Gay-Porn-Star-Turned-Catholic Interviews Faithful Bishop

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DETROIT (ChurchMilitant.com) -

A faithful Illinois bishop is taking on the LGBT lobby inside the Church in an interview with ex-gay author and blogger Joseph Sciambra. Bp. Paprocki also tackled the false compassion of accommodating sin pushed by so called gay ministries which are active in many Dioceses in the United States. The exchange was published on Sciambra's YouTube channel on August 1. The interview covered the issue of "gay affirmative" ministries, as well as a Vatican letter issued by Cdl. Ratzinger on pastoral treatment of homosexuals and the correct understanding of "gradualism."

Church Militant reached out to Sciambra and asked him what his impression was of Bp. Paprocki and what he felt like he learned from the interview, and Sciambra answered:

Despite what was often reported in the secular media, and by some left-leaning Catholic commentators and news sites, I found Bishop Paprocki to be a man dedicated to the truth, but also a man willing to listen. Bishop Paprocki is thoughtful and soft-spoken and he conveys the message of Our Lord Jesus Christ with a gentleness and compassion that is largely missing in the Church today. He is a rare combination of honesty and empathy.

Church Militant covered the development when Bp. Paprocki drew fierce criticism earlier this year by issuing a pastoral decree, barring Holy Communion and funeral rites to active homosexuals. The decree drew the ire of homosexualists both inside and outside the Church, including liberal Jesuit Fr. James Martin.

Paprocki responded to Sciambra on the reaction to his decree:

The first time I had first-hand experience in terms of people telling me directly, in response to my decree on same sex marriage ... I had anticipated that there would be opposition, of course, from secular proponents of gay rights, but I think what surprised me was the vehemence of those within the Church. Lay people who told me they were practicing Catholics, parents of gay people and also from priests and deacons who basically were telling me that I was wrong.

Bishop Paprocki commented on the importance of correcting Catholics in public sin as a duty of charity: "The most compassionate and loving thing that we can do for people is help them get to Heaven."

He continued, "That's our eternal salvation. So to tell people the truth about our Church's teachings, and the teachings are based in truth and they are based on love. So to tell someone that he or she is doing something sinful, first of all, Our Lord Himself encourages us to what we call fraternal correction."

Sciambra went on to bring up the 1986 Letter to Bishops on the Pastoral Care of Homosexuals issued by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). The CDF was at that time headed by then Cdl. Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Sciambra referenced the portion of the letter which read as follows:

This Congregation wishes to ask the bishops to be especially cautious of any programs which may seek to pressure the Church to change her teaching, even while claiming not to do so. A careful examination of their public statements and the activities they promote reveals a studied ambiguity by which they attempt to mislead the pastors and the faithful.

Bishop Paprocki responded to this excerpt as follows, "In terms of pressure being put on the Church as mentioned in that CDF document, I think is really what we're seeing happening very forcefully right now. Because the push for gay rights has always been incremental steps."

Bishop Paprocki continued:

The target for so long has been to get recognition in civil law, and now that's been achieved. In our country, civil law has recognized same-sex marriage. What they don't have is moral approval, and the only place that can give them moral approval is the Church. So I think that's the next target here, in terms of putting pressure on the Church in order to give that kind of moral approval, to say what you're doing is morally acceptable.

Michael Voris interviewed Bp. Paprocki during an episode of Mic'D Up in 2013.

Sciambra is the author of the book Swallowed By Satan, which chronicles his journey out of the gay lifestyle, pornography and the occult. In comments given to a Christian organization during an online documentary (warning: graphic content), featuring Sciambra's testimony, Sciambra said the following about his past:

I liked the sense of power that I felt in pornography, and I started looking into the occult because so many people that were around me were talking about it, were talking about the certain power that sex acts had, and I was interested in this because I wanted my life to make sense, because it had just become meaningless to me.

Sciambra continued:

I was willing to do things [in porn] that I wouldn't have been willing to do before, and I hated it. But I did it, and I hated the people that were going to watch it, and I hated the people that were going to be at home looking at this [pornography], and I threw out every curse I could imagine and I threw it, and I cast it out onto the camera, and I pushed it, and I prayed to Satan that anyone who came in touch with this would be destroyed because I wanted everybody to suffer, I wanted those people to suffer like I was.

Sciambra also describes the toll the gay lifestyle took on his health in a blog post titled Surviving Gay ... Barely (warning: graphic).

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