Continuing with my free translation of gay theologian Monsignor Charamsa’s interview in Religion Digital. In this second extract he contrasts Church preaching of “mercy”, with its record of active persecution of homosexuals.

The Church preaches mercy, but continues to persecute homosexuals?

Yes, there is real persecution by the Catholic Church of both individuals and of the LGBTI community in general. It is persecution of sexual minorities that do not belong and can not belong to the heterosexual majority. It is an ideological project of the Church. My Church allows itself to say  that we must fight against gays like we fought against Nazism. It compares us with the Nazis, the enemies of humanity. This statement has come from the mouth of African Cardinal Sarah in the middle of the synod, a pace which instead should be thinking about mercy for families. The Church is obsessed with homosexuality, just as with human sexuality in general.

Unfortunately, at this time of the church there is nobody able to open a serious discussion, free from all dictatorial ideology. The intellectual and spiritual level of the Pastors is generally not very high. So,there is a lack partners whom we could face up to in the Church. This is my experience in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: a cold, blind indoctrination, an automatic legalism, full of callous self-righteousness. With whom in the Church could we debate these human questions if the Church allows the words of Sarah? He should be denounced for the defamation of a social group. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith thinks like Sarah. They are obsessed with homosexuality.

A few days ago, Cardinal Kasper said that “the homosexual is born (that way).” It was the first time I heard this from a hierarch of the Church. How about you?

Yes, it is true, I think it is the first time. Cardinal Kasper is one of the few people in the Church who think. I do not share his position on moral judgment regarding homosexual acts by homosexual persons  following their own nature. I think he says, on the one hand you are born homosexual, but at the same time he excludes these same people from the possibility of love,  a possibility reserved only to heterosexual creatures. It is contradictory. In other words, if it is true that “one is born homosexual,” as he says, then Catholics have a problem with the homosexual issue. They should think again about the whole issue of sexual orientation, and then review the moral doctrine in light of this reflection.

However, with this sentence it seems to me that Cardinal Kasper continues the unfortunate theory of male-female complementarity. This approach is a truly Catholic mental construction, which has already been examined and is theoretically weak, if not false. Unfortunately, the term “complementarity” has become a slogan with which the Church wants to eliminate the discussion about gay people as God’s creatures looking for love. Thus the Church also promotes a homophobic false image of homosexuals, as people.naturally incapable of love  In this way it promotes hatred in the public mind against LGBTI people, who are presented as abnormal. This is an ideological position of a church that is afraid to think. I’m sure this will happen in the future and the Church will ask forgiveness for this delay. These types of errors have been repeated in the history of the Church

Returning to Cardinal Kasper. He is a believer who continually thinks, with whom you can discuss. There are also others like him: as Cardinal. Schönborn, Cardinal. Marx, Archbishop Monsignor Forte or Archbishop Monsignor Bonny, to name a few, and not forgetting Pope Francis. They are men of God and the Church, sensitive, faithful, capable of meeting humanity and talking to her. But most are obsessed, unable to think and to love, as Cardinal. Sarah. Stigmatization promoted by the majority is a weapon.

See also the full series:

• Charamsa: Celibacy, Gays,  Priesthood
• Charamsa’s Penalty, Clerical Pedophiles
• The Church, “Mercy”, LGBT Persecution
• Gays in the Curia, Gays and the CDF
• CDF Attempts to Undermine Francis’ Papacy
• Clerical Pedophilia, Sexual Immaturity
• Charamsa on His Future