Philip Shenon
speaker
84 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Philip Shenon’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Well, not only did people protest, opinion polls showed that Catholics around the world were just ignoring the papal decree, that they used birth control. They thought they wanted to control the size of their families. You know, in those days, in the 1960s, there was a great concern about, you know, worldwide poverty and overpopulation and the population bomb.
It's clear from opinion polling at the time that millions of American Catholics continue to use birth control.
You know, there's that famous aphorism about how power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That was said in reaction to the First Vatican Council. It was said in reaction to the power of the pope that when these men were offered absolute power, they were determined to hold on to it. And
You know, so many of the reforms that Vatican II was supposed to inspire, so many of the reforms that the world's Catholics had sought, the move to openness and tolerance, meant popes had to give up power. And what we've learned is that popes are very resistant to giving up power. They want to They appreciate the fact that they are essentially absolute monarchs.
And as a result, many of the reforms that a lot of Catholics consider just sort of common sense have never been enacted.
After the 1968 decree on birth control, where he keeps the ban in place, he really feels under siege for the rest of his papacy. He feels sort of openly mocked and defied. He sort of becomes fixated on the idea of this wanton sinfulness going on all around the world, much of it tied to the sexual revolution of the 1960s.
He asks the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is the doctrinal agency of the Vatican, to prepare a document that will sort of establish once and for all the church's views on sexual morality. The document is produced in 1975 and is a condemnation of masturbation and promiscuity, and much of it is focused on homosexuality and what the Vatican sees as the sinfulness of homosexuality.
Actually, I think it declares that homosexuals are intrinsically disordered. I think that was the wording. And I don't think Paul foresaw the sort of chain of events that would follow. But very quickly, he became engulfed in a scandal in Italy in which people were talking openly about rumors that he himself was gay. An Italian news magazine published an article by a prominent gay French writer.
in which the writer said he was well aware of the fact that the Pope was gay, that he had a boyfriend in Milan, and this became a huge sensation in Italy and I think mortified Paul VI. He was apparently just catatonic with fear that he was going to be involved in this humiliating scandal over his own sexuality.
Well, you know, the priesthood in many ways is a brotherhood in which, you know, priests and bishops look upon these other men as essentially their family. They have no wife and kids. They have no partner and kids. These other men are their family, and they need to protect their family members. And, you know, I think...
the research that's available to us shows an awful lot of priests do violate their celibacy vows. A lot of bishops and cardinals violate their celibacy vows, and they are eager to cover up for one another.
And I think there was a concern that Paul and other popes, you know, concerned that their own sexual histories might be questioned, went out of their ways to try to protect other churchmen from revelations about their own sexual activity.
The American church hierarchy really ignored questions about sexual misconduct or sexual crimes by priests for generations. But in the 1970s, the American Bishops Conference in the U.S. produced a study that found that American priests, a large percentage of them were emotionally stunted, that they had sort of the emotional development of a teenager.
And, you know, there was concern that this was linked to the doctrine of priestly celibacy, that priests became so obsessed with suppressing their sexuality that they weren't developing into fully formed, emotionally healthy human beings.
I think the single most eye-popping document I came across in all my years of research is was a letter written in 1999 by Cardinal John O'Connor of New York, arguably the most powerful churchman in America, to Pope John Paul II. And to back up a bit, Cardinal O'Connor had just been informed that he was about to die. He just had brain surgery. He had only weeks to live.
And one of his final acts on this earth was was to write this letter in late 1999 that was a dire warning to the pope that he must not promote Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, who was then based in Newark, New Jersey. He must not be promoted to any higher office in the church because of widespread, well-known evidence that he was a sexual predator. And O'Connor
offers quite explicit information about McCarrick, including the fact that he liked to invite young men to his home for dinner and then insists that they sleep with him in his bed. Even though this letter is presented at the boat by a respected senior churchman in the United States, Pope John Paul ignores this warning from Cardinal O'Connor.
and ignores warnings from lots of other senior Vatican officials who also know about McCarrick and still promotes him to a membership in the College of Cardinals and makes him Archbishop of Washington, D.C. And McCarrick then goes on for decades to continue to be involved in sexual misconduct with young men and boys.
This has been going on for centuries, that bishops and cardinals in Rome can accept large cash gifts. And there's always been concern that essentially this is a form of bribery, that you could buy the favor of a bishop or cardinal by giving him a big gift or by giving him a trip or by giving him the renovation of his apartment, as often happened. And McCarrick was well known in Rome for
Matthew Feeney, Jr. to prevent any sort of investigation of his sexual misconduct. He has a personal charity fund that raises millions of dollars. And the single largest check ever written from his personal charity account was a check for a quarter million dollars to Pope Benedict shortly after Pope Benedict was elected in 2005.
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