How Gay Friendly was the Catholic Church in the Past?: Not Very. St. Peter Damian on Clerical Sodomy
Antipope Francis vs Pope St. Pius V
St. Peter
Damian’s
Book of Gomorrah
Book of Gomorrah
A
Moral Blueprint for Our Times
by Randy Engel
Part I
The Life of St. Peter Damian (1007-1072)
It appears that whenever Holy Mother Church
has had a great need for a special kind of saint for a particular age, God, in
His infinite mercy, has never failed to fill that need. And so, in the year
1007 A.D., a boy child was born to a noble but poor family in the ancient Roman
city of Ravenna, who would become a Doctor of the Church, a precursor of the
Hildebrandine reform in the Church and a key figure in the moral and spiritual
reformation of the lax and incontinent clergy of his time.
Tradition tells us that St. Peter Damian’s entrance into
this world was initially an unwelcome event that overtaxed and somewhat
embittered his already large family. He was orphaned at a young age, and his
biographer John of Lodi tells us that were it not for the solicitude of his
older brother Damian, an archpriest at Ravenna,
the youth might have lived out his life in obscurity as a swineherd. But God
deemed otherwise. Peter’s innate intellectual talents and remarkable piety in
the light of great adversity were recognized by the archpriest, who plucked his
younger brother from the fields and provided him with an excellent education
first at Ravenna, then Faenza and finally at the University of Parma. In
return, Peter acknowledged his brother’s loving care by adopting Damian as his
surname.
Although he excelled in his studies and quickly rose in
academic ranks, Peter felt drawn to the religious rather than university life.
His spirituality would be formed by his love for the Rule of St. Benedict and his attraction to the rigorous penance and
individualistic practices of St. Romuald.
In his late twenties he was welcomed into the Benedictine
hermitage of the Reform of St. Romuald at Fonte-Avellena where he eventually
became Prior — a position he retained until his death on February 21, 1072
while also serving as Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia,
an honor bestowed upon Peter by Pope Stephen IX in 1057. The life of the
well-traveled holy monk was distinguished by his great learning and a marvelous
knowledge of Holy Scripture, and by great penitential acts, which served both
as a rebuke and as an inspiration to his fellow monks and the secular clergy at
a time in the Church when moral turpitude was endemic in clerical ranks. His
wise counsel and diplomatic skills were employed by a lengthy succession of
Popes, most importantly, Pope Leo IX, another forerunner of the Gregorian
Reform. Peter Damian died in the odor of sanctity on February 22, 1072 in his
sixty-sixth year.1
The Book of Gomorrah — A Lesson for Yesterday, Today
and Tomorrow
Among St. Peter Damian’s most famous writings is his
lengthy treatise, Letter 31, the Book of Gomorrah (Liber Gornorrhianus), containing the
most extensive treatment and condemnation by any Church Father of clerical pederasty
and homosexual practices.2 His manly discourse on the vice of sodomy in general and clerical
homosexuality and pederasty in particular, is written in a plain and forthright
style that makes it quite readable and easy to understand.
In keeping with traditional Church teachings handed down
from the time of the Apostles, he holds that all homosexual acts are crimes
against Nature and therefore crimes against God who is the author of Nature.
It is also refreshing to find an ecclesiastic whose first
and primary concern in the matter of clerical sexual immorality is for God’s
interests, not man’s, especially with regard to homosexuality in clerical
ranks. Also, his special condemnation of pederastic crimes by clergy against young
boys and men (including those preparing for holy orders) made over nine hundred
years ago, certainly tends to undermine the excuse of many American bishops and
Cardinals who claim that they initially lacked specific knowledge and
psychological insights by which to assess the seriousness of clerical
pederastic crimes.
Upon a first reading of the Book of Gomorrah I think
the average Catholic would find himself in a state of shock at the severity of
Damian’s condemnation of clerical sodomical practices as well as the severe
penalties that he asks Pope Leo IX to attach to such practices.
