When
a local paper reveals a new sex scandal involving a priest and a young boy, few
people are surprised. The regularity of these scandals has rendered priestly pederasty
almost a cliché. Sadly, the offhandedness with which we come to think about the
phenomenon occludes the tragedy of each individual case. Making jokes about frocked sex
offenders has the unfortunate effect of making pederasty more imaginable, while, at the
same time, encouraging us to take its offenders less seriously. To that extent, at least, the
publicity perpetuates the phenomenon more than stigmatizes it.
But perhaps the press coverage is as much a function of our desire for scandal as
actual predilection on the part of the clergy. The conventional logic, of course, is that
priests, denied the release of physical encounters, walk around stewing in whatever desires
they are unable to rid themselves of. And, clearly, if those desires are considered unnatural
in the first place, then taking a vow of chastity would appear to be a way of further
prohibiting them, nipping them in the bud, if you will. In some cases this kind of
preemption probably succeeds. In others, it does not, and the results are likely to be more
sordid than what would have happened had the original desires been acted upon through
conventional channels.
To whatever degree priests are actually more inclined to pederasty than anyone else,
the association is not new, as the excerpt below indicates. Taken from an eleventh-century
book-length invective against homosexuality among priests, the passage demonstrates that
not only were homosexuality and pederasty common in the Middle Ages, but so little was
being done about it that the author, Peter Damian, an Irishman, felt the need to speak out
violently. His verbal assault is sweeping and relentless and, to the modern eye, somewhat
comical. But despite his overblown rhetoric, Damian clearly believed that homosexuality
and pederasty were the foremost faults with the medieval priesthood. Nine centuries of
civilization have done little to erode the stereotype.
* * *
From The Book of Gomorrah: An Eleventh-Century Treatise Against Clerical Homosexual Practices by Peter Damian
translated by Pierre J. Payer
A Mournful Lament for the Soul Who Is Given over to the Filth of Impurity
O, I weep for you unfortunate soul, and from the depths of my heart I sigh over the lot of
your destruction. I weep for you, I say, miserable soul who are given over to the filth of
impurity. You are to be mourned indeed with a whole fountain of tears. What a pity! "Who
will give to my head waters and my eyes a fountain of tears?" And this mournful voice is
not now less suitably drawn from my sobbing self than was then spoken out of the
prophetic mouth. I do not bewail the stone ramparts of a city fortified by towers, not the
lower buildings of a temple made by hands; I do not lament the progress of a vile people
taken into the captivity of the rule of the Babylonian king. My plaint is for the noble soul
made in the image and likeness of God and joined with the most precious blood of Christ.
It is brighter than many buildings, certainly to be preferred to all the heights of earthly
construction. Therefore I especially lament the lapse of the soul and the destruction of the
temple in which Christ had resided. O eyes wear yourselves out in crying aloud, overflow
the rivers full of tears, water with continuous tears my sad, mournful face! . . .
Jack Murnighan's stories appeared in the Best American Erotica editions of 1999, 2000 and 2001. His weekly column for Nerve, Jack's Naughty Bits, was collected and released as two books. He was the editor-in-chief of Nerve from 1999 to 2001, before retiring to write full time and take seriously the quest for love.
