It should be stressed that the reports in the air today are based on leaked notes from the meeting with Francis, and the Vatican has refused to confirm or deny their content, so we don’t actually know what the pope said. Nonetheless, because the “gay lobby” business is back in the headlines, I’ll repeat here what I said in February.
Bottom line: It’s no secret there are gays in the Vatican, and it’s reasonable to think officials would be concerned that insiders with a secret to keep might be vulnerable to various kinds of pressure. The issue, in other words, isn’t so much their sexuality, but rather the potential for manipulation anytime someone serving the pope is leading a double life. That said, there’s also no evidence this was the “real” reason Benedict quit just as there’s no reason to believe now that Francis is on the cusp of launching an anti-gay witch hunt.
At least in TEC, there’s no speculation on whether there is a “gay lobby.”
I wonder how long it will be before ACNA gets infected.
A man leading a double life is a pedestrian security concern.
A self-conscious cabal is an existential threat to the Church.
The distinction between the two is critical. In the former case, such a man is valuable for exploitation by outside forces with instrumental objectives. He can be forced to do sonething he doesn’t want to do. For the blackmailing party, the efficacy remains only so long as the man is isolated.
In the latter case the persons are not mere tools of outsiders but are themselves the threat, as a group with it’s own agency and agenda at odds with the Faith. They are in a position to do harm that they *desire* to do.
Allen subtly conflates the one with the other with a facility that almost seems deliberate.
The fulcrum in the conflation sets at the point in the article where shepherds of the Church are described as “officials”. “Officials” are bureaucrats with merely functional concerns– concerns such as security. The Christian understanding of “shepherd” is, by contrast, one of moral accountability.