COLOGNE, July 28, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Polish priest Fr. Dariusz Oko has been charged by a German court with “incitement to hatred” for an article he wrote about homosexual clerical abuse, following a complaint by a pro-LGBT priest in Germany.
Oko’s article, published in the January/February edition of theological journal Theologisches, highlighted cases of abuse by homosexual priests and bishops and detailed mechanisms used by “homoclans” or a “homomafia” of predatory clerics to avoid accountability.
Oko described such groups as “a colony of parasites” that “cares first of all for itself, and not for the hosts at whose expense it lives,” and as a “homosexual plague” or a “cancer that is even ready to kill its host,” among other things. He stressed that “the existence of such powerful clans” attested to by both Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI “is an obvious logical, ethical, and dogmatic contradiction to the very essence of the Church and her teaching.”
In a sentence this month, the Cologne District Court claimed that Oko’s article, titled “On the need to curb homosexual cliques in the Church,” constituted “incitement to hatred” against homosexual people. The court demanded that Oko pay a fine of 4,800 euros or serve 120 days in jail, according to Polish magazine Wprost, and reportedly charged Fr. Johannes Stöhr, the editor-in-chief of Theologisches, as well. Oko has already appealed, and a trial is expected, katholisch.de reported.
Fr. Wolfgang Rothe, a dissident, scandal-plagued priest with the Archdiocese of Munich, has confirmed on social media that he accused Oko and celebrated the charges handed down by the Cologne court. Rothe was one of many German clerics who participated in a wave of illicit same-sex “blessing” ceremonies this spring and formerly held the post of deputy rector at an Austrian seminary shut down in 2004 amid a massive child pornography and homosexual misconduct scandal.
The Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture, a conservative Polish legal organization, is providing aide to Oko and Stöhr and has launched a petition on their behalf to the Cologne District Court and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The petition has garnered more than 15,000 signatures as of Wednesday.
“We have serious reservations about the legal basis for prosecuting” the two priests, said Ordo Iuris president Jerzy Kwaśniewski in a statement Monday. “Article 130 of the German Criminal Code prohibits hate speech against a number of groups, none of which is mentioned in the article by Fr. Prof. Oko.”
“In addition, we are dealing with a scientific article, so we are operating in the area of academic freedom, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech and criticism, the protection of which under the German constitution and the international system of human rights prevents the conviction of the author and editor-in-chief of a scientific journal,” he added.
Oko responded to the ruling against him in an interview with TVP Info, saying that he is “determined” to “save the seminarians from homocliques.”
“The Germans are putting me in jail? My grandfather and grandmother saved Jews, risked their lives, despite the fact that the Germans forbade saving Jews,” he said. “I am similarly determined, despite the fact that the Germans forbid me, to save the seminarians from homocliques.”
“This is a scientific article based on the enormous knowledge that comes to me from all over the world, from ordinary people, from the police, from the secret services. I collect known facts about homosexuals in cassocks and their habits,” he continued. “This ‘lavender mafia’ plays a similar role to the mafia in Sicily.”
LifeSiteNews will hand-deliver this petition to the Holy See, recording the moment traditional Catholics from around the world stood up for the Traditional Latin Mass.
Pope Francis has issued a new decree, "Traditiones Custodes," severely restricting the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM).
Please SIGN and SHARE this petition with other Catholics, and ask the Pope to reconsider this new and divisive Motu Proprio.
Pope Francis' decree clamps down hard on the TLM. In it, he effectively does away with Pope Benedict's protection of it, handing bishops in every diocese the right to suppress it, while demanding new priests get permission from their bishop and the Vatican to offer the Mass of the Ages.
As Catholics who value Tradition and know the place of the Magisterium in safeguarding the Deposit of Faith, it is time to speak up and have our voices heard.
Francis has decried rigidity and intolerance for years, but now is showing intolerance and rigidity himself by forcing his very narrow understanding of liturgy on one of the true sources of good fruit in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church.
