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When Sodom Came to Church
By Doug Patton
June 24, 2002

"The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." - Albert Einstein

I have deliberately avoided commenting on the scandal currently plaguing the Catholic priesthood, knowing that the manner in which the hierarchy addressed the issue would speak volumes about the depth of the problem. Judging by the church's ecclesiastical hand wringing and world-class hair-splitting, it appears that they intend to do little or nothing about their failure to protect the most vulnerable among us.

Still, as repugnant as the sexual molestation of children is to all of normal America, and no matter how tempting a target America's bishops have made themselves through their inaction, this is not the real issue.

The real topic has been grist for the talk radio mill for months. A cover article in a recent issue of The Weekly Standard called it "the elephant in the sacristy." In April, editor-columnist Tom Barrett (www.ConservativeTruth.org) examined the issue in depth in a well-documented op-ed piece called "Let's Look at the Real Problem."

Now investigative reporter Michael S. Rose, himself not only a Catholic but an experienced writer for Catholic publications, has published "Goodbye, Good Men - How Liberals Brought Corruption into the Catholic Church", an unvarnished look at the perversion of America's Catholic seminaries.

The ugly truth is not that pedophilia has invaded the Catholic priesthood. The dirty little secret is that homosexuality has invaded the Catholic priesthood. What we are all now roundly condemning as "perverse" and "deviant" is simply standard homosexual behavior. After all, there is no organization called the "North American Man-Girl Love Association" (NAMGLA).

The thought of rampant homosexuality among supposedly celibate priests is, in itself, disturbing enough. More alarming still are the societal ramifications that surely will result from the vociferous denial of that truth by both the Catholic hierarchy and the leadership of the so-called gay community. Both want to claim that pedophilia is deviant, while homosexuality is simply an orientation. Both want to pretend that individuals who are so obsessed with sex that it defines their very identity can somehow be celibate. Therefore, both want to play the same ridiculous "don't ask, don't tell" game that has been foisted on our armed forces in recent years.

It has been said that this entire scandal can be laid at the feet of the church's insistence on its priests taking a vow of celibacy. In a way, that is true, because apparently there are not enough heterosexual American males who can be persuaded to trade their God-given desire for a wife and family for a man-made notion of piety through forced isolation.

Homosexuals, on the other hand, have already rejected any and all scripture that labels their "orientation" as deviant. Jesus even said that those who would cause a child to sin would be better off at the bottom of the sea with a stone around their necks! That is fairly unambiguous. If clear biblical admonition cannot dissuade these men from their lust, an artificial tradition such as obligatory celibacy will mean even less, and the priesthood becomes the perfect place to hide among trusting, vulnerable altar boys.

Logically, the AIDS virus should have produced a backlash against homosexuals. Instead, strangely, it was used as a tool for promotion of the very lifestyle that fostered and perpetuated the epidemic in the first place. Education was needed, we were told, to let every young person in America know that "it's okay to be gay," that ignorance and intolerance are the real enemies, not this deadly disease for which there is no cure.

We should expect the same thing to happen with this scandal in the Catholic church. It will be announced that people - especially children - must be educated in order to stamp out the kind of intolerance I have just expressed in this column. We will be told yet again that homosexuals simply want to live in peace, with equal rights, without fear of harassment from bigots who would dare to suggest that the perversion of man-boy sex is a logical outgrowth of the perversion of man-man sex.

And after a while, like the proverbial frog in the slowly heating water, we will be unmoved when told that it was just another Sunday when Sodom came to church.