Did Frederic Martel Just Out Cardinal Raymond Burke?
I think he did. 
Cardinal Raymond Burke is featured prominently in Martel’s new book, In the Closet of the Vatican – Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy. A central thesis of the book is that cardinals and bishops who make the strongest condemnations of homosexuality are more likely to be gay themselves; Martel describes this as part of their attempt to cover up who they really are.
Chapter 2, “Gender Theory” focuses on Cardinal Burke’s flouting of his extravagant liturgical regalia–the 12 metre/39 ft. red moire silk cape, the “cappa magna;” the velvet gloves, lace and vivid colors. His nickname in the Curia is “The Wicked Witch of the Midwest.” The cardinal’s assistant refers to him in the feminine: “His Eminence has no office,” the young priest tells me. ‘Elle travaille chez elle.’ (She works at home.) Julian Fricket, a drag artist the author interviewed, commented on Cardinal Burke’s “Liturgy Queen” appearance: “What strikes me when I look at Cardinal Burke’s cappa magna, robes or hats topped by floral arrangements, is its overstatement. The biggest, the longest, the tallest: it’s all very typical of drag queen codes.” 
On page 28, Martel describes Cardinal Burke holding court: “How often we see him surrounded by young seminarians kissing his hand–also magnificent in that our Hadrian seems to follow the cult of Greek beauty, which, as we know, was always more male than female. Winning both the admiration and laughter of Rome, Burke always appears surrounded by obsequious chaperones, Antinous-like figures kneeling in front of him or page boys carrying the long red train of his cappa magna, as choirboys might for a bride.”
“Cardinal Burke is the very thing he denounces,” a cleric close to (Pope) Francis states starkly. The same man believes the pope might have had Burke in mind in October 2017 when he denounced “hypocritical” priests with “make-up” souls. “On the outside,” Pope Francis stated, “they present themselves as righteous, as good: they like to be seen when they pray and when they fast and when they give alms. (But) it is all appearance and in their hearts there is nothing…they put make-up on their souls, they live on make-up, holiness is make up for them…Lies do a lot of harm, hypocrisy does a lot of harm: it is a way of life.”
I thought Pope Francis’ use of “make up” was an interesting choice of words. Is that “make up” the way a woman will put on make up to make herself more attractive; or is it a clown? an actor? transvestite? Halloween costume? drag queen? They all might apply.
Cardinal Burke was described as “unstraight” in the book (page 29). This definition describes a person who is a non-heterosexual or one who is sexually abstinent. I don’t think Burke is sexually active, but I find the absence of females in his life, and his fixation with the sexual morality of homosexuality a little fishy.
In the Closet of the Vatican is the latest in a series of books, articles and published letters to attempt to name without naming closeted prelates in the Vatican and U.S. hierarchy. The authors flesh out their tales with stories of intrigue, corruption and hypocrisy among the cardinals, bishops and Vatican officials. Some of the most notable include:
2019: In the Closet of the Vatican – Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy – French writer Frederic Martel tries to explain why the Catholic Church is filled with closeted, and mostly self-hating, gay men. If I were a gay Catholic man I would be very depressed reading this book. A few dead prelates are identified, but most in the “Ring of Lust” around Pope John Paul II remain unnamed since they are still alive and politically lethal. The book is rich in rumor, gossip and innuendo. The publication date coincided with the Vatican’s sex abuse summit, officially the “Meeting on the Protection of Minors in the Church”, that was convened by Pope Francis and ran from February 21-24, 2019. You can bet this book was one of the main sideline conversations. 
2018: “Testimony” – A series of poison pen letters by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States (2011-2016). These letters were released via several U.S.-based and conservatively biased news outlets on August 22, September 29 and October 19, 2019. Vigano focused on liberal or moderate prelates insinuating they were gay or soft on homosexual priests. Vigano blamed the sex abuse crisis on gay priests and bishops. He accused Pope Francis of protecting homosexual predators–particularly the former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and called on the pope to resign. Archbishop Vigano’s first letter was released during the Vatican’s World Meeting of Families in Ireland; and the 3rd on the observance of the North American Martyrs. The last date struck me as very dramatic and is probably key to Archbishop Vigano’s character.
2013: “The Vatican’s Secret Life,“ was published in December 2013 in Vanity Fair magazine by Michael Joseph Gross. The opening scene is in a sauna.
2012: His Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI by Gianluigi Nuzzi was published in May 2012. The title of the English ebook is Ratzinger Was Afraid: The Secret Documents, the Money, and the Scandals that Overwhelmed the Pope. The book is based on confidential memos between Pope Benedict XVI and his personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Ganswein. The leaked documents ignited the “VatiLeaks” scandal. The book is full of fractional infighting, jealousies, and bribes and donations made to procure a papal audience. VatiLeaks was also the source for homosexual scandals, including a claim that Gian Maria Vian, editor of L’Osservatore Romano, manufactured evidence that Dino Boffo, editor of L’Avvenire, had an affair with a married man and harassed his wife. Boffo resigned, but later claimed his ouster was part of a power struggle in the hierarchy. The fact-finding mission Pope Benedict XVI organized to investigate VatiLeaks produced a 300-page dossier describing a powerful network of homosexual prelates, some of whom were being blackmailed. The report ultimately led to Pope Benedict’s resignation on December 17, 2012. He was the first pope in 600 years to resign.
