Catholic bishop claims homosexuality is just as sinful as paedophilia
Bishop Robert Morlino made the outrageous comments in response to a report on child abuse in the Catholic church
By Steve Brown
A Catholic bishop has declared homosexuality just as sinful as paedophilia.
Robert Morlino, the bishop of the Diocese of Madison, Wisconsin, made the comments when referring to a grand jury’s report which indicted that thousands of children in Pennsylvania had been raped and sexually abused by more than 300 Catholic priests.
The 71-year-old bishop – who has held his position for 15 years – wrote in a letter published by the Madison Catholic Herald which he said that “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.
“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.
“There has been a great deal of effort to keep separate acts which fall under the category of now-culturally-acceptable acts of homosexuality from the publicly-deplorable acts of paedophilia.
“That is to say, until recently, the problems of the church have been painted purely as problems of paedophilia – this despite clear evidence to the contrary.
“It is time to be honest that the problems are both and they are more.
“To fall into the trap of parsing problems according to what society might find acceptable or unacceptable is ignoring the fact that the church has never held ANY of it to be acceptable — neither the abuse of children, nor any use of one’s sexuality outside of the marital relationship, nor the sin of sodomy, nor the entering of clerics into intimate sexual relationships at all, nor the abuse and coercion by those with authority.”
The bigot then continued and said: “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.
“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.