Gay Star News reports that a German theologist found that employing gay priests “works exceptionally well” for the Catholic Church — because guilt makes for better priests.

Speaking with German magazine Stern, David Berger said, “It’s down to homosexuality being demonized in the Church. It’s a very severe sin.” Therefore, the idea of a celibate priest — who is never questioned about his perpetual bachelor status — becomes highly appealing to gay men.

That means the Catholic Church has “the advantage of having many gay men with a guilty conscience. They do their best to be especially smart, loyal to the pope, and hard working. Which is why they have the best chances for a career and, through this, get into the Vatican. There, they find a network of gay men in which people help each other out.”

Berger claims that this is the most important rule in the Vatican: You can have gay sex, but in public you must remain true to the Church’s principles and never talk about it.

“I think that may be down to being gay being an important apparatus of power,” Stern says. “After coming out, those in power don’t have anything left with which to hold you down That’s a disaster beyond all expectations.”

Berger was formerly an academic at the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas in Vatican City.

When he came out, he was forced to leave.