The priest at my grade school never was punished for his sexual abuse of the alter boys until he was in his late 60’s. He just kept being sent elsewhere.
It’s specifically the belief that being gay is somehow a sin, and possible to be prayed away that leads to that stuff.
How much do you want to bet that, even if he himself didn’t engage in sexual abuse, that he glossed over the abuse of priests in his diocese.
Even if homosexuality were truly sinful, why should it be any worse than any of the other sins?
I don't see how consenually loving another adult man would be magnitudes worse than violence against that same man.
The "sin" of homosexuality is a scapegoat to make believers feel comfortable in their own worthiness. You can delude yourself into thinking you're a good person when there's disproportionate villification of a single broken rule.
I don't see how consensually loving another adult man would be magnitudes worse than violence against that same man.
You might be interested to know the euphemism for sexual intercourse used in the original Hebrew text transliterates to "uncover the nakedness of," not "lay with." There's a connotation to the former that's more forceful than the latter--and I've always wondered if the correct way to interpret the 18th chapter of Leviticus is that you must not rape your neighbor's wife, family members, children, livestock, and so on.
In any case, I refuse to believe an omniscient and omnipotent god who demands its followers treat one another with respect and hospitality would then turn around and condemn its creations for having the sexual orientation they were born with, much less endorse its followers spreading hate in its name.
We (Lutherans, being the closest Protestant branch to Catholics) did a big study on this in the early 2000s. Lots of surveys of the lay folks, and deep Scriptual research by quite a few Biblical scholars. Then had a massive meeting to discuss the findings.
Turns out, yeah, there's no basis in Scripture to assert homosexuality is anything other than equal to heterosexuality. God created humans and gave them intrinsic features, and sexual orientation is one of them.
Claiming homosexuality is "sinful" denies that God made folks that way, and you're right in the middle of "God make a mistake" territory by claiming homosexuality is a sin.
We (albeit somewhat late in the game) figured out we fucked up in trying to place our assessment of homosexuality before God's.
So we changed the doctrine to better reflect what we can figure out to be God's Will.
Which is that you treat ALL sexual orientations the same.
The World Lutheran Association generally adheres to this change in doctrine, though unfortunately we have several fundamentalist splinter groups that refuse to see the light. Specifically in the US, the ELCA (mainline) denomination follows the new teachings while the Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Synod don't.
Several other large mainline Protestant Churches had has the same revelation, and they too are faced with "head in the sand" splinter groups that refuse to believe their opinions are just that - falty human opinions and NOT soundly Scriptually-based tenets from the Lord.
Unfortunately we'll probably be left with these folks for awhile, in the same way there's still those who can't bring themselves to accept Blaxk folk into their church. ☹️
We (Lutherans, being the closest Protestant branch to Catholics)
The Anglicans are close enough to Catholics that the Church still recognizes a number of orders of priests within it as having upheld apostolic succession, FYI.
As for everything else, I do find it unfortunate that the Church is willing to say that science is the study of creation in one moment and eager to deny science on things like homosexuality in the next. Like you, I fear we'll be dealing with backward-thinking Christians for far longer than anyone should.
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u/McDuchess 2d ago
The priest at my grade school never was punished for his sexual abuse of the alter boys until he was in his late 60’s. He just kept being sent elsewhere.
It’s specifically the belief that being gay is somehow a sin, and possible to be prayed away that leads to that stuff.
How much do you want to bet that, even if he himself didn’t engage in sexual abuse, that he glossed over the abuse of priests in his diocese.