Catholic church sexual abuse: Cardinal blames ‘moral depravity’ of gays
VATICAN CITY, VATICAN – FEBRUARY 22: New Cardinal, attends the Consistory at St Peter’s basilica on February 22, 2014 in Vatican City, Vatican. 19 new cardinals have been created in a ceremony in the Vatican. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)
A cardinal has blamed the child sex abuse scandal that has engulfed the Catholic Church on the “moral depravity” of gay people.
In an interview with far-right Catholic website LifeSite, cardinal Gerhard Müller suggested that being gay counted as a form of sex abuse.
“In my view, there do not exist homosexual men or even priests.”
—Cardinal Gerhard Müller
Müller discussed the resignation of cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who stepped down in July 2018 after he was accused of sexually abusing young boys.
Being gay is a “disorder,” says cardinal
“That McCarrick, together with his clan and a homosexual network, was able to wreak havoc in a mafia-like manner in the Church is connected with the underestimation of the moral depravity of homosexual acts among adults,” Müller told LifeSite.
Elsewhere in the interview, Müller, who described homosexuality as a “disorder,” said that being gay is a sin.
“In my view, there do not exist homosexual men or even priests. God has created the human being as man and woman,” the cardinal said.
Gerhard Müller (left) has linked the Catholic Church’s child sex abuse scandal with the “moral depravity” of gay people. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty)
“But there can be men and women with disordered passions.
“Sexual communion has its place exclusively in the marriage between a man and a woman.
“Outside, there is only fornication and abuse of sexuality, both either with persons of the opposite sex, or in the unnatural intensification of sin with persons of the same sex.”
Cardinal Gerhard Müller: Homosexuality is a form of sex abuse
Müller served as a Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith between 2012 and 2017.
Müller’s comments come after another cardinal blamed the sex abuse scandals on a “homosexual culture” within the church.
US Cardinal Raymond Burke, who serves as Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta in Rome, also said that homosexuality was a “tendency that is disordered” and needed to be “purified at the root.”
The 70-year-old former head of the influential Apostolic Signatura has a history of making anti-gay comments, having claimed in 2014 that parents should keep their children away from gay relatives.
In an interview with advocacy group Catholic Action for Faith and Family, Burke said: “It was clear after the studies following the 2002 sexual abuse crisis that most of the acts of abuse were in fact homosexual acts committed with adolescent young men.
“There was a studied attempt to either overlook or to deny this.”
