Tag: 2023
“Sodomy” and “Homosexuality” Are Not Biblical Sins
One of my jobs as a priest is to help people discern which of the acts they have done (or might do) are genuinely sins―and which are not really sins, even though they might think they are. Priests do this so that people can participate in being forgiven when they have genuinely done something wrong…
What is scapegoating? Why Gay Catholic priest James Alison spent years learning why people target minorities
At the age of nine, Catholic priest and scholar James Alison realised two things. The first was that he was gay. The second was that his life would never be the same. “I did know immediately that basically, I was lost,” he tells ABC RN’s Soul Search. “I was afloat on a sea with no port.…
Why do we scapegoat?
James Alison says scapegoating is one of our oldest social behaviours. But casting someone out to maintain group cohesion has its obvious drawbacks — particularly for the person taking the fall! As a gay Catholic priest, Dr Alison was drawn to the work of French polymath René Girard, who proposed that scapegoating is not the…