Part of this reaction, as J. Wilhelm asserts with regard
to modern Catholics’ adverse reaction to the severity of medieval penalties
(including capital punishment for heresy), can be attributed to the fact that
we live in an age that has “less regard for the purity of the faith”.3 Many Catholics have simply
lost a sense of sin. It does not seem to matter if an overt effete homosexual
cleric “camps” it out on the altar while administering heretical rites for an
Ash Wednesday service. Like those watching Hilaire Belloc’s new barbarians at
the gate, parishioners smile. They are titillated. They find him ‘amusing’.4
Also, many Catholics today have little, if any, knowledge
of how the early Church Fathers dealt with the issue of homosexuality,
including pederasty, in clerical ranks.
Take, for example, the spiritual and physical penalties
declared by the 4th Century architect of Eastern monasticism, St. Basil of
Cesarea (322-379AD), for the cleric or monk caught making sexual advances
(kissing) or sexually molesting young boys or men. The convicted offender was
to be whipped in public, deprived of his tonsure (head shaven), bound in chains
and imprisoned for six months, after which he was to be contained in a separate
cell and ordered to undergo severe penances and prayer vigils to expiate his
sins under the watchful eye of an elder spiritual brother. His diet was that of
water and barley bread — the fodder of animals. Outside his cell, while engaged
in manual labor and moving about the monastery, the pederast monk was to be
always monitored by two fellow monks to insure that he never again had any
contact with young men or boys.5
One wonders how many homosexuals and pederasts would be
lining up at Bernard Cardinal Law’s or any other American prelates, seminary
door if they knew that such a harsh fate awaited them if they were found guilty
of even attempting much less carrying
out the sexual seduction and molestation of minor boys and young men?
And speaking of seminaries, I might mention the papal
ruling of St. Siricius, a contemporary of St. Basil, who ordered that “vessels
of vice,” that is known sodomists, including those who had fulfilled their
penance, were forbidden from seeking entrance to the clerical state.6
Considering that the Book
of Gomorrah was written in 1049 A.D. it borders on the miraculous to note
how many of Damian’s insights can be applied to the current pederast and
homosexual debacle here in the United States
and abroad, including the Vatican.
His treatise certainly stands as a masterful refutation of contemporary
homosexual apologists who claim that the early Fathers of the Church did not
understand the nature or dynamics of homosexuality. Rather, as Damian’s work
demonstrates, the degradation of human nature as exemplified by sodomical acts
is a universal phenomenon that transcends time, place and culture.
One of the main points of the Book of Gomorrah, is the author’s insistence on the responsibility
of the bishop or superior of a religious order to curb and eradicate the vice
from their ranks.7 He minces no words in his condemnation of those prelates who refuse or
fail to take a strong hand in dealing with clerical sodomical practices either
because of moral indifferentism or the inability to face up to a distasteful
and potentially scandalous situation.8
Other issues tackled by St. Peter Damian which have a
particular relevance today are:
• The problems of homosexual
bishops or heads of religious orders who engage their “spiritual sons” in acts
of sodomy.
• The sacrilegious use of
the sacraments by homosexual clerics and religious.
• The special problems for
the Church related to the seduction of
youths by clerical pederasts, and
• The problem of overtly lax
canons and penances for clerical and religious offenders that make a mockery of
the seriously sinful nature of homosexual acts.
The Motivation for a Treatise on Sodomy
When the humble monk and future saint, Peter Damian,
presented his Letter 31, the Book of
Gomorrah, to Pope Leo IX in 1049, he made it clear that his first and
overriding concern was for the salvation of souls. While the work is addressed
specifically to the Holy Father, its distribution was intended for the
universal Church, most especially the bishops of secular clergy and superiors
of religious orders.
