More on the Attempted Lesbian Coup at the Vatican: Blaming Fiammetta Venner

Wow. There is some seriously disturbed . . . stuff . . . out there on the heels of the Vatican's attempt to blame its current problems on French journalists Fiammetta Venner and Caroline Fouerst.

Check out blogs like The Catholic Knight ("Putting the Sword to the 'Tyranny of Relativism'"), which picked up the blame-the-lesbians story from Rorate Caeli Tuesday (http://catholicknight.blogspot.com/2009/02/attempted-coup-underway-at-vatican.html). Big cry there of an "attempted coup" at the Vatican.

For its female readers, that blog, maintained by a "happily married" Knight of Columbus in Missouri, offers a nifty little poll in which you may choose to let the world know that you are "a Biblically modest woman and I will veil." The winning choices so far? 437 Biblically modest women have reported that they will veil; 437 men have logged in to state that they support veiling (of women, one assumes).

Who knew this little world was out there?

Even the powerful Alliance Defense Fund picked up the story yesterday, adding it to its ADF Alliance Alerts, under the heading, "A Liberal Plot Against the Pope?" (www.alliancealert.org/2009/02/04/congressional-dems-chide-the-pope). Two stories down: "Bishop Williams [sic] Apologizes to the Pope . . . ."

How to read what's going on here? Well, first of all, it's clearly payback from the right for those who have pressed Benedict on Richard Williamson. As I noted today, the worldview that dominates patriarchal institutions requires that I define my power, prestige, authority, at your expense. I prove myself on your back.

I have to stand on you in order to stand tall.

So when its own inepititude (or its even more unsavory characteristics) force the male-dominated institution to yield, it looks for someone to whom it can pass on the pain--often, someone with a female face and/or a gay "lifestyle." In this case, the Vatican has found both, in Venner and Fouerst.

There's also a cynical political calculation going on here. It's as if the Vatican is involved in a poker game, and is raising the stakes. With Williamson, the Vatican's hand has been called.

So now it's responding, "I see your anti-Semitism, and I raise you a lesbian." Those playing this cynical blame-the-lesbian game know perfectly well that they will get nowhere with anti-Semitism. That horrific prejudice lives only in the underbelly of developed Western societies nowadays, and rears its ugly head only covertly. That's what has made Benedict's attempt to rehabilitate Williamson so grotesque: we claim to have put anti-Semitism beyond the pale.

But with homophobia, it's entirely different. The same voices that are calling the Vatican, and loudly, on its anti-Semitism won't utter a word about its homophobia. The mainstream media routinely gives religious groups a big pass when it comes to gay-bashing.

This lesbian-coup fable is a diversionary tactic on the part of the Vatican and its religious right allies, and a particularly mean-spirited one. It's both an attempt to divert attention from Benedict's considerable faux pas with Richard Williamson, and to pass on the pain to those who can be bashed with impunity.

To pass on the pain so that the big boys will feel like big boys again.

The Lesbians Made Me Do It: The Vatican on a Plot to Embarrass Benedict

An interesting twist on my posting earlier today about the claim of the Vatican that Benedict did not know of Richard Williamson’s gross anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial before Benedict invited Williamson and his SSPX confrères back into the Catholic church: two days ago, the Rorate Caeli blog reported about “a dossier circulating within the Vatican which could reveal that a plot was planned for several months to embarrass the Pope in the ‘Williamson affair’” (http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com, "A Plot against the Pope").

According to Rorate Caeli, the blog had received a tip about this inside information, but did not choose to make it public until Italian newspapers Il Riformista and Il Giornale had disclosed the information.

To be specific: the text that Rorate Caeli claims to have received—apparently from inside the Vatican itself—maintains that Fiammetta Venner, “a very well known french lesbian activist,” in collusion with her partner (the tip-off text uses coy brackets to indicate its distaste for this term) Caroline Fourest, colluded with Swedish television to air the interview with Richard Williamson in which he made his infamous statements right on the eve of the papal announcement about SSPX.

I hear from those who track right-wing Catholic blogs that this claim of a lesbian plot to embarrass the pope is now burning like wildfire through that murky demi-monde of blogland. Fiammetta Venner, who co-authored a book on Catholic integralism with Caroline Fourest (Nouveaux Soldats du pape), flatly denies the existence of any such plot (www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2009/02/04/ni-moi-ni-la-television-suedoise-ne-connaissaient-a-l-avance-l-agenda-du-vatican_1150857_3224.html).

The German and Swiss media are already noting the Vatican’s attempt to shift the conversation about the rehabilitation of SSPX to this purported lesbian plot (www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,605392,00.html and www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/international/williamson_vatikan_1.1881660.html).

And so here’s what interests me in this sordid little blame-the-lesbians story: remember that earlier today I wrote, “Like any bureaucracy—particularly those heavily invested in monitoring the morality and controlling the behavior of others—the Vatican keeps extensive files on major ecclesiastical players like the SSPX bunch”?

Remember that I talked about how dubious I was re: the claim that Benedict did not have access to files that showed precisely what Richard Williamson’s Holocaust record is?

Now right-wing Catholic blogs trying to defend Benedict are claiming to have tips about “a dossier circulating within the Vatican which could reveal that a plot was planned for several months to embarrass the Pope in the ‘Williamson affair’” (my emphasis)?

Isn’t that interesting . . . . There was no dossier at all circulating about public, easily documented claims over the course of years by Richard Williamson denying the Holocaust and blaming the Jews for everything wrong in Western culture.

But there is a zingy little dossier immediately circulating, blaming “a very well known french lesbian activist” and her [partner] for the kerfuffle around the rehabilitation of Richard Williamson.

We’re to conclude—so it seems—that the Vatican's inner circles have access to more information about Fiammetta Venner and Caroline Fourest than they do about Richard Williamson before Benedict makes an historic move to rehabilitate Richard Williamson?

Puhleez!

This despicable attempt of the big men in Rome, caught red-handed in a plot to rehabilitate a vicious anti-Semite, to try to hang their shame on the lesbians is pathetic. It’s scraping the bottom of the barrel. Shame on those gullible and/or venal right-wing Catholic bloggers helping to circulate this tripe as a way of letting Benedict off the hook.

H/t to a faithful reader of this blog for links to the Rorate Caeli blog and information about the Venner story.