Roman Catholic Church in Modern Times
Further information: Homosexuality and Roman Catholic priestsCardinal Hans Hermann Groër was removed from office by John Paul II for alleged sexual misconduct involving either homosexuality or pederasty. Officially, the Pope accepted the resignation letter which Groër had written on the occasion of his 75th birthday. This made Groër, who had adamantly refused to ever comment in public on the allegations, one of the highest-ranking Catholic clerics to become caught up in the sexual abuse scandals.
Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee, Wisconsin retired on May 24, 2002 following the revelation that he had used $450,000 in archdiocesan funds to settle a lawsuit accusing him of sexual harassment. In a statement one week later, he admitted the falsity of his previous assertion that income he had earned outside of his priestly occupation (and turned over to the Church) exceeded the $450,000. In 2009 he confirmed that he was gay, but did not reveal any details of his relationships.
In 2005, Juan Carlos Maccarone, the Bishop of Santiago del Estero in Argentenia was forced to resign after images were released of him engaged in sexual activity with another man. Suggestion was made that the former state governor Carlos Juarez had been involved in the release after criticism of the governor's human rights record.
The auxiliary Roman Catholic Bishop of Cape Town, South Africa, resigned in July 2002 following allegations that he outed himself as gay on a sometimes-sexually charged website set up for gay priests. Bishop Reginald Cawcutt blamed the scandal on the conservative U.S. organization Roman Catholic Faithful which infiltrated the now closed website, called St. Sebastian's Angels, and traced posting addresses.
Francisco Domingo Barbosa Da Silveira, the Bishop of Minas in Uruguay was forced to resign in July 2009, following a gay sex scandal in which he had faced extortion.
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, a retired bishop in the Diocese of Detroit, has consistently been a supporter of New Ways Ministry and has also called for homosexual priests and bishops to "come out" and be truthful to themselves and others. Gumbleton has also acted as a keynote speaker at Call to Action conferences. In 1995 he wore a mitre at a church service on which were symbols of the cross, a rainbow and a pink triangle in solidarity with the gay community. Later, he came into the public eye before the Vatican's Instruction with regard to the ordination of homosexual men was released, arguing against Fr. Baker's article on the issue in America.
Read more about this topic: Gay Bishops
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“It is a dogma of the Roman Church that the existence of God can be proved by natural reason. Now this dogma would make it impossible for me to be a Roman Catholic. If I thought of God as another being like myself, outside myself, only infinitely more powerful, then I would regard it as my duty to defy him.”
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“It is time that the Protestant Church, the Church of the Son, should be one again with the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of the Father. It is time that man shall cease, first to live in the flesh, with joy, and then, unsatisfied, to renounce and to mortify the flesh.”
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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