In his introduction, the holy writer makes clear that the
Divine calling of the Apostolic See makes its primary consideration “the
welfare of souls”. Therefore, he pleads with the Holy Father to take action
against “a certain abominable and most shameful vice,” which he identifies
forthrightly as “the befouling cancer of sodomy,” that is ravaging both the
souls of the clergy and the flock of Christ in his region, before God unleashes
His just wrath on the people.9 Recognizing how nauseating
the very mention of the word sodomy must be to the Pope, he nevertheless asks
with blunt frankness:
“... if a physician is appalled by the contagion of the
plague, who is likely to wield the cautery? If he grows squeamish when he is
about to apply the cure, who will restore health to stricken hearts?”10
Leaving nothing to misinterpretation, Damian
distinguishes between the various forms of sodomy and the stages of sodomical
corruption beginning with solitary and mutual masturbation and ending with
interfemoral (between the thighs) stimulation and anal coitus.11 He notes that there is a
tendency among prelates to treat the first three degrees of the vice with an
“improper leniency,” preferring to reserve dismissal from the clerical state
for only those men proven to be involved in anal penetration. The result,
Damian states, is that a man, guilty of the “lesser” degrees of the vice,
accepts his milder penances, but remains free to pollute others without the
least fear of losing his rank. The predictable result of his superior’s
leniency, says Damian, is that the vice spreads, the culprit grows more daring
in his illicit acts knowing he will not suffer any critical loss of his
clerical status, he loses all fear of God and his last state is worse than his
first.12
Damian decries the audacity of men who are “habituated to
the filth of this festering disease,” and yet dare to present themselves for
holy orders, or if already ordained, remain in office.13 Was it not for such crimes
that Almighty God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, and slew Onan
for deliberately spilling his seed on the ground? he asks.14 Quoting St. Paul’s letter
to the Ephesians (Eph 5:5) he
continues, “... if an unclean man has no inheritance at all in Heaven, how can
he be so arrogant as to presume a position of honor in the Church, which is
surely the kingdom of God?”15
The holy monk likens sodomites seeking holy orders, to
those citizens of Sodom who threatened “to use
violence against the upright Lot” and were
about to break down the door when they were smitten with blindness by the two
angels and could not find the doorway. Such men, he says, are stricken with a
similar blindness, and “by the just decree of God they fall into interior
darkness”.16
If they were humble they would be able to find the door
that is Christ, but they are blinded by their “arrogance and conceit,” and
“lose Christ because of their addiction to sin,” never finding “the gate that
leads to the heavenly dwelling of the saints,” Damian laments.17
Not sparing those ecclesiastics who knowingly permit
sodomites to enter holy orders or remain in clerical ranks while continuing to
pollute their office, the holy monk lashes out at “do-nothing superiors of
clerics and priests,” reminding them that they should be trembling for
themselves because they have become “partners in the guilt of others,” by
permitting “the destructive plague” of sodomy to continue in their ranks.18
Homosexual Bishops Who Prey on their Spiritual Sons
Then comes the bitterest blast of all reserved for those
bishops who “commit these absolutely damnable acts with their spiritual sons”.19 “Who can expect the flock
to prosper when its shepherd has sunk so deep into the bowels of the devil ...
Who will make a mistress of a cleric, or a woman of a man? ... Who, by his
lust, will consign a son whom he spiritually begotten for God to slavery under
the iron law of Satanic tyranny,” Damian thunders.20 Drawing an analogy between
the sentence inflicted on the father who engages in familial incest with his
daughter or the priest who commits “sacrilegious intercourse” with a nun, with
the defilement of a cleric by his superior, he asks if the latter should escape
condemnation and retain his holy office?21 Actually, the latter case deserves an even
worse punishment says Damian, because whereas the prior two cases involved
natural intercourse, a religious superior guilty of sodomy has not only
committed a sacrilege with his spiritual son, but has also violated the law of
nature. Such a superior damns not only his own soul but takes another with him,
Damian states.22
The Continuing Scandal of Bishop Daniel Ryan
I do not know who or what comes to one’s mind after
reading such an excoriating censure of homosexual bishops and Cardinals whose
unnatural lusts drive them to prey on rather than pray for the spiritual sons
that Holy Mother Church has entrusted to their care. Mine went directly to the
person of Bishop Daniel Leo Ryan.
Ryan was consecrated an auxiliary bishop of the Joliet
diocese on September 30, 1981 by Joseph L. Imesch, Bishop of Joliet, and
assisted by Daniel W. Kucera, Bishop of Salina and the future Archbishop of
Dubuque and prime architect of the infamous New
Creation sex ‘catechism’ which bears his imprimatur.23 Two years later, on
November 19, 1983, Pope John Paul II appointed Ryan Bishop of Springfield, IL.
