The Vatican’s ‘lavender mafia’ strikes again

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | May 12, 2026

Scandalous? Yes. Surprising? Not really.

Many faithful Catholics were shocked last week when a Vatican document quoted a man who proclaimed his homosexual inclination a “gift from God.” They were shocked again when they learned that the pop song “Dancing Queen”—widely recognized as a “gay anthem”—had been played by a visiting band at the Pope’s weekly public audience.

Was the Vatican showing signs of some significant policy shift? Again, not really. What was happening in Rome last week was the same thing that has been happening for years: Some Vatican officials quietly signaled their support for the homosexual agenda, and no one stopped them.

Begin with the “Dancing Queen” episode, which is the least serious and easiest to explain. Someone—probably a minor official in the Vatican bureaucracy—authorized the band to play that tune last Wednesday. Was it a deliberate nod to the homosexual lobby? Maybe; maybe not. Many of the people who enjoy the song are unaware that it has been adopted by gay-rights advocates; others are aware of its “anthem” status, but loath to make a fuss about what is, after all, just a pop song.

The new document—a report from one of the “study groups” working alongside the Synod on Synodality—was a far more important development. Study Group #9 had been charged with weighing “controversial” issues, but the group chose to characterize them as “emerging” issues, explaining that the Second Vatican Council had initiated a “paradigm shift” in the understanding of Church teaching.

Consistent with the overall approach of the Synod on Synodality, the report offered testimony from Catholics who call for changes in Church teaching, notably including one American man who identified himself as a happy partner in a same-sex “marriage,” and proclaimed: “My sexuality isn’t a perversion, disorder, or cross; it’s a gift from God.”

That direct challenge to the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which teaches [#2357] that “homosexual acts are considered intrinsically disordered,” found its way into the study group’s report—presumably in a bid to provide space for all viewpoints. Yet the perspective of Courage, an apostolate that strongly supports the teachings of the Church, were not presented. On the contrary, the report included a negative portrayal of Courage, written by a critic who claimed, inaccurately, that Courage encourages “reparative therapy.”

Courage responded by saying that the report was “both calumny and detraction.” The group pointed out that Vatican officials could have contacted Courage for a response that would have corrected the record. “Rather than do so, however, the report presents one person’s experience and opinion as part of an official ecclesiastical document.”

Courage has often experienced unfair portrayals in the secular media, the group’s statement continued. “It is a great sadness and an additional wound to our members to have this false and unjust depiction in a Vatican document.”

The study group’s report is just that: a report, with no magisterial authority. And the most provocative material appeared in appendices. So the document cannot be interpreted as a change in Church teaching. Yet it would be naïve to pretend that the appearance of this Vatican document—with its sympathetic depiction of same-sex marriage contrasting so sharply with its hostile portrayal of a loyal Catholic apostolate—will have no impact on the public perception of Church teaching.

Who was responsible for this report? Journalist Edward Pentin, writing in the National Catholic Register, notes that several members of Study Group #9 had previously questioned Church teachings on controversial (or “emerging”) moral issues. Cardinal Gerhard Müller charged that the report’s authors “do not openly deny revealed truths, but set them aside and, alongside them, build their own house of a comfortable and world-conforming Christianity.”

Unfortunately the use of Vatican working statements to promote dissent from Church teachings, particularly on the issue of homosexuality, has become a regular feature of synods. Back in 2014, Robert Royal reported for the Catholic Thing that a preliminary report for the Synod of the Family had “utterly astonished old Vatican reporters” with a sympathetic approach to same-sex unions. He related that prominent Vatican officials “gave each other an open thumbs-up when the sections on gays were read out,” apparently delighted that those passages had survived the editor’s red pen. Perhaps not coincidentally, just before the 2015 meeting of the Synod on the Family, a priest who had been working at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith “came out” as an active homosexual, denouncing the Church’s opposition to same-sex unions at a press conference in Rome.

The McCarrick scandal—and the Vatican’s flat refusal to allow a thorough investigation into that disgraced prelate’s rise through the ecclesiastical ranks—demonstrated the influence of the “lavender mafia” in Rome. That influence is equally evident in the persistent attempts to elevate gay-rights issues in the preparation for each meeting of the Synod of Bishops. Clearly there are more than a few clerics, safely ensconced within the Vatican bureaucracy, working from within to change the Church’s teachings and pastoral practices. As Father Gerald Murray insisted in his reaction to last week’s scandals: “This Vatican-sponsored destructive subversion must come to an end now.”