This analysis of the relationship between male homosexuality and Catholicism examines the Church's language about sexual morality and the rhetorical devices used to actively produce silence about the topic. The author draws analogies between clerical institutions and gay culture.

A 2000 Lambda Literary Award Finalist The past decade has seen homosexual scandals in the Catholic Church becoming ever more visible, and the Vatican's directives on homosexuality becoming ever more forceful, begging the question Mark Jordan tries to answer here: how can the Catholic Church be at once so homophobic and so homoerotic? His analysis is a keen and readable study of the tangled relationship between male homosexuality and modern Catholicism.