Cardinal Jorge Medina Estévez, an 83-year-old Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church in Chile, is stirring up some controversy for remarks he made in response to the passage of marriage equality in Chile, Catholic Culture reports:
"Reacting to Argentina's decision to legalize same-sex marriage, the cardinal said that “the Church distinguishes the homosexual tendency and homosexual practice. If a person has a homosexual tendency it is a defect, as if one lacked an eye, a hand, a foot.” On the other hand, homosexual activity, he noted, is immoral.
“In my life as a priest, I have had [pastoral] care of many people with this problem,” he added. Some, like alcoholics, have overcome this tendency by “discipline, education, or reeducation,” he said, while others have heroically resisted this tendency for their entire lives.
Same-sex marriage, he added, “is something in opposition to the law of God, and no human law can go against the law of God. If a human law goes against the law of God, that human law does not exist.”
The remarks were made at the opening of the newly restored Our Lady of Sorrows church in the town of Villa del Mar on July 25th.
So, if homosexuality is a "defect", what does that make the Catholic Church, which is filled with gay priests?