Priests of Paradise ... Lost
Palm Springs, a beautiful desert resort town in southern California at the base of a 10,000-foot mountain, was once a winter destination for Hollywood and entertainment celebrities like Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Michael Douglas and Zsa Zsa Gabor. The entire desert was best described as a warm winter Paradise.
Palm Springs, once the town of family activities, Circus parades, and charity golf tournaments, now prides itself as having a five member City Council that is completely composed of homosexuals.
Much has changed in the last twenty years. According to a website Gay Palm Springs:
Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as lover in Behind the Candelabra
In recent years, Palm Springs has experienced a huge influx of new Gay residents and Gay businesses. The Gay population is now estimated at more than 50 percent of the annual resident population. Today the City of Palm Springs has the highest per capita gay population in the US, if not the world. Palm Springs has an exciting lineup of ever changing Gay and/or Gay-oriented events including the International Film Festival, the Short Film Festival, Cinema Diverse
(the gay and lesbian film festival), the Nabisco
Classic (formally the Dinah Shore Classic) and
of course the infamous White Party.”
Catholic churches in Palm Springs and nearby small towns of Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert and Indio all belong to the Diocese of San Bernardino which is based in the city of San Bernardino about 60 miles away. In the past twenty years Catholic people in the desert have experienced a strange collection of priests from queer to quirky to criminal. As the Gay culture developed, desert priests were silent about homosexuality and chastity. Even when Jeffrey Sanker's homosexual debauchery known as the White Party started at the doorstep of Our Lady of Guadalupe parish and took over the entire town of Palm Springs during Easter Week, nothing was said by the priests. Men paraded around the small Palm Springs downtown area in skimpy attire, holding hands and kissing, but not one word from any pulpit. The exception was when a priest might read a letter from the Bishop regarding “all our children,” which was the Church's response to pedophilia but not to homosexual conduct. “Abuse” is very narrowly defined to apply to sexual abuse against a child. The diocese has never clarified if consensual homosexual acts among priests are considered okay or not.
Pope Francis has written a book, The Strength of Vocation, and in it he addresses homosex and the religious life. The Pope stated the Church teaches that homosexual tendencies are not sinful in themselves, but homosexual acts are. The Catholic Catechism states that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered and contrary to natural law” and that “homosexual persons are called to chastity.”
Bishop Gerald R. Barnes was in charge of all the desert Catholic churches and their priests since 1992 when he succeeded Bishop Philip Straling, who was transferred to Reno, Nevada. Bishop Barnes has just retired and has been replaced by Bishop Alberto Rojas of Chicago. We wait to see if Bishop Rojas continues the legacy of the Priests of Paradise... Lost. Lesbian and Gay Ministry at the Hilton Hotel in Palm Springs. Bishop Barnes accompanied by Fr. Howard Lincoln of Sacred Heart Parish near Palm Springs joined him and celebrated a special Mass at the hotel just for the homosexual group. A reporter from the local Press Enterprise newspaper wrote that Bishop Barnes told the gays “Some would say you don’t belong, but we know that’s not true because the Lord himself says that.” The reporter, a non-Catholic also quoted Pope John Paul II who wrote that “church programs can reach out to homosexuals but must discourage them from partaking in sin.” Bishop Barnes omitted the Pope’s and the Catholic Church’s teaching about chastity.
BISHOP BARNES AND GLORIFIED HOMOSEX
In 2012, longtime Hollywood producer, Jerry Weintraub and his director, Steven Soderbergh (both Jewish), approached Fr. John Kacvac, pastor of Our Lady of Solitude Church in Palm Springs and offered to pay a large sum of money to rent the entire Church for three days in order to make a movie about the 54-year-old Liberace and his 18-year-old lover, Scott Thorson. The movie was based on Thorson's book, Behind the Candelabra.
Our Lady of Solitude Church in Palm Springs, CA from Behind the Candelabra
Apparently, the deal had to be approved by Bishop Barnes and his lawyer, Wilfred Lemann. According to John Andrews, Communication Director for the Bishop, the parish did get the money from Weinstein, but Andrews refused to state the amount. TMZ, an entertainment news source said that Weitraub paid Zsa Zsa Gabor “about $70,000” to use her Palm Springs house for a few movie scenes.
The Church itself would become the stage for the last scene of the movie when Liberace is allegedly receiving a Requiem Mass. Fr. Kavcak got to play the role of a priest and actually intoned the words for the beginning of Mass, and during Mass announces, “Liberace died with Christ and rose with him to a new life.” Liberace’s very young lover, Scott Thorson, now rejected but not totally dejected, comes to the church and watches as Liberace ascends into heaven over the altar with white feathered showgirl angels to accompany him (YouTube, “Behind the Candelabra Ending”)….
[…] This is just an excerpt from the July/August 2021 Issue of Culture Wars magazine. To read the full article, please purchase a digital download of the magazine, or become a subscriber!