NUREMBERG, Germany (ChurchMilitant.com) – Reluctant to reject pedophilic sexual behavior, pro-LGBT Catholics colluded with pedophiles for two decades under the umbrella of the Ecumenical Working Group on Homosexuals and the Church (HuK), a new study has revealed.
Dr. Klaus Große Kracht
Presenting the study titled “Pedo Question — Undecided?” at a press conference on Tuesday in Nuremberg, the HuK leadership acknowledged the collusion and asked “the public for help in coming to terms with this dark side of our history.”
In a press release, the HuK board explained that the pro-LGBT organization demonstrated solidarity with homosexuals because they were discriminated against and their existence was not accepted as “normal” or as an “equally good gift from God.”
Founded in 1977, the pro-LGBT campaign group said that pedophiles, those who have a “sexual preference” for prepubescent boys or girls, “showed us this solidarity” and “demanded our support in return.”
Hence, in a policy adopted in 1980, HuK, which includes Catholics and Protestants, demanded that “every person — regardless of his age — has the right to freely exercise his sexuality, provided that it occurs with mutual consent and responsibility.”
“This implied that ‘consensual sexuality’ between adults and children is possible, provided there is no ‘violence’ inflicted,” HuK said. “For a long time, the HuK could not and did not want to generally or in the main say ‘no’ to pedo-sexual acts.”
“Many were happy to accept the supposed expertise of the sex educator at the University of Hanover, Prof. Helmut Kentler, as well as other scientific authorities and organizations that proclaimed and promoted pedo-sexual behavior,” the statement added.
However, in March 1997, the association decided on a “clear declaration of incompatibility with pedo-sexual interest groups and individuals after recognizing that there was only “apparent consent” between adults and children.
While several members “uncritically accepted the claim that consensual sexual acts between adults and children were possible,” and others “showed solidarity with pedophiles rather than sensitivity to the situation of children and young people,” the group admitted.
Such solidarity “may have led to more and greater suffering for them [children],” the group lamented, noting that “HuK had not problematized the socio-political role of pro-pedo-sexual actors.”
“Today there is no question for us that sexual acts between adults and children should be categorically rejected because they are always violence against children; there can be no consent due to the power imbalance between children and adults,” the HuK stressed.
On Jan. 13, 2024, the HuK board and council of delegates began a process of reappraisal, which led to commissioning a study on the topic, the LGBT campaign group noted.
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The HuK board apologized to victims and expressed its gratitude to the men and women who “raised awareness of pedo-sexuality as violence against children in our group in the mid-1990s.”
“Our intention is to highlight how we have encouraged sexual violence against children by trivializing, turning a blind eye and keeping quiet. We want to bring immediate justice to those affected by hearing their stories and, if they allow it, making them public,” the HuK statement concluded.
Catholic historian Dr. Klaus Große Kracht from the Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg oversaw the research for the independent study.
Kracht was also responsible for the clerical sex abuse study for the Catholic diocese of Münster, which was presented in 2022, together with the historian Thomas Großbölting, who also teaches in Münster.
In March 2021, after HuK was awarded the Herbert Haag Prize for Freedom in the Church, the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) congratulated it. Previous recipients of the award include the radical Marxist ex-priest Leonardo Boff.