He was installed on January 18, 1984.24
In 1999, Ryan took an unexpected early retirement for
“health reasons” amid well-documented charges by Roman Catholic Faithful (RCF),
based in Springfield,
that he (Ryan) is an active homosexual who has engaged in gross homosexual
misconduct with area under-age male prostitutes, and clergy.25 The Holy See and the
American papal nuncio were said to have been aware of Ryan’s predatory
homosexual propensities.26
Among the witnesses who came forward to support RCF’s
indictment against Ryan’s sexual exploits was Frank Robert Bergen, a former
runaway turned male prostitute who contacted RCF and informed President Steve
Brady that he had had sodomical relations as a minor with Ryan and other
priests. Bergen
said that the bishop had heard his confession and absolved him of his sins each
and every time he had a sexual encounter with him."27
When Bishop Ryan
“retired,” his episcopal office was filled by Bishop George Lucas, former
chancellor of the Archdiocese of St. Louis and a close associate of Archbishop
Justin Rigali. Lucas’ installation reception was held at the Ansar Shrine
Masonic Temple
in Springfield, IL.28 His influential mentor,
Archbishop Rigali was consecrated for service to the Holy See in the mid-1980s
by Pope John Paul II and served as papal chamberlain and Secretary of the
College of Cardinals until his return to the United States as Archbishop of St.
Louis in 1994.29
Under Lucas’s bishopric, RCF reports that Bishop Ryan has
continued to say Mass publicly and has administered the Sacrament of
Confirmation in both the Springfield and Joliet dioceses. He
(Ryan) was in attendance at Lucas’s installation. In February of this year, the
Springfield diocese announced that Bishop Ryan
would be the presenter of “A Lenten Day of Reflection & Prayer for
Priests,” at Sts. Mary and Joseph Church in Carlinville, IL.30
Seen Through the Eyes of St. Peter Damian
Let us now recall the warnings of the monk-author of the Book of Gomorrah presented hereto.
By any standard, the Holy See’s lack of public censure in
the Ryan case must be considered incredibly lenient. No public chastisement, no
shaved head, no chains, no solitary confinement in an isolated monastery under
strict guard, no bread and water diet, as proposed by St. Basil. No! Quite the
opposite!
Bishop Ryan continues to remain a retired bishop in “good
standing”. Neither his pederast activities with minor males nor the sexual
harassment of his “spiritual sons” have been publicly denounced by either the Vatican or his
fellow bishops including Bishops Lucas and Imesch. As predicted by Damian, Ryan
has not been humbled by his personal shame or the shame he has brought on Holy Mother Church. Indeed the whole experience
appears to have stimulated his audacity to even greater heights. He collects
his pension, has unlimited mobility, easy contact with youth and where, by his
very presence, he continues to pollute, figuratively if not literally, the
faithful priests and religious of his and other dioceses who have to suffer
daily the remembrances of his homosexual affairs. Not to mention the public
scandal caused by his public appearances at public sacramental rites of the
Church.
So I find it necessary to ask, has the Holy See fallen
into such a state of dissolution that it can no longer profess, much less
protect, God’s interests in this matter and defend the sanctity of Holy Orders
from the pollution of the sodomites? Do not the horrific acts of predatory
homosexual clerics and bishops like Ryan, and Symonds and Ziemann, to name but
a few, strike the fear of God into the heart of our Holy Father and the members
of the Roman Curia?31
Clerical Homosexual Abuse of the Sacrament of Confession
Leaving the matter of active homosexual members of the
hierarchy and religious orders for the moment, let us move on to what Damian
denounces as one of “the devil’s clever devices” concocted in “his ancient
laboratory of evil,” by which confirmed clerical sodomites, experiencing a
pricking conscience, “confess to one another lest their guilt come to the
attention of others”.32
As Damian observes however, though such men have become
“penitents involved in great crimes,” they appear to look none the worse for
their penances. “... their lips are not pale from fasting nor are their bodies
wasted by self-denial,” nor are their eyes red from weeping for their sins, he
observes.33
The holy monk questions the validity of such confessions
asking, “By what right or by what law can one bind or loose the other when he
is constrained by the bonds of evil deeds common to them both?”34
Quoting Holy Scripture concerning “the blind leading the
blind,” (Matt 8:4; Luke 5:4) Damian
continues, “... it becomes perfectly clear that he who is oppressed by the same
guilty darkness tries in vain to invite another to return to the light of
repentance. While he has no fear of extending himself to outstrip the other in
erring, he ends up accompanying his follower into the yawning pit of ruin.”35
Since this practice remains a common one today within the
homosexual underworld of diocesan priests, bishops and religious and between
pederast priests and their young victims, it
may be well to recall that under the revised 1983 Code of Canon Law, the
absolution of a partner (clerical or layperson) in a sin against the sixth
commandment of the Decalogue is invalid, except in danger of death (Can. 977)
and a priest who acts against the prescription of Can. 977 incurs a latae sententiae excommunication, the
lifting of which is reserved to the Apostolic See. (Can. 1378 §1) Unless the offending
priest has his excommunication lifted by the Sacred Penitentiary or the Holy
Father, he has not been validly absolved. Should he attempt to offer the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass in a state of mortal sin he compounds his offenses with the
grave sin of sacrilege.