2006: The Rite of Sodomy: Homosexuality and the Roman Catholic Church was written and published by conservative writer Randy Engels. This 1,282 page tone focuses primarily on dead homosexual bishops and cardinals in the American hierarchy before 2000. There is a lot of material on John Cardinal Wright and Francis Cardinal Spellman.
2004: Vatican II, Homosexuality and Pedophilia by Atila Sinke Guimaraes. Guimaraes is a traditionalist Catholic and manages the website Traditional in Action. The book blames Vatican II and homosexuality for the downfall of Catholicism. He makes some points about the cover-up culture in the Vatican, and the alleged homosexuality of Pope Paul VI.
2003 – BishopAccountability.org – This site is dedicated to the victims and loved ones of clergy sex abuse. Constantly updated with new information, it is a good source of identifying homosexual cardinals, bishops, priests and other religious who were credibly accused of sex abuse or protecting abusers.
2002: The Silence of Sodom: Homosexuality in Modern Catholicism was written by theologian Mark D. Jordan. This book was published at the time the sex abuse crisis began to break in the U.S. It was also the period when Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) issued hostile and degrading statements about homosexuals, and their visibility in the church and society. In response, Mark Jordan set out to discover why a church filled with gay men was so homophobic and duplicitous. Jordan coined the term, “Liturgy Queen.”
1999: Gone with the Wind in the Vatican was originally published under the pseudonym “Millenari.” Monsignor Luigi Marinelli eventually admitted his involvement and said he had nine or ten other co-authors. The book was published in 200o in English with the title Shroud of Secrecy: The Story of Corruption Within the Vatican. The book offers an insider’s account of sex, corruption and intrigue. This steamy 288-page book describes all kinds of sexual scandals, and a Vatican culture dominated by favor swapping, careerism and back-stabbing. The main characters in the book were given pseudonyms from Margaret Mitchell’s novel, Gone with the Wind (1936).
The granddaddy and most outrageous of all expose writers, French author Roger Peyrefitte, wrote and spoke extensively about homosexuals in the Vatican. He famously outed Pope Pius XII in his 1955 book, Les Clefs de Saint Pierre (The Keys of St. Peter). In a 1976 interview with the Italian magazine, Tempo, he commented on a January 1976 homily by Pope Paul VI. Peyrefitte said the pope’s words were hypocritical and made this statement: “The second sin from which I feel I have been freed, after this grotesque papal speech is my homosexuality. In my last book, Hunting Scenes, and in another, About the French People, I stated with all the respect due a Pope (especially when he is still alive) that he is homosexual. It is amazing that the papal speech (against homosexuality) was published at the same time as my book. Was Paul VI moved by a guilt complex? Buy why should he feel guilty? It is known that a boyfriend of Paul VI was a certain movie star*, whose name I will not give, although I remember him very well. He was an unknown actor when our friend Paul was Cardinal Montini, Archbishop of Milan. (*alleged to be Paolo Carlini)
Lots to ponder. Especially the stomach-turning notion that most of Catholicism’s anti-gay rhetoric is produced by gay men themselves; with the permission of gay popes, or straight popes that are happy to take the money and men their gay minions raise for their causes. 
April 16th, 2019 at 2:47 am
Keep sharing
July 12th, 2019 at 2:03 pm
John Paul 2 was a Mason, period.
August 14th, 2019 at 12:01 am
I find it entirely plausible the Vatican, its Curia, and the “religious” men (especially) working there are (largely) homosexual, for why else would many of those people condemn homosexuality other than to deflect attention from their own gaseous duplicity. I’m sure they’re committing fellatio and anal intercourse, on its grounds, or wish they were, every opportunity they can get. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass (so to say) if they’re gay, but hypocrisy isn’t it’s own reward, for when eternity beckongs, those cowardly men will have hell to pay (so to state). It’s time The Church practices, teaches and preaches a moral-ethic which states that every human relationship must be centered in love, absent hate and coercion, pederasty and pedophilia, and promiscuity and adultery, as individuals, families, communities and nations otherwise suffer. Homosexuality isn’t really the issue, as it’s been with us since forever and a day, and more importantly, its genesis involves a confluence of events involving human evolution, human biology, genetics and epigenetics, timing and hormones, all within the context of fetal development. One doesn’t get to dispute this, one gets to be sadly mistaken, if not ignorant. Inherent sexuality isn’t a choice, and can’t be learned, for it’s a state-of-being that infuses one’s mind, body and soul, like handedness (left/right), race or eye-color, for example. Furthermore social, cultural and family dynamics play no role, but these inform cultural attitudes about sexuality, as well as how society regulates it. It has to teach what Jesus said about it. He said nothing. And (mostly) Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) scripture relating to the “men sleeping with men” and related scripture exclusively addresses heterosexual male sexual behavior, as practiced in the Ancient Near East, Greece and the vast Roman World, the areas referenced by the anthology of Biblical stories. The foundation of the anti-homosexuality verses involves “man’s inhumanity to man.” And to understand this one must know there can be a “distinction with a difference” between “homosexuality & homosexual,” and “heterosexuality & heterosexual,” each one. For instance, homosexuals often have children the old-fashioned way, and imprisoned heterosexuals often sexually engage their gender.
