Letter to the Bishop

Your Excellency:

A few years have passed since we corresponded. After my last letter to you, I’m afraid I took a wrong path, crashed and burned, and now stagger forward, burdened by more ordinary trespasses. But still a believer, grateful, as Graham Greene had the wheezing old priest murmur at the end of Brighton Rock, for “the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.” Without that tender and inexplicable mercy, so different from any we receive from most human beings, my soul might well burn for eternity like a marshmallow over an open fire.

Thankful as I am for God’s forgiveness and for the Church, lately I have become confused, addled, or as some here in the South put it, bumfuzzled, by some of the shenanigans in Vatican City. If you choose to respond to this letter, please bear in mind that in certain matters of theology I am a naïf. As the head of a financial firm says to a market analyst in the movie Margin Call, “Please speak as you might to a young child, or a golden retriever.”

To begin: Not much more than a year ago, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigan? issued several letters accusing the Vatican of covering up rampant homosexuality within its walls and among the ranks of priests, bishops, and other religious worldwide. On Oct. 7, 2018, Archbishop Vigan? in his third letter of testimony stated:

It is no exaggeration to say that homosexuality...