Sodomite Priests and the Sacred Mysteries
In a lengthy and scathing attack on faulty and “spurious”
canons and codices related to penalties for various sodomical acts that were in
use by the Church in the mid-1000s, Damian compares them to the harsh and long
penances assigned to laymen guilty of unnatural acts with men and beasts by the
Church Fathers at the Council of Ancyra (314 A.D.), and finds them wanting.36
If, under earlier Church laws, a layman guilty of sodomy can be deprived of the Holy Eucharist for
up to twenty-five years or even till the end of his life, how is it possible
that a similarly offending cleric or
monk is let off with minor penances and is judged worthy to not only
receive the Holy Eucharist but consecrate the Sacred Mysteries?, he asks.37 If the holy Fathers
ordained that sodomites should “pray in the company of demoniacs,” how can such
a cleric hope to rightly exercise his priestly office as a “mediator” between
God and His people? Damian continues.38
Later, Damian returns to this same theme and exclaims
“For God’s sake, why do you damnable sodomites pursue the heights of
ecclesiastical dignity with such fiery ambition?”39 He warns these clerics, who
persist in their unnatural lusts, against inflaming the wrath of God, “lest by
your prayers you more sharply provoke Him whom your wicked life so obviously
offends”.40 At the conclusion of this section, Damian reminds clerics and prelates
alike that, “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”41 (Heb 10..31)
Remarkable Insights into the Nature of Homosexuality
In his description of the unnatural passions that rule
over the sodomite, Damian reveals an extraordinary degree of perception
regarding the narcissistic, promiscuous and compulsive psychosexual aspects of
homosexual behavior.
“Tell us, you unmanly and effeminate man, what do you
seek in another male that you do not find in yourself?” he asks. “What
difference in sex, what varied features of the body?” he continues.
Then he explains the law of life. “For it is the function
of the natural appetite that each should seek outside himself what he cannot
find in his own capacity. Therefore, if the touch of masculine flesh delights
you, lay your hands upon yourself and be assured that whatever you do not find
in yourself, you seek in vain in the body of another,” he concludes.42
The Particular Malice of the Vice of Sodomy
A wise Dominican once told this writer, that once the
vice of sodomy has contaminated a seminary, Church authorities have only two
options — close the place down and send everyone home or do nothing and simply
wait for the moral rot to spread until the foundation collapses on its own. Why
is this particular vice so deadly to the religious life?
According to Damian, the vice of sodomy “surpasses the
enormity of all others,” because:
“Without fail, it brings death to the body and
destruction to the soul. It pollutes the flesh, extinguishes the light of the
mind, expels the Holy Spirit from the temple of the human heart, and gives
entrance to the devil, the stimulator of lust. It leads to error, totally
removes truth from the deluded mind ... It opens up hell and closes the gates
of paradise ... It is this vice that violates temperance, slays modesty,
strangles chastity, and slaughters virginity ... It defiles all things, sullies
all things, pollutes all things ...
“This vice excludes a man from the assembled choir of the
Church ... it separates the soul from God to associate it with demons. This
utterly diseased queen of Sodom
renders him who obeys the laws of her tyranny infamous to men and odious to
God... She strips her knights of the armor of virtue, exposing them to be
pierced by the spears of every vice ... She
humiliates her slave in the church and condemns him in court; she defiles him
in secret and dishonors him in public; she gnaws at his conscience like a worm
and consumes his flesh like fire. ... this unfortunate man (he) is deprived
of all moral sense, his memory fails, and the mind’s vision is darkened.
