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Gay News: A German theologian has said that much of the clergy in the Catholic Church are gay and that homophobia is rife in the Church
By: Nigel Robinson
Priests "fighting their own sexuality"
Priests "fighting their own sexuality"
Much of Catholic clergy "are gay"
22 November 2010
David Berger, the former publisher of a Catholic magazine, told news magazine der Spiegel that “a large number of Catholic clerics and trainee priests in Europe and the United States are homosexually-inclined.”
Berger, who is gay, went on to say that the worst homophobia in the Church came from closeted gay priests themselves who were desperately fighting their own sexuality.
“Obviously, those who follow their urges are repudiated more fiercely when one is so painfully repressing that disposition oneself,” he said.
Berger, who was professor at the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas until he came out, said that his writings on homosexual themes were heavily censored.
He was not allowed to use the word “homosexual” but instead had to refer to gay men as “perverse sodomites”, and “life partners” had to be described as “fornication partners”.
Der heilige Schein (The Holy Illusion), Berger’s book on his experiences as a gay theologian in the Catholic Church, is out now.
