rid the priesthood in America and beyond of homosexuals, the people it believes are at the core of the problem.

The stealth plan hasn’t just required waiting until the hungry media pack moved on to bigger and better stories; it has also required speaking in coded terminology. The first trial balloons outright suggesting a purge of homosexuals failed miserably, you may remember. Those were sent up during the height of the sex abuse scandal back in March. "People with these inclinations just cannot be ordained," the Pope’s spokesman, Dr. Joaquin Navarro-Valls, said. "That does not imply a final judgment on people with homosexuality. But you cannot be in this field." Some American cardinals echoed the Vatican’s sentiments, and on a Sunday in June Monsignor Eugene Clark, filling in for Cardinal Edward Egan, blasted gays in his sermon at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, calling homosexuality a "disorder" and saying it was a "grave mistake" to allow gays into the priesthood.

These comments were met with great derision as television commentators and newspaper editorials across the country came down hard on the church. Navarro-Valls’ words in fact gave new steam to progressives in the church working for change. They sat on television talk shows day after day, condemning the Vatican’s scapegoating and underscoring its intolerance. For an institution that moves as glacially as it does, the Vatican changed its p.r. course rather quickly. Cardinals and bishops soon toned down the scapegoating of gays, to the point where it was pretty much absent at the June bishops’ conference in Dallas, as were calls for preventing gays from ordination. One outcome of the Dallas meeting was the creation of a council of lay Catholics–apparently with the Vatican’s blessings–charged with monitoring the church’s handling of sex abuse cases, supposedly to hold church leaders accountable and prevent them from passing the buck and blaming others.

But now, the Pope himself, shielded by all of the attention focused on Saddam Hussein and Iraq (even a certain conservative gay Catholic pundit who couldn’t get enough of criticizing the church months ago is busy warmongering), is putting forth the very same agenda that Navarro-Valls suggested, though in a coded and low-key manner. John Paul said last week–in Portuguese, in a speech to visiting Brazilian bishops at his summer residence south of Rome–that the Roman Catholic Church now needs to be wary of men with "deviations in their affections" who are trying enter the priesthood.

What do you suppose the Pope means by "deviations in their affections"? Well, some might say that he solely means pedophiles, whatever their sexual orientation–as if it is such an easy proposition to spot pedophiles without them having acted on their desires. But this is a church that has called homosexuality "intrinsically disordered," so it’s safe to assume that "deviations in affections" not only was meant to include homosexuality; it may in fact refer only to homosexuality. Remember, the Vatican powerbrokers, equating homosexuality with pedophilia, seem to believe that homosexuality itself is the cause of the abuse scandal.

The Pope’s further words seemed to back that up. He said potential priests have to be screened "above all from the standpoint of morals and affections," warning that screeners have to be on the lookout for "young, immature [men] or those with obvious signs of deviations in their affections."

Obvious signs? Gee, like what? Limp wrists? Lisping? A penchant for pink? Humming too many show tunes? Within our culture there are more "obvious signs"–stereotyped and often ridiculous as they may be–to mark homosexuality than there are to mark pedophiles (for which there are none that I can think of, beyond having a stash of kiddie porn in one’s basement, which isn’t pretty obvious anyway), so it seems pretty clear what the Pope meant here.

The kicker line from the Pope, though–the point that the Vatican and many, if not most, of the American cardinals have been desperate to drive home since the beginning of the scandal and which proves they still don’t get it, was this: "As we sadly know, [such men] can cause grave deviations in the consciences of the faithful, with obvious harm for the entire Church."

In other words, those terrible, deviantly affected men–not the church’s hierarchy that looked the other way from sexual abuse–are the root of the problem, have caused the "faithful" to become disenchanted and have damaged the church. And deviantly affected equals "intrinsically disordered" equals homosexual.

The wordplay and codes, in combination with the church’s scandals being overshadowed by other, fresher news events, worked like a charm. There was little media attention last week focused on the Pope’s comments. And none of the reports I saw in the press analyzed what the Pope may have meant, particularly within the context of the sex abuse crisis and the particular group the Vatican had only a few months ago scapegoated. Here we are, after a conference of the American cardinals in Rome, a meeting of the American bishops and the naming of an outside commission of lay people who actually think they’re going to dig deep, get to the heart of problem and make changes. Meanwhile, as that show goes on, the Vatican is pushing through its own solution, and keeping it all on the down low just by tinkering with a few words.