Philip Tartaglia, RC Archbishop elect of Glasgow
… one may smile and smile, and be a villain.
Thanks to Haggis for the link to the story in the Scotsman. Here is Philip Tartaglia, archbishop-elect of Glasgow in the Roman Catholic Church, presently the bishop of Paisley. Nothing special about that and not really worthy of note at all, but his truly idiotic remark about the death of a Scottish MP is really beneath contempt. These guys think they have the right to speak on any pretext whatever, if it helps to get their regressive morality noticed. It should actually get him sued for libel, since he attributed David Cairn’s death to his gay lifestyle. According to the Scotsman report:
Philip Tartaglia’s suggestion prompted criticism from friends and the partner of the late David Cairns, a former priest, who claimed the Catholic leader had suggested the politician’s death at the age of 44 was somehow connected to his sexual orientation.
Tartaglia’s comments were made in Oxford, where he was attending a conference on freedom and equality (of all things!). Asked to comment on the suicide death of a gay author in the United States, Tartaglia replied:
If what I have heard is true about the relationship between the physical and mental health of gay men, if it is true, then society is being very quiet about it,” the archbishop-elect, 61, said.
Recently in Scotland there was a gay Catholic MP who died at the age of 44 or so, and nobody said anything, and why his body should just shut down at that age? Obviously he could have had a disease that would have killed anybody. But you seem to hear so many stories about this kind of thing, but society won’t address it.”
Cairns, a Scottish MP, former Roman Catholic priest, and a devout Catholic, had lived in a committed relationship for fifteen years, was a highly respected member of parliament, and a member of cabinet. He died of acute pancreatitis, and his death had nothing to do with his “gay lifestyle.” That the new archbishop elect of Glasgow should have suggested a conspiracy of silence regarding the physical and mental health of gay men is the kind of innuendo one comes to expect of Catholic officials who, when unable to make an accusation stick, assassinate by suggestion rather than speak the truth. As Mr. Cairn’s partner said:
I don’t care what his views on gay marriage are, but to bring in my dead partner to justify those views is wrong.
Not just wrong, however. It was cruel and unnecessary, and unacceptable coming from a public figure. It was not, however, surprising, since the Catechism of the Catholic Church has normalised the practice of using unduly prejudicial language to speak about practices and relationships that the church finds morally questionable. At the same time it claims to receive and welcome with respect those who are spoken of as gravely disordered.
It is worthwhile remarking that the cherubic faced archbishop elect will not get the last laugh, which is reserved for the Scottish Parliament, which has announced its intention to introduce legislation legalising same-sex marriage. According to the Scotsman, despite the fact that two-thirds of respondents opposed the measure (generated, one suspects, by the churches, who have weekly opportunities to harangue their charges), the Scottish National Party has announced that it will proceed with the legalisation, because it is “the right thing to do.” In announcing the decision, Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has declared that
We are committed to a fair and equal Scotland.
Not surprisingly, of course,
[r]eligious leaders have dismissed the plans as a “dangerous social experiment”, amid concern that it conflicts with traditional doctrines that marriage is between a man and a woman.
But the move has been widely welcomed by campaigners and political leaders, with the first gay marriages likely to be held in Scotland by 2015.
Religion is simply on the wrong side of history, desperately holding its finger in the dyke of privilege and pontification, while all around it people are simply walking away in disgust. It is impossible to pry religion loose from the decaying remnants of another time, when clerical privilege justified practically any outrage against humanity. But now the sleek, overfed virgin who is slated to take over the archdiocese of Glasgow, reminding one, for all the world, of Chaucer’s Pardoner, simply cannot understand what ordinary people think and feel, but it makes no matter:
… let me briefly make my purpose plain;
I preach for nothing but for greed of gain
And thus I preach against the very vice
I make my living out of – avarice.
And yet however guilty of that sin
Myself with others I have power to win
Them from it, I can bring them to repent;
But that is not my principal intent.
Covetousness is both the root and stuff
Of all I preach. That ought to be enough.
The Pardoner had just said:
The curse of avarice and cupidity
Is all my sermon, for it frees the pelf.