There is nothing in the Bible that speaks to homosexuals per se, let alone ones in loving relationships — as the ancients had no understanding of THOSE PEOPLE, or sexuality, or the science of it. What’s important about those scriptures is CONTEXT without which we “tell the truth while telling lies” (my quote). But for ignorance, heterosexual sensibility, Christian arrogance and/or vanity, most theologians, ministers and layman skip over the truth. And reading those scriptures literally is a vice.
The original Biblical texts reference the Ancient Greek practice of adolescent male & adult heterosexual male love, pederasty, which was popular in sport, military and upper class culture, while freeborn men in the vast Roman World often engaged in anal intercourse with lower rank boys and men. By law freeborn men could be put to death for being the receiver/bottom in such situations. Furthermore the practice of homosexuality within cults was popular, including in the biblically-referenced “cult of temple prostitution.” Other behaviors speak to sexually abusing the poor, strangers and neighbors, and men vanquished by war, street fights and other conflict.
As important, Women played a tangential role why many men sexually engaged their gender. Ones in antiquity thought twice before sexually engaging husbands and boyfriends, as it could lead to pregnancy, which put them, and their babies, in mortal danger. Unlike today with advances in maternal/fetal medicine, and nutrition, women often died during pregnancy, while giving birth, or shortly thereafter. And fetuses often died in the womb, babies during birth or shortly afterwards, or before reaching puberty. For the consequences, many women thought hard before agreeing to sexual intercourse. To compensate many men engaged their gender, perpetrated rape against them, frequented male prostitutes, etc. (Heterosexual rape, prostitution and orgies occurred as well.)
The prophets and others thought that if men were sexually engaging their gender they’d put the human race in peril of extinction.
Last, I want to address the term “abomination” as it relates to the original Biblical verses about homosexuality, because its use is a corruption of original intent. The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) uses the terms TOVAH and SHEKETZ, meaning TABOO – the use of either depends on context. These taboos were a means for the Ancient Israelites to distinguish themselves from the 1000s of religious/spiritual cults, and gods, present in ancient biblical lands. Some taboos: male homosexuality, fornication, witchcraft, eating shellfish, sleeping with menstruating women and wearing woolen clothing.
It’s time the Roman Catholic Church stops playing with our lives, and gets serious about sexuality. It’s teaching on homosexuality is immoral, flawed and hypocritical (to the power of infinity). And here we are, at an abyss. Let us pray…that we practice the 4th Commandment, and not mock it, which is why the Church is at a crossroads today. “Our Father…”
August 17th, 2020 at 8:12 am
Gossip always sells. But the problem with gossip is that it just ends up spreading slander; it goes from hearsay to calumny. What’s worse, those who propagate it on the Internet aren’t doing themselves any favors, being that it spreads and scatters like feathers in the wind, never knowing how and who it will affect someone. Yet the responsibility falls on those who spread it and thus will be accountable for all the injuries, false notions, decisions and actions others take because of the slander.
Furthermore, the sin of “detraction” is the technical term for gossip. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that a person is guilty of detraction if they, “without objectively valid reason, disclose another’s faults and failings to persons who did not know them” (CCC 2477). It is also continuing to talk about those faults or failings for the purpose of curiosity and not in order to offer help or assistance.
The worst step in the category of “talking about others” is calumny. This unusual little term refers to lying about the faults of another in order to damage their reputation. It is clearly the worst, because malicious intent is always present and because it involves lying.
Gossip is serious because it poisons and often kills relationships and murders the reputations of others. Gossip always infects and corrupts. It is diabolical, because it causes dissension, kills lifelong friendships and breeds mistrust and brings division.
And it is hypocritical. There could be tomes written about the sins of those who write slanderous books, of those spreading gossip online and throwing stones. In the end, Jesus warned that every idle word will have to be given an account. The Letter of James warns: “If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless” (James 1:26). To think that some of the worst culprits are those of us who go to church. St. James says that, for anyone who gossips, their attempts at religion are worth nothing.
In Dante’s “Inferno,” the deepest circle of hell is for the sin of treachery or betrayal.
August 17th, 2020 at 10:57 am
Dear Anonymous,
What is worse…a gossipy, scandalous book; OR hypocritical prelates and clerics who have f–cked and s–cked their way through parishes, dioceses, seminaries and the Vatican bureaucracy, and THEN, fall all over themselves to heartily condemn homosexuality?!! I don’t think the author went far enough. It’s time to name names, and drag them all out of the closet; living, dead, no matter who they are. I’m sure a lot of Vatican financial scandals and corruption can be traced to blackmail. Time to drain the swamp and clean out the rot. Sunlight is the best cleaner.