A book about priests' sex lives, their mistresses and their children has been met in Italy with a wall of embarrassed silence
It promised to arouse discussion and create a bit of commotion, said a dispatch from the Italian agency, Ansa, on April 18.
And, indeed, that is the way it seemed when Carmelo Abbate's book, Sex and the Vatican, was published last month. The book grew out of an investigation by the author, published last year by Panorama news magazine, into the double lives of some gay priests in Rome. But Sex and the Vatican goes much further.
It looks at such taboo issues for the Roman Catholic church as the women who become priests' mistresses and the children they have (and those they abort). It details allegations of the rape of nuns by priests. And it concludes that large parts of the clergy are leading double lives because of the crushing burden placed on them by the Vatican's insistence that they lead lives of celibacy and chastity.
Spicy stuff, I think you'll agree.
The French edition shot to number 12 in Amazon.fr's non-fiction bestseller list as the initial print run sold out in under a week. Abbate was interviewed at length on one of France's prime-time current affairs programmes. There have been articles about him and his book in various French dailies. Now there is a television documentary in the making for French television, based on his disclosures.
In Italy, by contrast, the publication of Sex and the Vatican has been met with a wall of embarrassed silence. It is as if it had never happened. Before writing this article, I did a search on the Factiva newspaper database to check my subjective impression.
It indicated that, apart from Ansa's dispatch (and an extensive preview in Panorama), the only article on Sex and the Vatican in the Italian press appeared on 27 April in the Milan-based small-circulation financial daily, Finanza e Mercati. There will of course be those who regard Abbate's book as sensationalist muck-raking. But its merits and demerits have not even been discussed in Italy. This is disquieting for at least one reason and possibly two.
It shows that, notwithstanding the collapse of Christian Democracy, Italy's public life continues to be influenced by the Catholic church in a way that is thoroughly unhealthy. The question, which will doubtless never be resolved, is whether the silence that has enveloped Sex and the Vatican is the result of self-censorship and a misplaced sense of respect on the part of Italian journalists, or direct intervention by the church hierarchy.
If it is the latter, then Abbate's book is being dealt with in a way that exactly mirrors the main charge against the Catholic church in the sex abuse scandals of recent years: that instead of dealing with the causes of the problem, the church's leaders covered it up so they could pretend it did not exist. Priests and monks who were found to have abused (and, in many cases, raped) children or adolescents were shuffled off to other dioceses or communities; accusations were stifled and accusers were discredited, because the most important consideration was not to root out the rotten apples, but to protect the reputation of the farm they came from.
Whatever the degree of church involvement in the media entombing of Sex and the Vatican, the hypocrisy it alleges is all of a piece with the blind eye that, for decades, was turned by bishops on priests who were known, or suspected, predators.
Next week, the Vatican is to issue a new document for bishops, setting out how they should manage cases of sexual abuse. It is expected to deal with how to deal with victims, work with the civil authorities, protect children and train candidates for the priesthood. But all this will be of limited effectiveness if the underlying mindset of church leaders remains unchanged. And the story of Sex and the Vatican provides grounds for believing it is.
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