The Catholic Church is all but extinct in The Middle East where it began. It is largely irrelevant in Western Europe, its former stronghold. In America, a one-time bastion of Catholicism, the church is in decline after  having surrendered its moral authority by covering up sexual abuse with minors.

The future of Rome is clearly in developing countries where it is locked in a death match for supremacy with Evangelical Churches, Anglicanism and Islam. A microcosm of this struggle is best witnessed in religiously fractious Nigeria, where sectarian strife has repeatedly led to violence.

To effectively compete with these homophobic religions, The Vatican has adopted a strategy of using virulently anti-gay rhetoric and opposing equal rights. The Church has become a bully, kicking a helpless minority in nations where gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are already persecuted. This is pure cowardice by a Church that hardly has the moral standing to discuss sexual morality, given the outrageous sins against children that have taken place within its walls.

The latest gay bashing came this week from Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan who called  homosexuality  an “insult to God”.

“Transsexuals and homosexuals will never enter the kingdom of heaven and it is not me who says this, but Saint Paul,” the cardinal said, in comments reported by the Ansa news agency. “People are not born homosexual, they become homosexual, for different reasons: education issues or because they did not develop their own identity during adolescence. It may not be their fault, but acting against nature and the dignity of the human body is an insult to God.”

Barragan, the retired head of the Vatican’s Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers, quoted a passage from Paul’s epistle to the Romans which speaks of “men committing indecent acts with other men”.

“Homosexuality is therefore a sin, but this does not justify any form of discrimination. God alone has the right to judge,” the cardinal said. “We on earth cannot condemn, and as human beings we all have the same rights.”

Well, I guess we will give him credit for arguing in favor of equal rights after stepping all over us and saying we are morally inferior. That is better than we are getting from other Catholic leaders these days.

(Weekly Column)

It is time to admit that the gay community has a gigantic Pope problem. Under the leadership of Benedict XVI, the Vatican has become an implacable foe of liberalism, modernity and basic rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Rome has eagerly jumped with both feet into America’s culture wars and is working on a global scale to punish or purge ideological dissenters within the church. This aggressive activism presents a formidable new front in the fight for parity – one with considerable political clout and financial resources.

Last week, a coalition of totalitarian religious activists and radical clerics joined forces to unveil the “Manhattan Declaration” at Washington’s National Press Club. This rambling manifesto, written by former Watergate felon Chuck Colson, called for “Christians” to disobey laws they didn’t fancy and to ignore civil rights laws that protected GLBT people from discrimination. It was a dishonest document filled with historical revisionism that promoted theocracy, encouraged anarchy and supported the dissolution of the rule of law. It falsely portrayed right wing Christians as victims, even as they pledged to work tirelessly to deny equality to those who would not adhere to their sectarian church rules.

An extreme manifesto of such breathtaking cynicism and insincerity is no surprise coming from what passes for “leaders” in today’s evangelical circles. It was striking, however, that more than 15 key American Catholic leaders signed on to the “Manhattan Declaration”. Signatories included heavyweights such as Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York and Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, DC. This was clearly a call to arms and a powerful signal that the Roman Catholic Church is taking the gloves off to fight political battles in America.

This hands-on involvement from Rome has passed the “trend” stage and appears to be official policy. Consider the significant involvement the Catholic Church had in stripping marriage rights away from GLBT couples in a Maine referendum held earlier this month.

In the same manner, on June 11, the Washington, DC Archdiocese threatened to abandon the homeless and quit charity work in the District if it had to comply with anti-discrimination laws. Catholic Charities had the audacity to believe it was entitled to collect $8.2 million in tax dollars meant to serve all DC residents, and then still get to handpick whom it deems worthy of assistance.

Catholic involvement with arch-conservative politics is growing by the day. In May, Catholic groups tried to stop President Barack Obama from speaking at a Notre Dame commencement ceremony because of his pro-choice position.

Earlier this month, Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin put the clamp on Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), banning the lawmaker from communion because he is pro-choice. This was reminiscent of The St. Louis Archbishop refusing to give communion to John Kerry during his presidential campaign.

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has suddenly begun to steer GLBT Catholics to 12-step programs that promise to “cure” homosexuality or support them in a lifelong celibacy. The Catholic Diocese in Sioux Falls, South Dakota urged its 128-thousand members to oppose an attempt to bring legalizing embryonic stem cell research to a public referendum. (I guess the sacrosanct “people’s right to vote” on controversial social issues only applies to same-sex marriage)

In fighting back, we must remember that the Vatican is launching these attacks from a position of weakness. It has yet to recover its moral authority from public exposure of rampant child sexual abuse scandals that cost the Church billions of dollars in legal settlements.

The Vatican appears to be acutely aware it is losing its worldwide market share. It is basically defunct in the Middle East, where the religion began, and on life-support in Western Europe, where it once prospered. In Africa, Rome competes with Islam and Anglicanism for a shrinking slice of the pie. (Who can forget that while in Africa the Pope said condoms could make the AIDS crisis worse.) South America, one of its few remaining strongholds, is losing Roman Catholics to evangelical faiths by the millions.

Instead of competing against the conservative evangelical brand, Pope Benedict has decided to embrace it, shaping a conspicuously political Catholicism that embraces extremism and drives out dissenters. The Vatican has become so doctrinaire that it recently launched an invasive probe into the lives of America’s 60,000 nuns to enforce anachronistic rules. In January, Benedict welcomed back excommunicated Bishop Richard Williamson who denied that millions of Jews died in Nazi death camps.

Fortunately, Benedict is a cold, unsympathetic figure and the majority of American Catholics often ignore his edicts. The strategy for the GLBT community should be to stand up to Rome and help mobilize mainstream Catholics to fight back against an authoritarian Pontiff who is hell-bent on making the Catholic Church as unpopular and unappealing as His Holiness.

Similar to U.S. ex-gay poster boy Christopher Delaney, the Italian songwriter Povia believes that homosexuality is little more than a phase that anyone can overcome:

“[I] had a gay phase, it lasted seven months and then I got over it.”

Povia, a headliner for the upcoming Sanremo Music Festival, has raised the concern of Italian gay equality group Arcigay because he penned a song, Luca Was Gay, about an ex-gay man.

Pinknews says the song implies homosexuals can be “converted” to heterosexuality.

Aurelio Mancuso of Arcigay told Pinknews that Povia also said he has two friends that he has “converted” to being straight.

According to Pinknews:

Two years ago Povia won the Sanremo festival with a song about marriage, and the Vatican has been accused of overtly interfering with the event.

Mancuso believes that Luca Was Gay refers to Luca Tolve, who says he was “cured” of his homosexuality at the hands of controversial Catholic American psychologist Joseph Nicolosi.

A Facebook protest has accumulated more than 16,000 members since its launch in mid-January. It seeks to pressure festival organisers to remove Povia from the lineup.

It was no secret that Pope Benedict XVI was far to the right of most Catholics. But, he keeps sprinting to the far fringes of decency and common sense. His latest misstep came this weekend when he revoked the excommunications of four schismatic bishops from the far right order, St. Pius X Society.

One of the bishops the Pope is embracing, Richard Williamson, is a conspiratorial holocaust revisionist who claims the extermination of six million Jews was a hoax. This is a shame, because in recent years, the Roman Catholic Church had taken steps to heal wounds caused by centuries of anti-Semitism.

I think it is important to note that when a church group is rabidly anti-gay, they are usually intolerant of other groups, as well. These actions by the Pope confirm this point.

If there is a silver lining, it is that it is getting harder to take this church seriously, as the Pope is working overtime to sever its ties from reality and the modern world.