Note: If you do a google search on this, be careful not to mistake the National Catholic Reporter, a credible independent journalistic effort, for the National Catholic Register which is not one.
I have not read more than the introduction to Frédéric Martel's clearly sensational book, In The Closet Of The Vatican, about what he claims to have found out about an overwhelming percentage of those who work in and around the Vatican being gay men, he says 80%, apparently a number that some who have worked there do not doubt but others question. A long excerpt of the book (I believe it's the entire intro) was published by National Catholic Reporter. The NRC also published a scathing review, not of the book but of that introduction by one of their experienced journalists, Michael Sean Winters, which Winters admits is not a review since he had not read the whole book. The NRC also posted an actual review which took a more positive review of the book by Donald Cozzens, never let anyone tell you that the NRC is merely an agenda driven publication.
Having read all three of these and being left saying that while I am concerned about the inaccuracies that Winters alleges, I find a lot of what the text I've read and read about seems credible. I think Martel's analysis of how the Catholic Clergy came to be heavily staffed with gay men is insightful, it was a way for gay men in a highly family-oriented pre-liberation culture to hide their sexual preferences. I know of men who went into the priesthood in families and in communities in which a man remaining unmarried and not dating women would have been whispered about as being gay. I'm old enough to remember that. He, as a gay man, probably has deeper insights to the mind sets of gay men than are available to most straight men, I find his suspicion that the stronger the Cardinal or Bishop or priest comes out bashing LGBT people the more likely that they're hiding a hidden gay life to be entirely credible. I also suspect he is spot on in a number of those right wingers in the hierarchy are hypocrites on matters of sexuality. While I believe that most priests have probably at least technically remained chaste or relatively chaste, it's clear a large percentage haven't.
Most credible, I think, is Martel's attribution to the preponderance of unmarried men in the hierarchy of the absolute tone-deafness, absolute cluelessness, callous cruelty of the Catholic hierarchy, especially those who have not worked as parish priests but have had lives in religious communities or, worst of all, in academic theology, in issues of real family life and real sexuality as lay Catholics live it. While I think Michael Sean Winters has a point that to attribute that just to their being gay is probably, to some extent, inaccurate, the fact that just about none of the men who make the policy of the Church have lived typical family lives since they were teenagers is certain to warp their thinking on it. Even at times someone as astute as Pope Francis comes up with some sentimental, unrealistic groaners, especially about women and womens' lives as lived as wives and mothers and as single women in the world.
I have come to the point where I don't want to stay within a Catholic Church which is governed by a small clique of unmarried men, gay or straight or mixed. If this Pope doesn't open up the governing structure of the Church, the Curia, the College of Cardinals, most of all, to married Catholics and Women who are unmarried, I'll support the Roman Catholic Women Priests in their several organizations. I am certain that under Pope Francis the disgusting ban on Women's ordination made by JPII will not be lifted, even if I doubt he really supports it. I think it is his fear of the likes of Cardinal Raymond Burke, other neo-medievalists and the multi-millionaires and billionaires who fund the Catholic hard right will split the church if he makes the change necessary. I think if he wants to have a successful papacy and the Church to survive, one which restores the Catholic Church to something like its claims, then he will have to risk that. I'm not waiting, I consider the Women Priests to be as Catholic as the degraded Vatican which has been the home of so much corruption, sandal and rumor. By their fruits you will know them. I don't mean that to be a pun, it is the actual advice of Jesus as to how to judge those who speak in his name and with his authority. The Vatican is sorely wanting by that standard of judgement.
I am troubled about the book when I read the specific criticisms of its accuracy in Michael Sean Winter's criticism and his listing of actual, errors which can be checked. Clearly the sprawling book was not adequately fact-checked - perhaps along the same line, apparently it lacks an index. I have done enough fact checking of what I write to know that it can be a daunting task to try to avoid inaccuracies and mistaken beliefs but it should be the responsibility of any writer of non-fiction to do that and, as well, their publishers. That said, I think a cleaned up, fact checked and INDEXED AND CITED edition of the book might be not only an important contribution but earth shaking. I will read the whole book but I'd like a better idea of what is gold and what is dross in something I'm supposed to take as a journalist's product. I will say that in that Martel is far from the only offender, I come from the United States with all of the fallen journalistic standards in place here, after all.
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