Almost everyone thinks Sodon and Gomorrah were destroyed over homosexuality (hence the term sodomy). Wrong. They were destroyed over the sexual abuse of children. Of course the first leads to the second.
As Christ said, “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” The converse applies IMHO. And that brings (brought) the wrath.
That is where we’re headed? Apparently. God help those of us who oppose this. Please.
Actually, they were destroyed over the sexual abuse of angels. But your point is well taken.
The Council of Nicea, the first ecumenical council after the Council of Jerusalem, determined that anyone who scandalizes a child must be defrocked and expelled from the community.
The greatest number of persons killed during the Spanish Inquisition (which, incidentally, applied only to those professing Catholicism; anyone who acknowledged being Jewish or Muslim was exempt) was of priests who had committed sexual abuse.
Many of Luther’s wild accusations against Rome were unfounded. He never had even visited Rome, or else he wouldn’t have falsely believed that the Vatican was in Rome. But one accusation he seems ashamed of, and so gains credibility in my eyes: While insisting that celibacy was unnatural, he alludes to unspeakable acts done by various monks.
Homophiles are those with same-sex attraction who may or may not be sexually active (whereas homosexual describes someone who has engaged in homosexual sex). Way back in 1961, Pope John XXIII warned bishops that homophiles must not be ordained as priests or religious, because the burdens of celibacy requires a heroic level of sexual health, and may further distort the sexuality of homophiles into pedophila. Sadly, the nearly schismatic American bishops ignored his warnings.
In 1978, with sexual abuse becoming epidemic, and lay psychologists fanning, rather than extinguishing the flames, the Catholic cardinals elected not as pope a former young-adult counsellor, matchmaker and romance novelist, turned exorcist. He fought the sex abuse scandal not by public trials (there were too many enablers), but with ecclesiastical reform, exorcisms and prayers. BY 1990, the rate of sexual abuse (according to the 2005 John Jay study) had been reduced 97%... before the media even caught a whiff of it. He was succeeded by yet another exorcist and liturgical reformer.
(Admit it... you didn’t realize that John Paul II was a romance novelist, young-adult counsellor or exorcist, did you?)