The Memorial of Saint Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church, on the First Day of the Vatican Synod on Clerical Sexual Abuse

The Memorial of Saint Peter Damian,
Bishop and Doctor of the Church, on the 

First Day of the Vatican Synod on Clerical Sexual Abuse

Much of St. Peter Damian’s reform struggle seems strikingly relevant to the modern situation of the Church today, as 190 Catholic leaders are meeting in the Vatican today in an historic summit devoted to child sexual abuse. I don’t speak about this often, but it seemed appropriate on the beginning day of this synod, and on the feast of this particular saint, to say something to this matter.

Every Catholic knows that the Pope is elected by, and from, the Cardinals of the Church gathered in the Sistine Chapel. Every Catholic knows that the Pope then goes to a large balcony perched high in the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica to greet the faithful and receive their acceptance. This is simply the way things are done in the Church. But it’s not the way things were always done. A Catholic in the early Middle Ages would have described a papal election as something like a bar room fight, a back-alley brawl, or a political horse race replete with bribes, connivings, and promises made just to be broken. Everyone—far-off emperors, the nobility of Rome, military generals, influential laity, priests—put their hands on the wheel to turn the rudder of the Church in one direction or another.  Papal elections were sources of deep division, causing lasting damage to the Body of Christ. Then along came Saint Peter Damian to save the day.

Saint Peter Damian headed a group of reform-minded Cardinals and others who decided in 1059 that only Cardinal Bishops could elect the Pope. No nobles. No crowds. No emperors. Saint Peter wrote that the Cardinal Bishops do the electing, the other clergy give their assent, and the people give their applause. This is exactly the program the Church has followed for almost a thousand years.

The Church of Damian’s time had been rocked by almost two centuries of political and social chaos, and the doctrinal ignorance, scandalous personal behavior, and petty venality of the clergy had reached intolerable levels. Bishops and priests were involved in every kind of immorality, publicly living with concubines or illicit wives, or furtively engaging in homosexual practices. Many had purchased their ordinations and the lucrative benefices that accompanied them, and spent their free time in scandalous secular amusements. An outraged laity was beginning to rise up against ecclesiastical authority, sometimes in riotous outbursts of violence that threatened the civil order. If we despair for our time, it is somewhat comforting to realize that God can cleanse and purify; he only needs a few holy saints to get the job done.

Most relevant to our own age is St. Peter Damian’s famous Liber Gomorrhianus, or “Book of Gomorrah,” a long letter in the form of a long letter addressed to Pope St. Leo IX sometime between 1049 and 1054. The book, which is written against an epidemic of sodomy “raging like a cruel beast within the sheepfold of Christ” has deep resonance with us today, and offers many insights into the contemporary crisis in the priesthood. As we know the independent report written by John Jay College in 2012 identified 81% of the sexual abuse consisted of clergy having sex with post-pubescent children, not so much pedophilia (as horrible and odious as that is), but what is legally called pederasty. Many will speak about pedophilia this weekend in Rome, but only those speaking about homosexual pederasty, men like Cardinal Raymond Burke and Cardinal Walter Brandmuller, who were not invited, are speaking to the real issues, as St. Peter Damian courageously would have done.

Damian’s opening words in The Book of Gomorrah almost seem addressed to the contemporary Church, as he warns the pope that the “cancer of sodomitic impurity” is threatening the integrity of the clergy itself, and urges him to act with all speed, adding that “unless the force of the Apostolic See opposes it as quickly as possible, there is no doubt that when it finally wishes for the unbridled evil to be restrained, it may not be able to halt the fury of its advance.”

Damian is also concerned with a phenomenon that has become disturbingly familiar for us: the tendency of those involved in sexual perversion to seek promotion and advancement in the Church, and to recruit others into their lifestyle. “Why, I ask, O damnable sodomites, do you seek after the height of ecclesiastical dignity with such burning ambition?” writes Damian. “Why do you seek with such longing to snare the people of God in the web of your perdition? Does it not suffice for you that you cast your very selves off the high precipice of villainy, unless you also involve others in the danger of your fall?”

Something tells me that people got uncomfortable when this Bishop preached. In a rebuke against the 11^th century equivalent of covering up scandals of sexual misbehavior, Damian blames lax ecclesiastical superiors for their “silence” with regard to clerical sodomy, and regards them as sharing in the guilt of those under their authority.

Like most reformers, St. Peter Damian did not seek the limelight; he wanted to just be in his cell and pray. His request for retirement was repeatedly denied until finally the Holy Father let him return to a life of prayer and penance, where his primary distraction was carving wooden spoons. St. Peter Damian died of fever in 1072. Pope Benedict XVI has described him as “one of the most significant figures of the eleventh century…a lover of solitude and at the same time a fearless man of the Church, committed personally to the task of reform.”

In 1828, he was declared a Doctor of the Church.

“Saint Peter Damian, your reform of the Church began in your own monastery cell. You never asked of others what you did not demand first of yourself. You even endured the detraction and calumny of your peers. Help us to reform others by our example, learning, perseverance, mortifications, sexual purity, and prayers.” Amen