A Vatican official suspended after being caught on hidden camera making advances to a young man said in an interview that he is not gay and was only pretending to be gay as part of his work.
So, his job description not only requires homophobia; but, hypocrisy.
In an interview with La Repubblica newspaper, Monsignor Tommaso Stenico said he frequented online gay chat rooms and met with gay men as part of his work as a psychoanalyst.
He said that he pretended to be gay in order to gather information about “those who damage the image of the Church with homosexual activity.”
Stenico was secretly filmed making advances to a young man and asserting that gay sex was not sinful. In the Repubblica interview, Stenico said he had met with the young man and pretended to talk about homosexuality “to better understand this mysterious and faraway world which, by the fault of a few people — among them some priests — is doing so much harm to the Church.”
Aside from the usual Stone Age delusions characterizing religion, the Catholic Church’s fixation on every aspect of human sexuality makes them a laughingstock in any educated dialogue.
That whole idea of “Undercover Monsignor” is classic!
Monsignor… take Pastor Ted’s hand and together, you can pray away the gay 😉
#1
Yeah, Ted became hetero in no time…
It is possible only 1% of the population is gay and 9% are researchers. I knew the 10% gay thing was blown out of proportion.
#4 – Dallas
LOL
Hmmm, interesting #4. Correspondingly, I wonder what percentage of priest pedophiles are just doing research?
#6. like the old gag that at most Klan rallies 10% were Klansmen and 90% were undercover Feds.
Yeah right. Actually, there are no pervs at all, they’re scientists.
When is the church going to finally wake up and realize that this is a huge problem!
Next up…
Scientist suspended from Mensa after being caught on hidden camera having gay time in church.
only one thing to say huh?
While Monsignor Stenico was only pretending to be gay to facilitate his “research,” maybe the young man was only pretending to be Catholic so he could “get some.” Meanwhile, the Vatican officials are only pretending to disapprove.
In the good old days, what happened in the Vatican stayed in the Vatican 😉
I wonder if he can tap his right foot too.
#2 The religion of government learned a lot from the church:
Want cash, print it and triple tithe (otherwise known as taxes)
Want to know peoples secrets, spy by tapping phone lines and planting bugs.
Want to explore sexual material, invent the internet and chat rooms.
Want to control people, create fear and then offer to protect the people.
Want to behave like a country, create a history of heroes and a belief in a manifest destiny.
Want to eliminate something, put it on a plane and crash it.
Want to abuse children, create secret societies (skull n’ bones).
Want a god on earth, run for president with anti-abortion platform.
Want to change the rules, write the laws.
Actually it’s generally the media and haters that are fixated with religious policies on sex. If there’s a whole philosophical treatise issued on man’s place in the universe, the summary headline reported is always, ‘Church opposes ocular penetration during sex’ as though that’s what it was about.
Since atheists have little going on spiritually other than masturbation, this is perhaps not surprising.
How do you say “wide stance” in Latin?
>>Since atheists have little going on spiritually other than
>>masturbation, this is perhaps not surprising.
Better watch that kind of talk, son. You’re in the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Atheist Church here, and that kind of blasphemy could get you burned at the stake!!
They don’t need no steenkin’ spirituality; they’ve got comic strips to tell them all about String and Lattice theory, and about the Schrödinger wave equation (even though the have no idea wtf it’s all about), so why should they bother with the bigger questions?
#17 – Mustard Gas
My usual response to you: Read a book. Educate yourself.
Ahh, the straw-man-monger has come out of hiding, I see.
The, a-hem “bigger” questions. Ya. What a hoot.
Science attrmpts to say “how”, Condiment-brain, using provable evidence. “Why” is not in Science’s brief. Anything anyone says about “why”, at this point in our development as a species, is pure hot air.
And any who say that that “why” is answered in a patchwork anthology of folklore, superstitiion, uninformed speculation, insanity and all-encompassing ignorance – are gullible, credulous sheep, amazed, intoxicated and confounded by what is nothing more than the normal operation of chemicals in the human brain.
John, I enjoy hearing your opinions on all things tech (even though I’m a hopeless MacFanBoi), but that’s because you know what you’re talking about. It’s obvious, however, that you don’t know very much about religious matters, even though you have strong opinions. I cordially suggest you stick to things you know something about!
Go Bears… yes, isn’t it odd that almost everyone who is successful with above average intelligence, somehow fail to understand something as intellectually vacuous as religious matters.
