Bishop Jamie Soto of Sacramento pulled a bait-and-switch at the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries’ conference last weekend.
The organization, which celebrates homosexuality and urges other Catholic group to do the same, had invited Soto to speak to congregants and spread the good word. Soto agreed, a move that surprised many of his faithful flock. “How could such a pious man endorse those sinful queers?” Answer: he doesn’t.
Rather than praising the Association’s commitment to maintaining their Catholic ways, Soto used his pulpit to admonish attendees and decried their “deviation:” “Sexual relations between people of the same sex can be alluring for homosexuals, but it deviates from the true meaning of the act and distracts them from the true nature of love to which God has called us all. For this reason, it is sinful.”
Soto then went on to cite the Biblical character Paul, who urged his followers not to conform to cultural and social changes. Rather than embracing gay acceptance, said Soto, true Catholics will eschew the so-called “distortion” of love:
“If you cannot have sex then you cannot love. This is the message. Even more destructive is the prevailing notion that sex is not an expression of love. Sex is love.” This view, says the bishop, “robs the human person of the possibility of ever knowing real love.
“Sexual intercourse between a man and a woman in the covenant of Marriage is one expression of love to which the human person can aspire, but we are all called to love. … The human desire to love must lead us to the divine.” The path to the highest love, said the bishop, “is the path of chastity.”
Soto also used his speech to urge voters to support Proposition 8, a California ballot measure that would revoke that state’s gay marriages. A number of the Association’s associates reportedly got up and walked out on Soto. And, really, who can blame them?
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tallskin
LOL, yet another pig ugly shaman of one of the branches of the absurd sky pixie religions.
Most animals have homosexual behaviour, so do humans.
Yet, because of some imaginary friend in the sky we are informed that humans cannot do it as well.
Remember even educated fleas do it.
and only the badly educated are religiously afflicted.
Trenton
I wouldn’t have gotten up and waled out. I would have gotten up and kicked his ass off the pulpit and preached my own damn sermon. What a fucking monster.
John
I’d be interested in knowing Biship Soto’s role in covering up the wrongful acts of his priests in the past. I think there is a lot in the news about it.
I strongly believe that the Catholic church will not change its position on things in our lifetime, especially with the last two popes they’ve put in there.
If it were me, I’d leave the church. If I needed religion, I hear some Episcopaleans like us.
tallskin
About 15 years ago I was at the funeral of a young black lad who had died of complications due to his HIV infection and the fucking cunt of an evangelical preacher ranted for about half an hour about how the lad was going to go to hell due to his homosexuality.
His poor family, sitting there taking this shit
If his family had not been there I would have taken one of the heavy wooden chairs and used to break the cunt’s arms and legs, but I didn’t I sat there and took it.
God I fucking hate the religious.
gkruz
If heterosexuality is “the true nature of love to which God has called us all”, then why is he an unmarried celibate?
Tim in SF
“How could such a pious man endorse those sinful queers?”
Who actually said that? I can’t figure it out from the story.
Gerard Priori
Wow! Another lying sack-of-sh!t catholic clergyman telling everyone what his imaginary friend wants–how completely unexpected.
CondeNasty
This is why I left the Catholic church. Too many secrets and lies.
Gianpiero
Much like gay Republicans, gay Catholics will only continue to get crumbs and scorn from the institution they are trying to change. Although it is an American ideal to work for change from the inside–and generally a praiseworthy activity–these two institutions, under their present leaders, are too far gone to expect meaningful progress in the near term.
seitan-on-a-stick
I uses teeth when he sucks cocks in the pulpit and says things like “The Power of Christ compels you.” Is that important?
Distingué Traces
Presumably he wrote this out beforehand. Was he unable to see his own doublethink lying there on the page? These are some badly muddled sentences.
But the poor bastard has had to put himself through the mental loop-de-loop of justifying clerical celibacy, so perhaps his sense of the absurd has been permanently fried.
It’s obvious he’s on the losing end of history, so I feel more sad about everything he’s given up than angry that he’s impotently trying to impose his own suffering on everyone else.
Jack
I suppose he considers the act of brushing one’s teeth sinful too? Looks like one doctrine he sticks to religiously…
Michael
Why do people who are excluded – in writing – from groups like these (Church, Boy Scouts, etc…) continue to beat down their doors? Surely there are enough churches out there to find one to suit your needs. I mean that’s the Christian model, isn’t it? Keep splitting off until there are a gazillion churches with 3.5 members each? Is it a glutton for punishment thing? I can’t even remember the last time I attended a church that wasn’t a historic structure, camera in hand. To each his own but the whole religion thing sounds so… antiquated.
DairyQueen
What an Asshole. I actually don’t feel sorry for the attendees of this conference. The Vatican Catholic Cult hates QUEERS! When are they going to learn. Go join Dignity if you must stay in that cult. They are not reconized by the Prada Queen in Rome. So you can be gay all you want without all the guilt.
Chris
I have settled within myself long ago that unless something I do is harmful to another person (or myself), it is not sinful. And if I care for another man, and that is mutual and good for both of us, then I don’t think people should speak for God. And this bishop can bite me, along with all the other hypocritical religious people out there. Love is love, in all its forms.
BillyBob Thornton
Uhm….so why was he invited to speak in the first place??
reversion
WOW WOW WOW
Being an atheist I obviously wouldn’t have attended, but if I did, then I would have stood up and cursed the fucker before leaving.
I don’t get how people just sat there and took it.
Puddy Katz
Well, being a liar is not nice, I’ll say that.
Patrick
Speaking as a gay, practicing Catholic:
I think that, at least in the US and in Western Europe, many Catholics these days are feeling a real sense of disconnection with their church hierarchy. I go to a church where I’m accepted as a gay person. There’s a lot of disappointment at my church at the actions of the Catholic hierarchy, who are seen as a lot of old men who have no idea what world they noow live in.
The point I’m trying to make is, please don’t react towards all Catholic with all the same ignorance and anger that drives some of the hierarchy.
rayrayj
Dear God please save us from these fucked up idiots who preach to us that You are omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, beyond the comprehension of mere mortal man; and then tell us they know what you believe and what you want. Of course they may not be mere mortals. They could be genies or fairies.
alan brickman
What an Ugly closet case….obviously he’s jealous!!
M Shane
While my instincts are beginning to tell me that love is possible between men, it should be noted that both such notables as Plato and William Burroughs believed that the genious for sex and fascinatuion for love was “a fraud perpetuated by the female sex”.
Sex is in all likelihood, though, an act of aggresion at best.
Maybe he’s right. So what!
greybat
No.1- “Pig- ugly shaman”…You do have a way with words, Tallskin!
No.12- Sharks rarely brush their teeth, Jack!
No.22- Sex is also an Art, and art is both the tool and the enemy of religion.But it’s also an act of communion, which may well make Love a religion unto itself. No wonder the world’s oldest virgin is so down on it!
Miguel
Why did they invite Bishop Soto, a Catholic Bishop, to speak at their conference if they did not expect him to state Catholic teaching about the sinfulness of sexual activity outside of marriage? They should not be surprised, unless they had reason to believe that the Bishop’s beliefs did not conform to Catholic teaching. At least the Bishop was not a hypocrite who says one thing and does another.
Phoenix (The Angry Millitant Nelly Stoking the Fires of Change)
My only response to Bishop Soto’s rant is this http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Michelangelo-Ignudi.jpg and this http://images.chapitre.com/ima2/big1/748/5730748.jpg and this http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00015/sebastion2500_15393t.jpg
sir, pot meet kettle.
greybat
Those are pretty pithy responses, Phoenix! Thanks for a dash of beauty on a dry topic!