Quote of the Day

The [Roman Catholic] church’s official doctrine and the practice of most of its bishops (and too many religious superiors) do exactly what normal people would never do to their prized plants or beloved pets. They put us in closets and do all they can to keep us there.

And they do much worse than that, as Bishop Robert Lynch of St Petersburg, Florida, recently had the courage to point out.

“Sadly it is religion, including our own, which targets, mostly verbally, and also often breeds contempt for gays, lesbians and transgender people,” he said in response to the June 12 massacre that killed 49 people at a LGBT dance club in nearby Orlando.

. . . The most up-to-date Vatican teaching on homosexuality dates from the pontificate of John Paul II. The then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and his aides at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith drafted it.

And one of the main practical results and assertions is that LGBT Catholics should keep their homosexuality hidden from others."
And then in that 1986 document, Ratzinger (who later became Pope Benedict XVI) went on to say that, if gay people insist on revealing their sexual orientation to others, it's understandable that people react violently, even if violence is not a desirable way to react. The document blames LGBTQ folks for the violence inflicted on them.

– Robert Mickens
Excerpted from "Church Statements
Keep the Door Closed on Gays"
National Catholic Reporter
June 20, 2016

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Two Powerful Calls for the Catholic Hierarchy to Fully Acknowledge the LGBT Victims of Anti-LGBT Violence
• Quote of the Day – June 13, 2016
• The "Ratzinger Letter" of 1986 as "Theological Pornography"
• What the Vatican Can Learn from the X-Men
• Gay Men in the Vatican Are Giving the Rest of Us a Bad Name
• Catholic Church Can Overcome Fear of LGBT People
• Catholic Theologian: "Heterosexism, Not Homosexuality, is the Problem"