Two days before a longtime Vatican official burst from his stained-glass closet last month, he was dining with an Italian media consultant inside an elegant restaurant on the right bank of Rome’s Tiber River.
The topic of conversation: How should the official come out?
Krzysztof Charamsa was still employed at one of the Holy See’s most powerful offices, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
But after decades of hiding, the 43-year-old gay Polish priest wanted to come out with a flourish.
He was no longer afraid to confront a Church he saw as intrinsically “homophobic” and proposed a symbolic news conference outside the headquarters of the Congregation — the very institution charged with defending and disseminating Catholic teachings around the globe.
But Emilio Sturla, a public relations consultant who worked closely with gay Catholic groups and was helping Charamsa, strongly suggested he reconsider, both men recalled.
The public and the Church, Sturla insisted, would see such a move as too incendiary.
“But that’s what he wanted,” Sturla said. “To be provocative.” And that’s what he did.
Their conversation suggests how even before it happened, Charamsa’s high-profile debut — including its timing right before a major Vatican meeting of the Church hierarchy — was already controversial among the small group of gay Catholics aware of his plans.
Charamsa’s move brought the expected denunciations from the Church and religious conservatives, who pointed out that he had violated his vow of chastity and the Church’s teachings on homosexuality.
More surprisingly, his actions have also sparked a split among gay Catholics.
The Church officially teaches that homosexual desires are not sinful unless acted upon and calls on gays and lesbians to live lives of chastity.
It teaches that gays are deserving of human dignity. But it also describes homosexual acts as a sin that is “intrinsically disordered” and a “grave depravity”.
As Pope Francis opens the door to more inclusion of gay people, Charamsa’s coming out — and the reactions to it — cuts to the heart of a debate raging among gay Catholics worldwide: Should they use gentle dialogue or open confrontation in pushing for change? Continue reading
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