On Mondays, I answer questions frequently asked by those considering a return to the Catholic Church. How do I know this stuff? I was away for more than 30 years myself, and am the co-author of When They Come Home: Ways to Welcome Returning Catholics, a book for pastors and parish leaders interested in this ministry.
Why does the Church hate gays?
The Church doesn’t hate gays and lesbians. Rather, it instructs acceptance with “respect, compassion, and sensitivity” and calls for no discrimination
against people regardless of sexual orientation.
It is true that the Church calls on gays and lesbians to be chastely celibate—just as it does heterosexuals who aren’t married. While the Catechism refers to homosexual inclinations as “disordered,” that same word is used elsewhere about our constant struggle as people in this world. For example, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s 2009 Lenten address referred to fasting as a means of battling “every possible disordered attachment to ourselves.”
