It's almost impossible for me to understand how any queer person could associate themselves with the tremendous evil of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Church teaches hundreds of millions of school children around the world every day, from its official catechism, that gay people like me and those I love are literally depraved and disordered.
The wording of the catechism is sickening and evil. It's horrific in its ugly moral condemnation. It's even more horrific that the Catechism literally instructs people that it's possible to believe those horrible words calling us depraved and disordered while simultaneously "respecting" us. Talk about evil! I despair! I can't believe that people are being taught that it's okay to call me those awful, sickening, evil words.
Obviously, labeling me as depraved and disordered is not an act of respect and could not in any sense be ever considered an act of respect. I shouldn't even have to make this argument, because it's self-evident and plain.
Pope Francis has stood up firmly against reforming those horrific doctrines. He has done everything he can to smash a movement in the German-speaking world to genuinely reform Church teachings with respect to us queer people — to stop labeling us as immoral. (See the Synodal Way or Synodal Road, as the movement in Germany proper is sometimes translated to in English.)
Besides smashing the German reform movement, Pope Francis took LGBTQ reform off the table by dictate at the recent synod on synodality.
In another grotesquely homophobic move, the pope has significantly hardened the church ban on gay men training for the priesthood, which is a major homophobic regression in Church practice. Yet somehow people still call him progressive. Those people are wrong.
The Pope himself made that perfectly clear a few months ago when twice in the course of two weeks he was caught privately addressing other priests and bishops explaining to them that gay men may not train for the priesthood because "there's already too much fagotry in the Vatican." (He spoke in Italian, but gay Italians I know tell me that there's no way to put a positive or even neutral spin on his horrific language. They tell me that people who claim the word he chose can be neutral in Italian are clearly lying.)
I don't know why any queer people would want to be associated with a stigmatizing, homophobic, evil organization like the Roman Catholic Church.
If the servers want to do that, I guess that's up to them. But as far as I'm concerned, Catholic nuns and priests are disgusting monsters. Because they have to affirm that horrifying language about depravity and disorder. I hold them in the highest degree of personal disrespect and loathing.
That includes the Jesuit priest Father James Martin who is sometimes very falsely described as an LGBTQ ally.
I have personally read articles by him telling us gay people that we need to accept being called depraved and disordered.
That is such a horrific position to take, that if I ever met him in person I would have to hold back from spitting in his face.
He's not an LGBTQ ally, he is a foul, evil homophobic bigot.
Because calling us gay people depraved and disordered is absolutely homophobic bigotry. Bigotry most foul.
People who claim otherwise are either very evil or very stupid.
I AM NOT DEPRAVED!
I AM NOT DISORDERED!
I'm sad I have to say that. It's obvious to most people, but clearly to Catholics, it isn't obvious. I have often shed tears over that as a gay man born into a Catholic family.
