"Knock and will be closed to you". Faith, magisterium, homosexuality

Interview with Franco Barbero by Ludovica Eugenio taken from Adista n.81/2007

Franco Barbero, theologian and animator of a basic community, in his interview reflect On the relationship between church, sex and power, as it is "in this shady and removed area, created by a power that does not know how to smile at love and feelings and does not live in peace the reality of bodies, the practices of hiding, fertile ground of anguish, blackmail and retaliation are born".

The Church is terrified of homosexuality, but more generally by freedom in emotional and sexual life, on which she wants to maintain a meticulous and ferocious control, which makes nothing to feed a "culture of anguish" and the incidence of immature behaviors among its members, even those of the clergy.

Franco Barbero - theologian and animator of the basic community - embraces the relationship between church, sex and power with a wide look and on the mechanisms for which the homosexual priests are first marginalized and then inquired or persecuted, unless there is the objective risk that they discovered "discover the pot", in which case the silence makes its dust again on this live and submerged world.

And it does so in an interview with Adista starting from the stormy story that in early October catapulted a high Curia prelate on all national media, Msgr. Tommaso Stenico, chief of the congregation for the clergy, taken by a hidden camera of the Exit de la7 program while attempting a homosexual approach with a young man.

According to revelations of Panorama (18/10), Stenico (who defended himself declaring that he had fallen into a trap while carrying out his work as a psychotherapist "to defend the Church") he would have aimed to reveal in a sensational way the scandal of homosexual priests in the Vatican, to "take revenge" of his lack of promotion to Bishop, and this purpose would have drawn up a list of priests over the years homosexuals thanks to his role within the Congregation for the Clergy and Psychologist at the Vatican City Health Assistance Center.

In short, an intertwining of power, control, clandestinity, anguish and guilt which, according to Barbero, has its matrix in a structural inability to live "the reality of the bodies in peace".

The case of Monsignor Stenico, priest and psychotherapist, has highlighted a mechanism in the Church - in the specific case in the Curia - which makes homosexuality an element of retaliation and blackmail. Type everything seems to be born as a retaliation for a lack of appointment, for a failure to promote. What does this attitude come from? Is there also a link between sex and power that moves careers?

The case of Monsignor Stenico, in my opinion, has highlighted above all how cloudy and shady the curial world is and more generally all the "clerical world". Instead of looking at reality and dealing with any problematic aspects, it is preferred to drive everything back into the shadows.

The auxiliary bishop of Sidney, now resigning, in his latest book claims that, when a scandal appears, the ecclesiastical authority manages it with the hope of removing it, instead of dealing with the deep causes.

In this shady and removed area, created by a power that does not know how to smile at love and feelings and does not live the reality of bodies in peace, the practices of hiding, fertile ground of anguish, blackmail and retaliation are born.

On freedom of thought and emotional and sexual life, ecclesiastical power exerts a detailed and ferocious control. If you are a priest or a business bishop, for the institution you are not dangerous, but if you devote yourself from a dogmatic formulation or live an emotional and sexual life different from the sacred canons, then you are out of place. Either do you secretly or leave.

Mountains of anguish and many immature behaviors receive a strong increase or even find a matrix in the fact that there is this iron power of control, which does not let the sunlight live, which forces the clandestinity.

This is one of the perversions of ecclesiastical power that "suffers the happiness of the subjects", needs to hold up and consolidate itself of the culture of anguish, feels comfortable with submissive men and women, possibly gements and crying in this valley of tears.

That's why I know many confreres who tell me: "This church has become my prison ". And so the Church favors the sad landscape of "a thousand suffered obediences"And as many oppressed existences.

From the definition of homosexuality as "intrinsic evil" to the ban for gay seminarians to access the priesthood: the Church is terrified of this dimension of human sexuality. But why shouldn't a priest have to have this sexual orientation?

You say well: the church is terrified of homosexuality. In order to be able to peaceful in the face of homosexual priests, this Church must first re -examine its attitudes, its culture, its pronouncements with respect to homosexual people.