Out come the pence, especially for myself
For my exclusive purpose is to win
And not at all to castigate their sin.
Once dead what matter how their souls may fare?
They can go blackberrying for all I care!
Tartaglia has said that it was not his intention to offend, and though he has been asked to stand down, it is clear that he will not do so, saying that, despite his offending words, David Cairns was buried as a Catholic (although, it needs to be said, according to the church he was living in grave sin), and pastoral aid was offered to his family and friends.
Dermot Kehoe, David Cairn’s partner, will have none of this, and called for the bishop to resign. According to the Daily Record, Kehoe said:
It is beyond belief that a man of God can come out with something as ridiculous and hurtful as that. He is not fit for public office.
I would also like him to show some genuine contrition for what he said. Tartaglia now has no authority for moral leadership at all and he must resign.
I hope to God he never has to watch someone he loves lying in intensive care. It was horrific and traumatic.
David was my life. I was with him till the end. For two months before he died, I spent every day at David’s bedside hoping he would pull through as he slipped in and out of consciousness.
That is what I think relationships are about. We loved each other and were devoted to each other.
It is devastating enough to lose someone you love without people like Tartaglia coming out and trying to blacken his name. He has besmirched David’s memory by saying he died because of his choice of lifestyle and seeking to use this to influence the issue on equal marriage.
This is more than distressing for me and his family, it has caused us all a great deal of emotional and physical pain. It makes me very angry.
I suppose the normal career path for the Catholic homosexual (who cannot be part of the Catholic reproductive machine that is the family) is to become a priest (for Catholic lesbians it is to become a bride of Christ). Now since Catholic priests can’t marry, and have to live a life of chastity, and thus divert that sexual energy into the task of maintaining the guardianship of the church, then gay marriage represents a direct threat to the Catholic priesthood and then to Catholic culture. So it makes complete sense why the Catholic church are so upset about homosexual marriage.
Unfortunately, that sexual denial manifests in other sinister ways through child abuse, which probably goes on unpunished because it’s another way of recruiting new priests into the fold.
Choosing to ignore those traditional doctrines of other religions where a marriage may be between a man and more than one woman.
Egbert
Your comment above is an insult to homosexuals. You have made the false assumption that homosexuals are child abusers. You go further afield by claiming that the Catholic Church’s systematic cover up of child abuse is attractive to homosexuals who are motivated to become priests so they can abuse children.
Priests who abuse children do so because they know they have power over these children and they depend on their church to protect them from exposure and prosecution. Priests who abuse children (the majority of these children are male) have been taught by their church to hate, fear and distrust adult women. Therefore, a sexual relationship with a consenting adult female is consorting with the enemy.
Well Veronica, I assume you’re not a homosexual but still feel insulted by my comment. Nowhere in my comment did I make any such assumption that being gay automatically meant being a child abuser. I do apologize to you personally, if you felt my comment was offensive.
For those interested in justice, here is a piece of good news:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0726/1224320825806.html
Egbert
This is how I read your comment #1
“the normal career path for the Catholic homosexual . . . is to become a priest . . . live a life of chastity . . . Unfortunately, that sexual denial manifests in other sinister ways through child abuse.”
Update: “Bishop ‘must be asked’ for apology”: http://www.scotsman.com/news/bishop-must-be-asked-for-apology-1-2434086
Veronica, I can see how you misread my comment. The second paragraph refers to denial in the sense of denying sex through chastity and not having a normal sex life, not in the sense of denying homosexuality.
@DiscoveredJ
Other religions? Christians who oppose gay marriage are continually appealing to the Biblical definition of marriage. This they claim is marriage between one man and one woman. As far as I am aware, this definition of marriage appears nowhere in the Bible, the Biblical definition of marriage is between one man and anything up to seven hundred women.
@Veronica
As I read it, Egbert suggested that gay Catholics had reasons to be drawn to the preisthood and that gay marriage, by providing an alternative, might be a threat to the Church. In a seperate statement, he also suggested that peadophiles might have reasons to want to become Catholic priests. I don’t believe that he conflated the two issues.