#21 – JimR
Yes, it is more than passing strange how rejection of unfounded beliefs correlates positively and strongly with intelligence. I’ve asked our resident Defender of the Faith the Mustard King to explain it, but he immediately tap-dances away from the question like Gregory Hines on crack…
Those stupid damn smart people, idiotically maintaining the conceit that they know more than average people, who obviously must be correct, since they vastly outnumber those atheistic egghead know-it-alls.
The more people who (claim to) believe an irrational thing, the more likely it’s true, right, MM? C’mon, let’s hear it, old chum…
• • • • • • • • •
#20 – GoBears
“John, I enjoy hearing…”
John? What ‘John’? Look again at the byline, where it reads, ‘Eideard’…
“It’s obvious, however, that you don’t know very much about religious matters…”
Oh, please, do tell. I know I speak for a number of us when I say, why don’t you be a little more specific? In what way was religious ignorance made manifest in this post? You imply that there is some sort of sensible, valid religious explanation for priests making sexual advances at impressionable young people, using the Catholic faith to rationalize it.
We’d very much like to learn of this heretofore-unknown religious insight, so please don’t disappoint us.
If only president Clinton had thought of that line…. classic!
I wonder if he was toe tapping in the confession booth?
>>Yes, it is more than passing strange how rejection of
>>unfounded beliefs correlates positively and strongly
>>with intelligence.
Sigh. To quote from The Great Communicator, “there you go again”. Lauren le Poisson, staunch defender or our intellectual vanguard.
Sheesh. The poverty of your spiritual life is cause for great pity, my walleyed friend.
…he said irrelevantly, as he tiptoed around the topic at hand.
Not irrelevant at all, son. Your goal here is to promote the notion that you are smarter, hipper-and-more-happening, naughtier, more dangerous, more free-thinking, more non-conformist, and all-around groovier than any of us mentally defective iconoclasts who don’t believe in the same dogma as you. High goals, for a gigolo! Not to gain a deeper understanding of any sort of spiritual life, which you reject in a knee-jerk fashion not unlike snake-handlers and tongue-speakers reject Darwinism.
The explanation, my morally bankrupt, is unfortunately, probably a little too “nuanced” for an unthinking dogmatist like yourself to appreciate. If I had any reason to believe that your mind was anything other than an Alcatraz of locked steel, I might deign to invest the time and energy. I don’t, so I won’t.
Your loss, m’hijito.
#26, “…he said irrelevantly, as he tiptoed around the topic at hand.”… while he tiptoed through the tulips by the garden of the willow tree.
…he continued, merrily playing the same old evasive tune in the fervent hope that his utter inability to gin up any credible response, however feeble, would pass unnoticed.
• • • • • • •
You’re getting pretty glib with those ad hominem airs of smug superiority, old fruitbat. My Smug-O-Meter went offscale when I fed that last one…
Marvelous form of blithe egocentrism, that – imagining that the experience of awe, or wonderment, or cosmic humility, or transcendant mystery is reserved strictly to those like yourself who, in their lack of understanding of neurochemical thought phenomena, credulously and childishly assume them to be indicia of some sort of mysterious messages from beyond the natural world.
Trance states, sensory deprivation, psychedelic drugs – all of these and more are well-known for evoking mental states that, in the perceptions of those unfamiliar with the neurochemical origins of said states, are totally convincing “religious” experiences.
If you, Musty, were to have my degree of extensive psychedelic experience, both first- and second-hand, you would know as well as I that there are many paths to Nirvana, Satori, téte-á-tetes with your preferred flavor of deity or ‘spirit’, or whatever variety of spiritual awakening that happens to float your personal metaphysical boat.
Let me give you a gift of Enlightenment, a free lesson; It costs nothing, and it gives you no shortcut to any of the Answers to the Big Questions, since you cannot possibly grasp it’s full import until you have experienced it yourself firsthand.
Your current obvious striving for spiritual ‘status’ – as blatantly evinced by your self-aggrandizing assertions of spiritual ‘superiority’ – will become your shame, then later, as awareness dawns upon you, an amusing peccadillo that all must commit as they take their first steps along the path. It’s not a competition. But as – and if – you make any progress along the Way, only then will you come to see clearly that it could never be one. In the meantime you will, as all seekers are at first, be incapable of understanding the nature of the goal. And so your petit, dead-end ego-games will continue to keep your eyes off the prize.
Have that knowledge with my best wishes. When the time comes that you will have use of it, you’ll know. Until then, you will strive. 🙂
#20 – Two Words: Adrian Peterson!
JimR – good ‘un… 😉