What lavender mafia?

By Domenico Bettinelli, Jr. ( articles - email ) | Oct 13, 2003

The Lavender Mafia strikes out at one who spoke up. A priest in Palm Beach, Florida, is being removed from his parish, essentially silenced, because ha dared repeat the Church's teachings that homosexual acts are sinful. Now, the diocese doesn't say that. What the vicar general said was this:

When Pasquini pressed Notabartolo about what was going on, Notabartolo explained that Pasquini's homilies were poor, he didn't show enough devotion to Mass, he was not equipped to be a priest and would never be a pastor in the diocese.

This about a priest who had already served in two parish assignments and had no complaints made against him before. But what did happen was that he sent a letter to the editor of the local newspaper saying that homosexuality is a sin and that the Episcopal Church was wrong to elect a gay bishop--by the way, about the same thing the Pope himself has said. For this, Father Pasquini was transferred to a hospital chaplaincy, which everyone acknowledges is a punishment assignment. (Just as Fr. Fessio).

You have to ask yourself, however, when was the last time a priest was silenced for actually contradicting the Chuch's teachings, that is Divine Truth, from the pulpit? Can't ever recall it happening. Yet, Fr. Pasquini wasn't even accused of that.

Remember that Palm Beach was the diocese where two successive bishops were removed after admitting to sexual activity with teenage boys, the last one being Bishop Anthony O'Connell. Even worse, 100 priests out of the 141 in the diocese didn't think that should disqualify him as bishop.

On March 10 [2002], local newspapers reported that 100 priests of the diocese had signed a petition urging Bishop O'Connell to retract his resignation. There are only 141 priests connected with the diocese. The greatest scandal of all--greater than serial pedophilia, greater than the shuffling of pedophiles, greater than the bishop’s transgressions--is the fact that 70 percent of the priests in this diocese did not think that repeated homosexual activity with teenage boys, compounded by the failure to recognize the gravity of those actions, disqualifies a man from being a bishop.

And this is the diocese that silences a priest for denouncing homosexuality as a sin while priests who have no problem with it are allowed to state their case publicly without fear of repercussion. Still think there isn't a Lavender Mafia?

[Thanks to Michael Dubruiel for the link.]