Maybe some Catholic priests are gay, but then so are some clergymen in other, more open denominations but that they should choose the priesthood because they are gay? Have you any evidence that this is the case? I suspect that the reason why anybody becomes a priest, gay or otherwise, is because they believe they have a religious vocation; at least tobegin with, and their sexual orientation does not come into it. In the RC church, gay or otherwise, priests are required to be celibate.
I don’t know about the RC church, but I do know that there are a significant number of gay men – and women priests in the Church of England, and that really should come as no surprise. Gay people can be very empathetic and caring, and if religious, would see the priesthood/ministry as a caring and empathetic role, so would be attracted to it on those grounds.
I would be very surprised indeed if many Catholic priests who were child abusers actually were gay. I suspect most of the abusers are straight but deeply disturbed men who as Veronica points out, would find the thought of sexual liason with a woman repugnant. However, there are enough cases of priests who have affairs with female parishioners to make me think that the child molesters might have been child molesters whether they were priests or not, but that is just a hunch.
In an organisation as large as the Catholic church, I think it is tricky making assumptions about the sexuality or motivation of those who become child abusers. I think it is a more complex issue than many would allow.
mike,
You say there are significant numbers of gay people in the Church of England, so why not also in the Roman Catholic Church? It seems to make sense that there are, although I don’t know of any statistics, or whether such statistics could ever be reliable, considering it’s such a stigma.
I think it’s reasonable to assume that people who were obliged to hide their sexual preferences because of social pressure might have tended to end up in a job where pretending to be celibate was one of the recruitment rules. And biographical accounts by men training for the priesthood suggest that there were, in fact, a high proportion of homosexuals in seminaries, during the Sixties and Seventies at least. But presumably that is now changing as homosexuality becomes acceptable in wider society — yet another reason why the supply of intelligent recruits to the priesthood has dried up, as demonstrated by the example of the putative Scottish Archbish.
Veronica, while I can see why you might think that Egbert’s conflation of homosexuality and abuse made the suggestion that sexual abuse and homosexuality go hand in hand, I agree with Stonyground that this was not his intention. Nor, of course, do I think it true (that homosexuality and abuse go together — I have known too many well-adjusted gay couples to think that this is the case, and too many fucked up heterosexuals, to think that heterosexuality is somehow the touchstone for the type of relationships we should value). However, there is every reason why repressed sexuality amongst priests should express itself in homosexual ways, precisely as it does in prisons. Clergy in the Catholic Church comprise a monosexual environment. Indeed, I knew a Catholic priest who lamented that he could have no friends — no women friends, because then it would be thought to be having an affair, and no priest friends, because then it would be thought to be a homosexual. It was, he said, a crushingly lonely life. However, while most priests do not have ready access to little girls, they do have access to little boys, so it would not be at all surprising to find their repressed sexuality expressing itself in same-sex ways, whatever their orientation. And boys have the other advantage — or should I say ‘had’ — that no one would suspect that anything sexual was involved at all. Now, of course, even that outlet is denied them. It seems quite clear that Tartaglia is speaking from the very narrow confines of the only kinds of relationships that he knows, and for him the gay lifestyle is full of menace. It was also much more replete with menace too in the past for gay men, especially, when it was a love that dare not speak its name, and initiallly, in Europe and North America, it was gay men who sufferred most from the plague of AIDS, and so it became associated with homosexuality. Tartaglia, like everyone else in the church, is hopelessly out of date, and will remain so. You can’t have a class of men, completely isolated from the surrounding culture, without the kinds of idiocies being spoken by people like Tartaglia becoming an almost daily occurrence. They do not understand modern culture, and cannot even begin to understand it, since they are so hopelessly isolated from culture, and find practically everything about it threatening to the values that they cherish.
Veronica, on the theme of asking for an apology. This just shows how out of touch these people really are, and how protective of the church’s reputation. Does the archbishop elect (odd word that for someone appointed by the pope!) not see that publicly apologising would do wonders for his reputation, and that the refusal to apologise without being asked for one is doing immense harm to that reputation? Golly, these guys are really out to lunch!
“Golly, these guys are really out to lunch!”
They live by the maxim, “Do what I say not what I do.” They certainly ignore the command “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”