Frédéric Martel

I purchased this book as research for a book I am writing regarding the pedophile priest scandal in the Catholic Church. I was expecting a scholarly work which I could glean information and statistical anaylsis of the problem within the church. What I received was a disappointing book filled with nothing more than gossip, innuendo and bias against the traditional dogmatic theology of the Catholic Church

Frederic Martel proclaims both his homosexuality and his atheism in his book. And he should. I make no judgement in this area. For the sake of transparency, I am a heterosexual and a member of of the Catholic faith albeit, a lapsed Catholic disillusioned with the child abuse scandal that has overwhelmed the faith these past decades. I hold a Baccaloreate in Catholic Pastoral Ministry and was once a candidate in the Permanent Diaconate program of the local diocese.

That being said, my expectations for this book were one that would provide reportage of sociological studies supported by statistical analysis, self-reports of those who are ordained and homosexual, studies of the hierarchy and its lack of mission in or its attempt to correct the problems within the hierarchy. I was extremely disappointed to find this book is nothing more than gossip and innuendo. It is filled with claims that cannot be verified.

In its five-hundred, fifty-five pages, Martel provides nothing more that anecdotal evidence he claims to have researched along with his vast army of researchers. He also claims he has verified each story with witnesses. The problem is that each and every witness is unnamed. I have counted 169 times where he reports that 279 witnesses are anonymous. The reader must accept that these gossip-coulmn stories are both accurate and true based upon the author's word alone.

The author's bias explodes upon the pages when he discusses certain parties of the hierarchy. In general, anyone prelate who is homosexual and liberal in his beliefs regarding the direction of the church is considered a hero. This would include those that seek a change in Catholic Dogma to include active homosexuals, a married priesthood (including same-sex couples), remarried divorcees and women in the priesthood. The author's lack of understanding of the Church and its theology is evident in his arguments. He take the same pop-culture stance as others; he just wants the Church to change its beliefs.

Martel's bias hits the reader like a speeding train when he speaks of the conservative arm of the Church. If the liberal arm that seeks change are heroes, then the conservatives of the hierarchy are the degenerates that the Church must rid itself. Furthermore, in almost every description of a conservative prelate, he suggests that each one must have questionable morals. In otherwords, every liberal prelate is a homosexual or a 'homophile', a supporter of the homosexual lifestyle while every conservative prelate is a homosexual but publicly a homophobe, one who distrusts, dislikes and fears the homosexual community.

The author goes even further. He paints the conservative prelates as being effeminate, prancing around in their dresses with long trains. The silly hats, the expensive shoes, the expensive slippers and the jewelry are the accoutrements of a diva. In Martel's mind, every priest, bishop and cardinal is either a homosexual or wants to be a homosexual. Even John Paul II and Benedict XVI are targets of Martel as he paints both popes as effeminate and in the case of Benedict XVI and his brother Georg, questions whether they are homosexual.

The worst description is that of Raymond Cardinal Burke. A most conservative of the Church, Martel throws insults at him with great fervor. I counted no less than twenty different insults in Chapter Two entitled Gender Theory. These weren't insults regarding his conservative beliefs. They were insults regarding his dress (the long-trained robe), his appearance, the amount of money he must have spent in acquiring these items. He concludes that Cardinal Burke might be a homosexual or a homophile at the very least.

If the reader is interested in researching books regarding the Catholic hierarchy and its issues with subjects like the sex abuse scandal or the church finance scandal, stay away from this book and seek others. There are plenty of good books regarding either of these subjects from which to choose.

If the reader is looking for book in the style of a tabloid newspaper filled with gossip and rumors then tis is the book to read.… (mehr)

In the Closet of the Vatican is an interesting book in that it mixes things that have direct empirical proof, e.g. the interviews with the male prostitutes of Rome who tell about their many trysts with curial prelates, sometimes in episcopal apartments in the Vatican itself, with pure assumptions, e.g. to what extent H.E. Raymond Cardinal Burke’s proclivity for pomp and lacy albs is an indication of his sexual orientation.

I have to admit that I found the book very interesting, and a fair bit of it is looking at parts of history that haven’t been discussed much in popular form (it also brings to mind David Hilliard’s article about Anglo-Catholicism UnEnglish and unmanly), and some of the hypocrisy surrounding the way the Church has dealt with the abuse crisis screams out to me. (Confession: when I lived in Sweden, I did consider converting for quite some time, but the fact that I would never have been ordained as an openly gay man was one of the things that in the end led to me never doing anything about it.

The book is a rather hefty volume, and if it hadn’t been on sale at Church House Bookshop, it is something I probably would have bought for my Kindle rather than as a hardback book, and it is obvious that the research that has gone into writing it has been very thorough. This is perhaps not surprising given that the author has a PhD from the Sorbonne, and has probably come in handy to help counter the criticism that has been raised against it.

All in all, this is not a piece of easy reading, but still something I would recommend to everyone who is interested in the Catholic Church.… (mehr)