In a new 27 November interview, Cardinal Gerhard Müller has restated his claim that homosexuality and clerical sexual abuse are clearly linked. He also says that, if there should be in fact a homosexual lobby in the Vatican, these persons’ own “doings should be strictly prohibited,” due to the “immense damage” they cause.
Cardinal Müller, the former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), now proposes that the Church’s canon law re-introduce penalties for priests who commit homosexual acts because such acts are “a grave offense against the priest’s ethos.” Such priests need to be “sanctioned,” he said. With regard to the controversial German Jesuit Fr. Wucherpfennig, he calls his pro-homosexual position “heretical” and regrets that his case was apparently dealt with by way of private agreements with the Pope, rather than through the official Vatican channels.
Speaking with the German regional newspaper Passauer Neue Presse, Cardinal Müller re-stated several things he had recently told LifeSiteNews. In his new wide-ranging interview, the German prelate says that “it is a fact that a little more than 80% of the victims of abuse are male teenagers after puberty.” While he cautions against generalizations, the Cardinal also insists that the clerical sex abuse of adults older than 18 should not thereby be relativized because of civil laws. Here, the Church should not follow the propositions of the LGBT groups.
He explains: “The image of man of LGBT organizations cannot be decisive for us. It could only be imposed upon the whole of society with the help of violence in destroying the freedom of religion and conscience. We resist it, even if threatened with the penalty of social depreciation and wild media insults.”
Speaking about a possible “homosexual lobby” in the Vatican – which, according to Müller, has never revealed itself to him – the German cardinal says that “Pope Francis himself has once spoken about the actual existence of such a lobby.”
“But if they [such persons] exist,” Müller continues, “their doings should be strictly prohibited, because they cause immense damage.”
Importantly, Cardinal Müller returns to a topic he recently discussed with LifeSiteNews, namely the fact that the 1983 Code of Canon Law had removed any specific mention of homosexual acts as one of the priestly offenses against the 6thCommandment which therefore incur certain canonical penalties. Cardinal Müller had told LifeSiteNews that this change in canon law was “disastrous.” Now, in this new 27 November interview, the Cardinal says: “In the Church’s law, one also once again has to present and sanction homosexual acts by priests as a grave offense against the priest’s ethos.”
Read the rest at Life Site News