The Cardinal, The Tax And The Brothel.

Cardinal Kasper’s idea of the Holy Mother Church: Joachim Beuckelaer, “Brothel”.

 

Concerning Cardinal Kasper’s fifth column work, more or less asking that we “tolerate” what we cannot “accept”, the rather baffled Father Z asks: “what else do we tolerate though not accept?”

I have an answer there.

Brothels.

In Italy, brothels were called case di tolleranza. I was always told, and have always taken for granted, that this is because the Church could not allow or in any way consent to the existence of brothels, but considered not fitting to crack down on them. This is the reason why in the Roma papalina prostitution was rife; be it because of the presence of an army of priest, not all of them very chaste, be it because of the position of Rome as an extremely important destination for pilgrimages, then largely the preserve of men, with the consequences anyone who is not a finishing school girl can easily imagine.

Therefore, in order to avoid the huge pressure to which girls would have been subjected in case of crackdown on brothels, the Papal States chose to tolerate brothels. Not “authorise”, mind; simply renouncing to a massive crackdown on a factual situation out there; a situation to which the Church lent no assistance or support whatever, forbidding the visit of brothels and constantly reminding of the consequences of sin on one’s soul.

This is the only example of “toleration” I know. I notice here that when brothels were outlawed in Italy in 1957, this was out of the initiative of a feminist Socialist female senator, enthusiastically followed by her own party and the Communists. Neither during Fascism nor during the dominance of the Democrazia Cristiana in the De Gasperi era did the governments of the day move to crack down on brothels: tolleranza was considered the best choice, and actually since Fascism also a strict regulation (for medical reasons, mainly) followed. 

Now, what Cardinal Kasper suggests is that the Church does the same with the public adulterers. This is tantamount as to suggest that the Church should bring prostitutes in the houses of men, in order to offer a “pastoral solution” to men’s testosterone problems, and reacting to the million of men vociferously asking for p***y as a matter of elementary justice.

No.

The Church tolerates, instead, that there are concubines today, just as she tolerated that there were prostitutes yesterday. The Church tolerates concubines in that she does not move towards the crackdown of the deplorable phenomenon, and does not demand for legislation making of it a criminal offence. But this is completely different from actively proceeding to sacrilege, and asking the priest to commit himself a sacrilege. If you can do that, you can as well make of the priest a pimp, and ask him to run a “pastoral” brothel for his flock. 

Cardinal Kaspar, whose mind frame is rather the one of the prostitute than of the priest, doesn’t get the difference. To him, a client is a client, and as long as the client pays the Kirchensteuer, he will do whatever it takes to please him.

He will then call it “pastoral concern”; a “concern”, mind, very strong in those countries where the Kirchensteuer provides an enormous income, as can be seen from the illustration on this blog post.  

Pastoral concern? I call it prostitution. Whenever a German prelate talks of being “pastoral”, follow the money. 

Mundabor