Most cardinals at the Vatican are gay, says Catholic academic
Most of the Roman Catholic cardinals who will choose the new pope are gay, despite the church’s doctrine that homosexuality is sinful, a Belgian expert has said.
Rik Torfs, a professor of canon law at the Catholic University on Leuven, has started debate with his claims, made on a popular Belgian news analysis programme after Pope Francis’s death was announced on Monday.
“A paradoxical situation remains,” Torfs said about Francis’s legacy. “On the one hand, homosexual relations are considered sinful but on the other, a significant percentage — probably the majority — of cardinals are homosexual.”
Asked about the statement, Torfs, a former Christian Democrat senator and a Catholic who is also a critic of conservative clerics in the Holy See, said: “People I know in the Vatican think it’s a large majority.”
Francis last year caused controversy when, during a private meeting, he used extremely derogatory language towards gay men. He criticised what he described as an “atmosphere of faggotry”, using the Italian word frociaggine, at the Vatican. He used the term, not for the first time, when asked during a meeting of clerics about arguments he had made about keeping gay men out of seminaries.
https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/ar...-x2vq2p8zq
Most of the Roman Catholic cardinals who will choose the new pope are gay, despite the church’s doctrine that homosexuality is sinful, a Belgian expert has said.
Rik Torfs, a professor of canon law at the Catholic University on Leuven, has started debate with his claims, made on a popular Belgian news analysis programme after Pope Francis’s death was announced on Monday.
“A paradoxical situation remains,” Torfs said about Francis’s legacy. “On the one hand, homosexual relations are considered sinful but on the other, a significant percentage — probably the majority — of cardinals are homosexual.”
Asked about the statement, Torfs, a former Christian Democrat senator and a Catholic who is also a critic of conservative clerics in the Holy See, said: “People I know in the Vatican think it’s a large majority.”
Francis last year caused controversy when, during a private meeting, he used extremely derogatory language towards gay men. He criticised what he described as an “atmosphere of faggotry”, using the Italian word frociaggine, at the Vatican. He used the term, not for the first time, when asked during a meeting of clerics about arguments he had made about keeping gay men out of seminaries.
https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/ar...-x2vq2p8zq
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
