Image: Kai Pilger

Call me vain. I finally finished my site logo this morning, and so far I’ve spent over an hour uploading it and trying to get it to work with my header, but IT.JUST.WON’T. So I’ll have to let it go.

I wanted the logo up because I wanted to write this post. But I realize now, logo or not will make no difference at all in what I have to say:

Pope Francis resigning or not resigning will make no difference at all.

I’ve heard people say that he needs to resign if he either does not have the guts or the capability to eradicate the lavender mafia.

But it’s not about Pope Francis’ guts or his capability. It’s about THE LAVENDER MAFIA.

It is so deeply entrenched now, both in Catholic and non-Catholic minds, that homosexuality is NOT a problem. It is not intrinsically disordered. People have bought into “born this way”. You cannot “pray the gay away” any more than you can “cure” it with therapy. There is no such thing as “homosexual subculture” in the clergy or the Church. All those men/priests abused those children/boys/teens because they were PREDATORS; homosexuality plays no part in it at all. Even in my Catholic groups where people have studied their Bibles, their Catechism, their encyclicals, only a small percentage will say that homosexuality needs to be rooted out of the Church, EVEN when they admit that homosexual priests and homosexual behavior are potential problems in our seminaries.

People are saying it’s not about homosexuality, it’s about POWER. But we’re not dealing with a dichotomy here. Homosexuality + Power can very well lead to abuse. But because it implicates IDENTITY, no one will admit that this is the case.

We are called to love every single person that God has created: male, female, young, old, heterosexual, homosexual, and everyone else in between. No question there.

But we need to see this problem for what it is before we can solve it. This is about what we are willing to do to stop the abuse.

Right now, too many of us will not admit that homosexuality is part of the problem. We’re blaming the POWER part of the equation without looking at the HOMOSEXUALITY part of the equation. We know that not all homosexuals are abusers: homosexuality in and of itself doesn’t imply abusive behavior. But couple that with access, and power in all its forms, and especially within the confines of our seminaries, and this is what we get.

All of us have some loved one, a family member, a friend, a colleague, who identifies as homosexual, hence our loss of objectivity. We have grown so scared of saying that a homosexual needs help. We don’t even want to call homosexual behavior a sin anymore, because what is sin anyway.

Until we are willing to recognize this, we will forever be stuck in status quo. Not even Pope Francis’ resignation will bring about change. Until we admit that homosexuality + power is a deadly combination, none of us, and especially not the feminists, the LGBTUVWXYZ movement, or the mainstream media, will be willing to lift a finger to prevent the abuse from happening again. Because as another writer pointed out, all these liberal activists, lobbyists, etc., WANT these abusive priests, bishops, cardinals, IN POWER, despite what they do, because they are the ones who are changing the Church from within. Pope Francis can’t and won’t get rid of them; even if he sincerely wanted to, he simply won’t be allowed to do so.

If there’s anything we should demand, it’s not Pope Francis’ resignation. We need to demand that all documents be released and every network and publication do their job to investigate and report the truth.

And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.” – Mark 9:29