(LifeSiteNews) — German Bishop Peter Kohlgraf said in an interview that “sexuality has several dimensions and homosexuality is not a sin.”
Kohlgraf, who is the bishop of the diocese of Mainz, made these comments in a recent interview with the Swiss Catholic news site kath.ch.
The German prelate was asked about the negative reactions he received for establishing a “queer-sensitive ministry” in his diocese to which he replied:
It was said that we are now chasing after the zeitgeist. If you want zeitgeist, you don’t go to the bishop and ask, “Think about how you’re dealing with us.” It’s not about the zeitgeist. Sin gets focused on the sexual element all the time. But: sexuality has several dimensions and homosexuality is not a sin.
Kohlgraf also talked about the rejection of a landmark document that sought to change Church teaching on homosexuality, contraception, and gender identity during the fourth General Assembly of the Synodal Way in September.
“We did not vote on theoretical moral theology, but people felt that we voted on their lives – and that they were found to be negative,” the German bishop stated. “If people felt very hurt personally, I can’t say, ‘Don’t be like that, we were talking about texts and not about you.’ Of course, it’s always about real people, too.”
Furthermore, Kohlgraf was asked about the efforts by him and other German bishops to change ecclesiastical employment laws, so that employees of the Catholic Church would not have to abide by Catholic moral teaching on sexuality in their private lives.
In this context, Kohlgraf said that “[w]e must clearly define what it means for us to be Catholic,” and that could “no longer be sexuality.”
“Nevertheless, we cannot simply say: What happens within the own four walls is private,” Kohlgraf continued. “I am not completely indifferent to the private lives of my pastoral staff. I don’t mean sexual orientation. But the behavior. For example, if a father beats his children and wife, I care.”
Kohlgraf is well-known for his heterodox, pro-homosexuality positions. A group of faithful German laypeople recently published a letter directed at the German bishop in which they called for his resignation for promoting “the heresy of homosexual, gender and queer ideology.”
Kohlgraf’s views are in direct opposition to the immutable teaching of the Catholic Church on sexuality. The Catholic Church has infallibly taught since its beginning that homosexual acts are gravely sinful and that same-sex attraction is disordered. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states the following:
Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity (Cf. Genesis 19:1-29; Romans 1:24-27; 1 Corinthians 6:10; 1 Timothy 1:10), tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Persona humana, 8). They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved. (CCC 2357)
Furthermore, it is impossible for the Church to change its teaching on homosexual acts since they are “intrinsically disordered” as the Catechism states. These acts are therefore always sinful, regardless of circumstances.
Homosexual acts are contrary to natural law, since the natural end of sexual intercourse is the conception of a child.
READ: No room for ‘inclusion’: Homosexuality and transgenderism are sins against nature itself
Sexual desire is the natural inclination toward sexual intercourse with the opposite sex for the sake of offspring. Homosexual acts not only exclude the possibility of procreation, but they also go against the order of nature as they depart from the inclination toward the opposite sex. They only seek sexual gratification without the possibility of conceiving a child.
Moreover, Kohlgraf’s assertions that “sexuality has several dimensions” and that homosexuality is one of these dimensions, hinge on the claim that people are “born” with homosexuals inclinations and that they are therefore “natural,” as the bishops’ previous statements show.
As LifeSite’s Pete Baklinski demonstrated in 2021, Kohlgraf’s assumption that someone can be “born gay” is not backed up by any valid scientific facts:
Science has made it clear that there are no known biological factors, such as a “gay gene” for instance, that can be used to distinguish someone with same-sex attraction from someone with opposite-sex attraction. The pro-LGBT British Royal College of Psychiatrists admitted in a 2014 position paper that same-sex attraction is not something one is born with but is determined by a number of factors, including “postnatal environmental factors.” Psychologists have pointed out that childhood trauma, especially in the area of the child-parent relationship, is a key factor in the development of same-sex attraction.