U.S. Bishop: Homosexual Abuse of Youth is a ‘Wickedness’ That ‘Should Be Hated With a Perfect Hatred’

Commenting on the recent revelations of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, specifically that of predator Archbishop Theodore McCarrick and the cases detailed in the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report, several bishops and lay leaders have blamed a “homosexual subculture” in the hierachy of the Church and called for the removal of the priests, bishops, and cardinals involved in that subculture.

Bishop Robert Morlino, head of the diocese of Madison, Wisc., in an Aug. 18 letter, stressed that the Church must stop excusing sin “in the name of a mistaken notion of mercy” and must express more “hatred” toward sin. “What the Church needs now is more hatred!” he said. “It is an act of love to hate sin and to call others to turn away from sin.”

“There must be no room left, no refuge for sin — either within our own lives, or within the lives of our communities,” said the bishop.  “To be a refuge for sinners (which we should be), the Church must be a place where sinners can turn to be reconciled. In this I speak of all sin. But to be clear, in the specific situations at hand, we are talking about deviant sexual — almost exclusively homosexual — acts by clerics.”

“We’re also talking about homosexual propositions and abuses against seminarians and young priests by powerful priests, bishops, and cardinals,” said the bishop.  “We are talking about acts and actions which are not only in violation of the sacred promises made by some, in short, sacrilege, but also are in violation of the natural moral law for all. To call it anything else would be deceitful and would only ignore the problem further.”

After remarking on the “disgraceful” and “well-documented” homosexual abuses committed by Archbishop McCarrick, Bishop Morlino commented on the problem overall.

“It is time to admit that there is a homosexual subculture within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church that is wreaking great devastation in the vineyard of the Lord,” he said.  “The Church’s teaching is clear that the homosexual inclination is not in itself sinful, but it is intrinsically disordered in a way that renders any man stably afflicted by it unfit to be a priest. And the decision to act upon this disordered inclination is a sin so grave that it cries out to heaven for vengeance, especially when it involves preying upon the young or the vulnerable.”

“Such wickedness should be hated with a perfect hatred,” said Bishop Morlino.  “Christian charity itself demands that we should hate wickedness just as we love goodness. But while hating the sin, we must never hate the sinner, who is called to conversion, penance, and renewed communion with Christ and His Church, through His inexhaustible mercy.”

In his Aug. 22 “Testimony” letter, in which he calls for the resignation of Pope Francis, Archbishop Carlo Vigano says it is vital to remove the officials who covered for McCarrick but this will not solve the deeply entrenched problem in the Church.

“The seriousness of homosexual behavior must be denounced,” writes Vigano.  “The homosexual networks present in the Church must be eradicated, as Janet Smith, professor of Moral Theology at the Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, recently wrote.”

“‘The problem of clergy abuse,’ she wrote, ‘cannot be resolved simply by the resignation of some bishops, and even less so by bureaucratic directives. The deeper problem lies in homosexual networks within the clergy which must be eradicated,'” says Vigano.

“These homosexual networks, which are now widespread in many dioceses, seminaries, religious orders, etc., act under the concealment of secrecy and lies with the power of octopus tentacles, and strangle innocent victims and priestly vocations, and are strangling the entire Church,” he writes.

“I implore everyone, especially Bishops, to speak up in order to defeat this conspiracy of silence that is so widespread, and to report the cases of abuse they know about to the media and civil authorities,” says Vigano, who served as the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States from 2011 to 2016.

As documented in the John Jay Report on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church from 1950 to 2002, less than 5% of the predators were pedophiles. In fact, 81% of the victims were male and 78% were post-pubescent, “meaning that homosexuality — not heterosexuality or pedophilia — was in play,” said Catholic League President Bill Donohue.

Cardinal Raymond Burke, a member of the highest court at the Vatican and Patron of the Sovereign Miltary Order of Malta, said it is obvious there is a poisonous “homosexual culture” among some priests and bishops and that there “needs to be an open recognition that we have a very grave problem of a homosexual culture in the Church.”

“It was clear after the studies following the 2002 sexual abuse crisis that most of the acts of abuse were in fact homosexual acts committed with adolescent young men,” said Cardinal Burke in an interview with Catholic Action for Faith and Family.  “There was a studied attempt to either overlook or to deny this.”

“Now it seems clear in light of these recent terrible scandals that indeed there is a homosexual culture, not only among the clergy but even within the hierarchy,” he said, “which needs to be purified at the root. It is, of course, a tendency that is disordered.”

Pope Francis himself directed back in May that homosexuals should be excluded from Catholic seminaries. “If there’s even the slightest doubt, better to not accept them [homosexuals]” said the Pope, as reported in the New York Times.

Quoted in the same article was Michael Hichborn, head of the Lepanto Institute. He said there must be a “complete and thorough removal of all homosexual clergymen from the Church. It’s going to be difficult and will likely result in a very serious priest shortage, but it’s definitely worth the effort.”

Columnist and best-selling author Pat Buchanan, a Catholic, said, “it needs be stated clearly: This is a homosexual scandal. Almost all of the predators and criminals are male, as are most of the victims: the boys, the teenagers, the young seminarians.”

“Applicants to the seminary should be vetted the way applicants to the National Security Council are,” said Buchanan. “Those homosexually inclined should be told the priesthood of the Church is not for them, as it is not for women.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/michael-w-chapman/us-bishop-homosexual-abuse-youth-wickedness-should-be-hated-perfect-hatred