The Catholic theologian James Alison is right to sell when he writes that there is a starting habit: "Perfectly in line with their logic, the Vatican officers do not treat we lesbians and gay as subjects to whom the word can be turned, capable of reasoned linguistic expression. In the Vatican documents we are only their ', objects to which we refer ...
In the official conception people like us are not reasonable subjects who can have something to say about a topic that concerns them. The only homosexual person who can act as a subject is that which accepts that his inclination is defined as a tendency towards intrinsically bad acts from a moral point of view, a tendency to be considered objectively disordered "(faith beyond resentment, Transeuropa books, p. 205).

The number of ruling no less than the language used is impressive. I think of the violence, arrogance and saccentery of the note of the Italian bishops against the I say, the ignorance of the pages of the Lexicon, the obsessive insistence of the documents of the Congregation for the doctrine of the faith.

"Of all lies, none is more terrible and devastating than that according to which homosexuals are unable to love and their love is sick, perverse and can only bring damage and degradation"(J. Alison).

It would be time to honestly recognize that the incompatibility between homosexuality and Christianity is without foundation (Schillebeeckx, Tamayo and Infiniti/and others) and to take scientific research seriously while in fact the Catholic hierarchy encourages the "reparative therapy" (or "reconstructive" or "conservation").

Until peace is made with the normal reality of the homosexual condition, gay priests will be seen as people who in fact "find themselves in a situation that seriously hinders a correct relating to men and women" (education of the Congregation for Catholic Education, November 4, 2005).

Is it too much to say that from emargination have we moved on to the inquisition and persecution? We also try to put ourselves in the shoes of those who feel called to the presbyteral ministry and know they are homosexual ... knock and will be closed ...

Often, in the media but also in the same church, there is the impression that a short circuit is made between the concepts of priest-homosexuality-pedophilia. Homosexuality would be a sort of pedophilia anteroom, therefore, sublimally but not too much, a gay priest becomes a criminal potential ... What are the risks of this attitude for the Church?

Sexual abuse of minors made by priests almost everywhere have aroused an understandable alarm. The hierarchy has done little to seriously face these situations and avoid violence on these victims. This is recent chronicle. But it has done absolutely nothing to clarify that homosexuality and pedophilia are two completely different realities.

In this confusion (which should not be put only on the account of the hierarchical church), homosexual priests are exposed to be seen as potential rapists, a public danger, unreliable people, immature, unable to an educational presence. Do not fight against this confusion means to encourage social and ecclesial prejudice and marginalization.

After this and other similar cases that have to do with Curia monsignors connected to homosexual events, there is the impression that the Vatican Curia is hostage to a mechanism for which, as long as the individual in question does not "speak", he has willing to undertake any clarifying action. What is the stake? What is under the lid?

The hierarchy is well aware that homosexuality is widespread among the members of the clergy. But it is not the only reality that the Vatican does not want to see. Fucking the pot would mean having to take note of some hypocritical situations and far away from the prescriptions of canon law.

If you honestly open the pot of the emotional, relational and sexual life of the clergy, it will be necessary to recognize that there are too many celibates of the facade, too many ambiguous situations, hidden lovers, secret and humiliated wives, "denied" children.
It would be so constructive to look at what boils in the pot and we would also discover many ecclesiastics with a human face, capable of loving another man, a woman, of the children.

We would discover many priests who joyfully live their celibacy as a gift and not as a law. Under the lid there is our humanity, full of fragility, but called to live under the smile of God. We would discover that human love and the love of God are well together, that there is no contradiction between love and ministry.

Instead, it is preferred to put the sepulchral stone of an inhuman ecclesiastical law on the lid. But I am convinced that, despite the widespread pathologies of ecclesiastical obedience, sooner or later the lid will fly away and God will help us find the courage to be human also in the Church.
I have never ceased to dream, to fight and also pray for a church with a human face. Always starting from my personal conversion