Men of God

Homosexuality and the church, they go together like chocolate and peanut butter. Only if the chocolate continually and openly denounced the peanut butter, but kept opening up Reese's Peanut Butter Cup factories in secret all over the world.

Now, if I were to say "Vatican Gay Prostitution Ring", the natural response would be "Which one?" Well, I'm talking about the one that's going on now, not all the other ones.

"Put on some music, swallow a Viagra, and adelante!"

That's the headline in Europe today following reports that a papal aide used an intermediary in an elite Vatican choir to solicit young male choristers and seminarians for prostitution.

Police wiretaps are expected to result in charges against Angelo Balducci, 63, a Papal Gentleman, as lay attendant are called, and the former chairman of the Holy See's Public Works Department, which is itself caught up in a corruption investigation.

According to police, Balducci regularly contacted Chinedu Ehiem Thomas, a Nigerian man who sings in St. Peter's Cappella Giulia, to engage the sexual services of young male members of the choir, along with seminarians and undocumented immigrants seeking residency status.

Prostitution, corruption and fucking over immigrants just for the hell of it. Truly these are men of God. With this scandal actually taking place within the Vatican this time, I wonder if the Pope will be able to ignore it like he and his predecessor ignored so many other scandals? Is the Pope Catholic? Of course he will. It'll be chalked up to a case of "boys will be boys", "what else is the choir there for, anyway", with a healthy dose of "nothing to see here."

But even with this going on we still get a healthy does of moralizing and hypocritical behavior from the Church in the meantime. Like in DC, where the city council passed a law making gay marriage legal there. The church, in response, naturally cut all benefits it paid its workers so they wouldn't have to pay a benefit to a gay couple and then completely shuttered its foster care and adoption programs so that there was no chance a gay might adopt or foster an orphan. For good measure they also shuttered the homeless shelter program. Gays can get married, so fuck everyone's benefits, see you later dirty orphans, and get bent homeless.

I'm sure if gay couple were willing to put out in exchange for a kid, pay a little hush money under the table, and were doing it to keep an immigrant from adopting a child, the Church would have been happy to oblige. So bang up job, Catholicism. When you aren't busy covering up or engaging in massive, horrific crimes, you're taking cheap political stands that harm the lives of people who work for you, children, and the homeless. Just like Jesus would, I assume. I bet you really earnestly wonder why church attendance and religious identification are down, too. I can't see why either.