Yesterday, Bondings 2.0 covered recent comments by several U.S. bishops that tried to link homosexuality with clergy sexual abuse. Today’s post offers commentaries from Catholics who either pushed back against such bishops or who have offered a more positive assessment about gay priests and the abuse crisis.

Two voices made immediate responses to Madison Bishop Robert Morlino’s letter in which he said gay priests are “wreaking great devastation in the vineyard of the Lord,” according to National Catholic Reporter.

Todd Salzman, a theologian at Creighton University, Omaha, rejected attempts to conflate sexual identity and abuse, saying such claims “fundamentally missed the point of power and power structures in the church, and the abuse of power that requires fundamental reform.” The main issue, he said, is the “structural sin of the abuse of power,” not sexual ethics.

Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA, called such conflation “a disgusting attempt to reinforce the institutional church’s handwashing of the sex abuse of children.” It comes from Church officials unwilling to “take any responsibility for a problem that lies at their feet.”

Elsewhere, Fr. James Martin, S.J., author of Building a Bridge on LGBT issues in the Church, wrote on the topic of gay priests for America Magazine. Martin acknowledged that in the wake of new sexual abuse revelations Catholics “have a right to be angry,” but he wrote, “the intensity of hate and level of anger directed at gay priests are unprecedented in my memory.” Read more via New Ways Ministry