Dozens of Catholic priests come out as queer to protest Vatican’s LGBTQ opposition
Deutsche Welle reports.The OutInChurch initiative, which launched on Instagram last week, has launched a Change.org petition celebrating the diversity of its members and offering a number of ways the Catholic Church can modernize its approach to LGBTQ Catholics.“Our group is diverse.
It includes people who in the past have courageously and often single-handedly dared to come out in an ecclesiastical context,” the petition states.“But it also includes people who have only now decided to take this step and those who cannot or do not want to take this step for various reasons.
What unites us is that we have all always been part of the Church and are helping to shape and shape it today.”The group’s members “no longer want to remain silent,” they wrote.“We call for a correction of misanthropic doctrinal statements — also in view of the church’s worldwide responsibility for the human rights of LGBTIQ+ people,” they continued. “And we demand a change in the discriminatory ecclesiastical labor law, including all degrading and exclusionary formulations in the basic order of ecclesiastical service.”The group has outlined seven core demands of the church, including being able to live and work openly as LGBTQ people in the Catholic Church “without fear.”OutInChurch is calling for LGBTQ people to have access to all fields of activity and occupation in the church without discrimination, and for church employment rules to be changed so that LGBTQ Catholics can live and work openly, including getting married, without fear of dismissal.Church doctrine should be “revised on the basis of theological and human-scientific findings,” a point that is “of utmost relevance especially in view of worldwide church responsibility for the human.
