The New Pope Must Purge the Church of the Lavender Mafia

Many who have written on the needed characteristics of the next pope have said such things as “The next pope needs to call the bishops to proclaim the faith boldly; to restore respect for the sacraments; to unify the polarized elements of the Church.” Few pundits note that purging the Church of the Lavender Mafia, of the homosexual priests and bishops who run the Church, is arguably the most important and the most difficult of all tasks a new pope will face. 

Pope Benedict failed to do the cleanup because he was old, frail, and sick—but even more so because the resistance to his efforts was so strong. Pope Francis, through appointments and his protection of bishops accused of sexual abuse and cover-up of abuse, has only strengthened the Lavendar Mafia. See the recent article by Damian Thompson on Francis’ favorable treatment of predators.

Undoubtedly, many Catholics are still oblivious to the dominance of the Lavender Mafia in the Church. The sex abuse crisis has opened the eyes of many, since bishops have been so lax in dealing with sexual abuse. Their weak response shows us that they are not healthy heterosexuals; for if they were, they would be enraged about the abuse in the Church and society and would not have let hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children to have “gone missing.”

I have written about this problem before. In short, after Vatican II there was a huge exodus of heterosexual priests and seminarians for a variety of reasons (some claim as many as 20,000); the priesthood was becoming more of a social-work profession and that didn’t require ordination. Also, many believed the Church was going to permit married priests. Ironically, this led many heterosexual men to leave the priesthood or seminary and get married; they believed that once the requirement of celibacy was lifted, they could return. The homosexuals remained and expanded their ranks by promoting each other, recruiting homosexuals, and rejecting heterosexuals. 

Let me pause and say that, undoubtedly, there are and have been priests and bishops who are tempted to homosexual acts who have remained chaste and served the Church well. I suspect they are not simply good men but truly holy men; to resist the temptations that the devil and his minions within the Church must have presented them requires supernatural virtues. I admire them beyond words. They are not the Lavender Mafia. And it goes without saying that many priests and bishops are not homosexual.

There is quite a lot of evidence to support the presence of a homosexual underground in the seminaries and priesthood: indispensable is the book by Fr. Donald Cozzens: The Changing Face of the Priesthood (2000), wherein he prophetically maintained that the priesthood was becoming a gay profession. Richard Sipe worked on the topic for years and wrote many books (listed on his website); he concluded that in the early-21st century, 30 percent of the U.S. bishops were active homosexuals. Frédéric Martel, in his sensationalist but nonetheless revealing In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy (2020), said that the Vatican was overrun by homosexuals. While it is too scurrilous for most, Tom Rastrelli’s Confessions of a Gay Priest: A Memoir of Sex, Love, Abuse, and Scandal in the Catholic Seminary (2020) provides a graphic description of his journey through seminary. 

In 2019, Pope Benedict, speaking of the ’60s and ’70s, famously said, “In various seminaries homosexual cliques were established, which acted more or less openly and significantly changed the climate in the seminaries.” Pope Francis, largely considered sympathetic to LGBTQ+ issues, shocked the Italian Episcopal Conference by saying, “there is too much ‘frociaggine’ [faggotry] in seminaries.” (Pope Francis later apologized for his use of the term.) In 2019, Pope Benedict, speaking of the ’60s and ’70s, famously said, “In various seminaries homosexual cliques were established, which acted more or less openly and significantly changed the climate in the seminaries.”Tweet This

Thus, there is every reason to believe that at least in first-world countries the percentage of homosexual bishops is high. Just consider the fact that Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio, a certified Mason, was in charge of appointing bishops worldwide from 1973-1984. His legacy is impressive.

It is impossible to estimate how many of the cardinals participating in the conclave have either been accused of being active homosexuals or of covering up for homosexuals. SNAP (The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) submitted to Cardinal Parolin a list of six of the papabile cardinals who have “either enabled or concealed sexual abuse committed by Catholic Clergy”: Péter Erdő from Hungary, Kevin Farrell from the United States, Victor Manuel Fernández from Argentina, Mario Grech from Malta, Robert Francis Prevost from the United States, and Luis Antonio Tagle from the Philippines. A rainbow cloud hangs over the heads of the cardinals from the United States, either for their own suspected homosexual activities or for cover-up of abusive homosexual priests.