Unmindful of God, he also forgets his own identity. This disease erodes the
foundation of faith, saps the vitality of hope, dissolves the bond of love. It
makes way with justice, demolishes fortitude, removes temperance, and blunts
the edge of prudence. (emphasis added)
“Shall I say more?”43
No, dearest St. Peter Damian, I think not.
Repent and Reform Your Lives
Like every saint before him, and every saint that will
ever come after him, St. Peter Damian exhorts the cleric caught in the vice of
sodomy to repent and reform his life and in the words of the Blessed Apostle
Paul, “Wake up from your sleep and rise from the dead, and Christ will revive
(enlighten) you.”44 (Eph 5:14) In a remarkable
affirmation of the Gospel message, he warns against the ultimate sin of
despairing of God’s mercy and the necessity of fasting and prayer to subdue the
passions:
“... beware of
drowning in the depths of despondency. Your heart should beat with confidence
in God’s love and not grow hard and impenitent, in the face of your great
crime. It is not sinners, but the wicked who should despair; it is not the
magnitude of one’s crime, but contempt of God that dashes one’s hopes.”45
Then, in one of the most beautiful elocutions on the
grandeur of priestly celibacy and chastity ever written, Damian reminds the
wayward cleric or monk of the special place reserved in Heaven for those
faithful priests and monks who have willingly forsaken all and made themselves
eunuchs for Christ’s sake. Their names shall be remembered forever because they
have given up all for the love of God, he says.46
Fraternal Correction is an Act of Mercy
Saints are realists, which is no doubt why St. Peter
Damian anticipated that his “small book” which exposes and denounces homosexual
practices in all ranks of the clergy including the hierarchy, would cause a
great commotion in the Church. And it did.
In anticipation of harsh criticism, the holy monk puts
forth his own defense as a ‘whistle-blower’. He states that his would-be
critics will accuse him of “being an informer and a delator of my brother’s
crimes,” but, he says, he has no fear of either “the hatred of evil men or the
tongues of detractors”.47
Hear, dear reader, the words of St. Peter Damian that
come thundering down to us through the centuries at a time in the Church when
many shepherds are silent while clerical wolves, some disguised in miters and
brocade robes, devour its lambs and commit sacrilege against their own
spiritual sons;
“... I would
surely prefer to be thrown into the well like Joseph who informed his father of
his brothers’ foul crime, than to suffer the penalty of God’s fury, like Eli,
who saw the wickedness of his sons and remained silent. (Sam 2:4) ... Who am I, when I see this pestilential practice
flourishing in the priesthood to become the murderer of another’s soul by
daring to repress my criticism in expectation of the reckoning of God’s
judgement? ... How, indeed, am I to love my neighbor as myself if I negligently
allow the wound, of which I am sure he will brutally die, to fester in his
heart? … 48
“So let no man
condemn me as I argue against this deadly vice, for I seek not to dishonor, but
rather to promote the advantage of my brother’s well-being.
“Take care not to appear partial to the delinquent while
you persecute him who sets him straight. If I may be pardoned in using Moses’
words, ‘Whoever is for the Lord, let him stand with me.’ (Ezek 32:26)”49
True Church Reform Begins with the Vicar of Christ
As he draws his case against the vice of clerical sodomy
to a close, St. Peter Damian pleads with another future saint, Pope Leo IX,
urging the Vicar of Christ to use his office to reform and strengthen the
decrees of the sacred canons with regard to the disposition of clerical
sodomites including religious superiors and bishops who sexually violate their
spiritual sons.
Damian asks the Holy Father to “diligently” investigate
the four forms of the vice of sodomy cited at the beginning of his treatise and
then provide him (Damian) with definitive answers to the following questions by
which the “darkness of uncertainty” might be dispelled and an “indecisive
conscience” freed from error:
Is one who is guilty of these crimes to be expelled
irrevocably from holy orders?
Whether at a prelate’s discretion, moreover, one might
mercifully be allowed to function in office?
To what extent, both in respect to the methods mentioned
above and to the number of lapses, is it permissible to retain a man in the
dignity of ecclesiastical office?
Also, if one is guilty, what degree and what frequency of
guilt should compel him under the circumstances to retire?50
Damian closes his famous letter by asking Almighty God to
use Pope Leo IX’s pontificate “to utterly destroy this monstrous vice” that a
prostrate Church may everywhere rise to vigorous stature”.51