Our Lord said that "a bad tree cannot bear good fruit", and yet we see more and more souls drawn to Christ through the TLM, with marriages dedicated to God and open to many children, and vocations also abounding in traditional seminaries, orders and priestly societies.
Indeed, the Traditional Latin Mass has been a source of unity for the Catholic Church for more than 1500 years, producing great saints, repentant sinners, and souls won for Christ across the world. *Read below how Benedict XVI decried attacks against the TLM and its adherents.
To attempt to restrict the Traditional Latin Mass, as a new generation are rediscovering the treasures of God's Church, will inevitably cause further division and hurt among the faithful, risking the loss of some souls who will regretfully turn away.
Souls are now at stake with this Motu Proprio, as some will drift away from the Deposit of Faith in disillusionment, while others that are far from God will never be touched by the profound beauty and reverence found in the Traditional Latin Mass.
Please SIGN and SHARE this petition to Pope Francis, urging him to reconsider his decision, not least for the good of souls and the glory of God, and making sure as many cardinals support the TLM as possible.
Click "Show Petition Text" on the right to read the letter to Pope Francis.
Finally, please pray, fast and do penance for the salvation of souls, including that of our shepherds, during this turbulent time in Church history.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
'BREAKING: Pope Francis abrogates Pope Benedict’s universal permission for Old Mass' - www.lifesitenews.com/news/pope-francis-abrogates-pope-benedicts-universal-permission-for-old-mass
'ANALYSIS: Pope restricts ‘divisive’ Traditional Latin Mass, says 52-yr-old Novus Ordo is ‘unique expression’ of Church’s liturgy' - www.lifesitenews.com/news/analysis-pope-restricts-divisive-traditional-latin-mass-says-52-yr-old-novus-ordo-is-unique-expression-of-churchs-liturgy
* Pope Benedict XVI (Spirit of the Liturgy, 2000):
"For fostering a true consciousness in liturgical matters, it is also important that the proscription against the form of liturgy in valid use up to 1970 [the older Latin Mass] should be lifted. Anyone who nowadays advocates the continuing existence of this liturgy or takes part in it is treated like a leper; all tolerance ends here. There has never been anything like this in history; in doing this we are despising and proscribing the Church’s whole past. How can one trust her at present if things are that way?"
**Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com
“Is the criticism of the criminal activity of the Sicilian mafia an incitement to hatred against all Sicilians? So how can an academic reflection on the challenge of a criminal network connected with homosexual practices in the Church be an incitement to hatred against all homosexuals?”
The sentence against Oko has also caught the attention of Polish deputy minister of justice Marcin Romanowski, who slammed the ruling in a tweet yesterday. “According to the German court, Fr. Prof. Dariusz Oko, by exposing a group of rapists operating inside the church in a scientific article, incited hatred. The court thus trampled on academic freedom and showed that it values torturers more than victims,” he wrote. “Let us not allow such paranoia in Poland.”
Według niemieckiego sądu ks. prof. Dariusz Oko demaskując w artykule naukowym grupę gwałcicieli działających wewnątrz kościoła, podżegał do nienawiści. Sąd tym samym zadeptał wolność akademicką i pokazał, że wyżej ceni oprawców niż ofiary. Nie dopuśćmy do takiej paranoi w Polsce
— Marcin Romanowski (@MarRomanowski) July 26, 2021
Fr. Oko, who currently works with the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, has long been an outspoken defender of Catholic teaching on homosexuality and gender, as well as a vocal critic of what he calls “homoheresy” and homosexual abuse within the Church.
“We are dealing not only with the problem of a homoideology and a homolobby outside the Church, but with an analogous problem within it as well, where homoideology takes the form of a homoheresy,” Oko wrote in his 2012 book, With the Pope Against the Homoheresy. He
published another book earlier this year, Lavender Mafia: With the Popes and Bishops against the Homoclique in the Church, from which his recent Theologisches article is drawn.
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