The good news is that things are getting better—for instance, fewer homosexuals are entering seminary, in part because homosexuals no longer need to “hide.” One article reports that before 1980, only 59 percent of newly ordained priests claimed to be heterosexuals; after 2010, 89 percent do. Given those statistics, it is not surprising that only 34 percent of priests ordained before 1980 thought homosexuality to be always wrong; after 2020, 80 percent do. 

But change in the episcopacy will not come soon or easily: the seminaries of the decades from the ’60s through the ’90s, and perhaps beyond, produced the bishops we have today; and they will do their best to reproduce themselves—today’s bishops appoint the next round of bishops.

Why is purging the Lavender Mafia the key task of the next pope, and why is it so out of reach?

Let’s suppose that the Church is governed by a Lavender Mafia, by cardinals, bishops, and priests who are homosexuals. Even for those who enter the seminary with the hope that they could remain chaste and serve the Church, the acceptance of homosexuality in the seminaries and priesthood makes it extremely difficult to keep their resolution. Likely, a corrosion of their faith follows, and they cease seeking to save souls but rather seek advancement through the hedonistic homosexual network. Power becomes their goal.   

Such men are not living single-heartedly for the Lord. Therefore, they become impediments to the task of preaching the salvific power of Jesus. Certainly, they may be able to do many things well and thereby win our respect; they may be good administrators, fundraisers, or researchers; they may have a heart for the poor and marginalized and even for the protection of the unborn; they may have a marvelous pastoral presence. But, in general, their preferred “causes” and ministries are not directed to interior perfection, to virtue, to mystical union with the Lord. Rather, they embrace a social justice that is horizontal—one that seeks material well-being for all instead of holiness for all.

One thing they don’t do and are not able to do is call others to the bracingly self-sacrificial work required of a true disciple of Christ, work which requires an undaunting allegiance to living in accord with the truth, no matter how difficult that may be. 

There are good articles that explain the deleterious effect the Lavender Mafia has on the Church. 

Back in 2000, Fr. Paul Shaughnessy wrote, 

Men entrusted with institutional authority who are enfeebled by deviant compulsive sexuality cannot help but damage the institution, not only by sexual mischief, but in ways unrelated to sex in which their immaturity, hostility, and irresponsibility lead them to sacrifice the common good to their own agenda. 

Sipe noted that active or unrepentant homosexuals will be living lives of hypocrisy: 

A serious conflict arises when bishops who have had or are having sexually active lives with men or women defend their behavior with denial, cover up, and public pronouncements against those same behaviors in others. Their own behavior threatens scandal of exposure when they try to curtail or discipline other clerics about their behavior even when it is criminal as in the case with rape and abuse of minors, rape, or power plays against the vulnerable. 

He also observed, 

Mention is seldom, if ever, made of the moral failing on the part of the priest. Sodomy is a mortal sin, and this sin is compounded on the part of the priest because it involves a further violation of his promises of chastity, in addition to the hypocrisy implicit in his acting against his role of moral teacher and helper of souls. Silence on this subject on the part of bishops and religious superiors is baffling to lay Catholics, who naturally wonder whether there is a double standard in operation that censures laypeople but excuses clergy, that censures heterosexual but excuses homosexual vice.

It is true that we need a pope who will rectify the wrongs done to faithful Catholics in China, who will preach that Catholicism is the one true religion and that not all are saved, who will restore John Paul II’s advocacy for the family, who will permit and promote the Traditional Latin Mass, and who will protect the deposit of faith and talk to us about Jesus. But among his most important acts will be appointing a wise, savvy Secretary of the Dicastery for Bishops, of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, and then the other dicasteries as well. Nuncios must be chosen with the utmost care. The next pope will, however, face fierce opposition from the deep Lavender Mafia, as did Pope Benedict. He will need our prayers and sacrifices.

The Holy Spirit surely has a plan, which, I hope, includes the election of a holy Holy Father capable of doing the seemingly impossible work of ridding the Church of the Lavender Mafia. Or the Church may become impoverished, at least the Church in the United States. It has been bleeding money for abuse settlements and is losing government funds for what it seems has been serious mismanagement of funds. The faithful are donating less to the institutional Church and are instead supporting trustworthy charities. 

It must not be very enjoyable to be a bishop at this time: bishops have lost status and the respect of both their presbyterate and the laity; too much of their job involves closing schools and churches and selling invaluable property. I pray that the next round of bishops will be from the cohort of priests who have kept the Faith, who know they are blessed when poor and persecuted, and who will zealously preach the truths that Jesus came to teach us. It is they who will be able to assist a holy Holy Father who wants nothing more than to do the Father’s will.