A Catholic priest in Ireland has kicked off a controversy after repeatedly stating that Irish Deputy Prime Minister; Leo Varadkar and other gay politicians would go to hell. Sean Sheehy, the 65-year-old priest, has made these allegations from the pulpit as well as in media interviews. Opinions of the priest have drawn widespread criticism and have even led to his bishop distancing himself from the views.
The Roman Catholic Church is the largest Christian denomination in the world, with approximately 1.2 billion members across the globe.
Sheehy delivered a homily at St Mary’s church in his native County Kerry. He expressed his strong views. Many people reportedly walked out of the church.
Raymond Browne, the bishop of Kerry, apologized. He said that Sheehy’s opinions didn’t “represent the Christian position”.
However, even after the bishop’s apology, Sheehy repeated his views in radio interviews. He was asked whether he thought Varadkar and other politicians would go to hell, and he replied, “Absolutely”
“You had an agenda that was being pushed and the sad point about it is that the hierarchy was mute: they never educated the people at all,” he told RTE’s Liveline, according to a report in The Guardian
Sheehy claimed that media, politicians, and even the Catholic church had misled people to win approval for same-sex marriage and abortion rights.
The priest is facing criticism. Some people are calling him ultra-orthodox while others are pointing at Sheehy’s 42 years of service in the USA during culture wars as a reason for his views.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (teachings of the Church), names “homosexual acts” as “intrinsically immoral and contrary to the natural law,” and names “homosexual tendencies” as “objectively disordered.” While the Catholic Church does not consider “homosexual orientation” sinful in and of itself, it does have a very negative attitude toward it.