The Pope is not Gay: book review

For many years the American Psychiatric Association included homosexuality in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Without going quite that far, one turbid paragraph in the "Considerations" document starts with the rights of homosexual persons and finishes with contagious or mentally ill persons, via logic which was too dark for me. The document seems to be throwing mud and expecting some of it to stick.

Discrimination against homosexuals, for example in employment and housing, is justified on grounds of protecting children and the family.

Rape of children is acknowledged in the 1992 catechism to be a particularly evil act. Apart from such references, the church documents included in the book are curiously silent on the subject of child abuse by clergy and indeed on homosexuality among the ordained.

The church dances around gay-bashing. On the one hand, it condemns such "irrational and violent" behaviour. On the other, it finds it "understandable" that people respond violently to demands for gay rights. So the church seems to pat gay-bashers on the shoulder, saying "we understand."

Instructions are directed to politicians in particular: "when legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed …, the Catholic law-maker has a moral duty to express his opposition…." In a "Doctrinal Note on … the Participation of Catholics in Political Life," Sir Thomas More is held up as the patron saint of politicians. The note does not recall that, as chancellor under Henry VIII, he approved the execution by burning of people whom he found guilty of owning a copy of the Bible in English.

Another important issue is Ratzinger's attitude to Islam, the subject of a lecture at the University of Regensburg, where he quoted a Byzantine emperor on the "evil and inhuman" things spread by Muhammad. In the ensuing storm, the pope could truthfully say that he was giving the views of another person, not his own. Well and good, but Ratzinger merely described the emperor's manner as "brusque" and "heavy-handed," i.e. he was far from dissociating himself from the essential content. According to The Pope is Not Gay! the speech was not a gaffe but a considered declaration of papal thinking. This is more than plausible.

I found that I was often drawn to the implications rather than the literal meaning of the church texts. I don't think this is because I was in a paranoid state when reading them: I think they are carefully crafted to have implications - to suggest things which, when required, the church can truthfully deny are actually stated.

I recently watched again the London IQ² debate on the thesis "That the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world," with Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry arguing the negative. The first speaker for the affirmative, His Grace Cardinal Archbishop of Abuja, John Onaiyekan, urged the need to read what the Vatican actually said, rather than what it was reported to have said. I have now done that (assuming that the transcripts in The Pope is Not Gay! are accurate). I suppose I could have read the Vatican documents on its website, but I hadn't. Now I have read a selection, and found them appalling.

The book has an Italian focus but references are explained by helpful notes, so that the discussion is perfectly accessible. Occasionally it slips into a doctrinaire left position - "the nuclear family is the offspring of a capitalism that tells us to produce, consume and die" - but this is hardly a concern (I found the nuclear family alive and well in communist Poland when I lived there). The text is marred by problems with spelling but, as it celebrates the rise of gay pride from Rome to "Sidney," this can be forgiven.

In sum, this is a very revealing and disturbing book. It would be dreadful indeed if people with influence in our country, like politicians, felt pressure to follow the Ratzinger line.