There's a second elephant in the sacristy. Not only are there 15,000 to 20,000 homosexual priests in America's Roman Catholic Church, there is an uncounted number of homosexuals and lesbians serving the Church's members as brothers and nuns. Worse, these people are most often involved in teaching school. That fox is really in the Catholic henhouse.

The vocation to be a brother or nun is similar to that of being a priest. The environments too are essentially the same. Same sex groups live together, unmarried, allegedly celibate, cloistered from the real world and enlisting while quite young. That compost of conditions nurtures homosexual or lesbian roots, allowing them to grow and, as with priests, flourish.

One of our readers, now in his early 40s, wrote that his Catholic high school in New York City was filled with homosexual brothers. In response to our Holy Wars column, he wrote us saying:

We had an entire residency home of gay Brothers at [the school]. It was called the "Yellow House" and was across the street from the campus. We all knew as students not to meet alone with a Brother inside that yellow house because all the gay ones lived there. The more straight ones lived in a brick building right on campus.

He went on to say that he has compared notes with others from many schools run by brothers of varying orders [and] the results were confirmingly familiar.

Have you read about this in any mainstream media? Anyplace at all?

We shouldn't be surprised. If the lavender mafia has taken over the Catholic clergy's hierarchy in America - and it has - then it stands to reason that precisely that state would exist in other Catholic religious groups within the Catholic structure. How could it be otherwise?

In our last column, Holy Wars, we suggested the reason the "pedophile priest" story had disappeared from the media radar was that it had become obvious the story was about abusive, rapacious, criminal homosexuals, not about pedophiles. Thus, media people ducked the truth as they are homo-sensitive as opposed to homo-phobic. Nevertheless, truth will out.

The Catholic laity in America needs to be aware of the full scope of the problem it faces in rooting out destructive forces within the Church's organizations. Law enforcement people need to in-vestigate Catholic schools, at every level, to determine where other criminal conduct has occurred.

Does this mean the discharge of every homosexual/lesbian? No. It does mean that the Church needs to decide whether or not there is a substantial increase of risk of sexual abuse connected with homosexuals or lesbians. How the Church answers that question will likely seal the fate of those now in its service.

It is unlikely that the current Church organization is capable of serious revision of itself. First, it would mean exposure of conditions covered up for decades. Second, it would lead to at least a reduction of personal power for the hierarchy. In some cases it would mean retirement, banishment really, to Nowhere: a total loss of power. That is never going to happen voluntarily.

What, then? Expect nothing to happen. But if you send your kids to a Catholic school, watch them like a hawk. And don't leave them alone with anyone dressed in black. They are more likely to be servants of themselves than Servants of God.