Catholic Church official resigns after cell data tracked him to Grindr, gay bars

With regard to this particular story, this guy, as far as we know, was just secretly gay and not technologically savvy.

The real story in my view is how and why he was outed. It's not just priests who have a lot to lose by being revealed to be gay.

You might be surprised to learn that those references are considerably more ambiguous than how they are generally talked about.

The Bible has been continually retranslated by people with specific agendas and moral frameworks. Some of those translation choices are pretty questionable. As one example, Thomas Aquinas chose to translate "don't practice witchcraft" as "don't interpret dreams" due to his own inability to manage his (intense) dream life. That probably singlehandedly set back discourse around dreams in Western culture a couple hundred years.

The idea that the New Testament speaks against homosexuality comes largely from the (mis)translation of the single Koine Greek word 'arsenokoites.' It has often been translated as 'men who lie with men' but does not have that literal meaning and was not used as a term for homosexuality at the time.

As just one proposed example other scholars have put forth, that line could actually be chastising 'men who lay about,' as in rich people who do nothing to contribute to society. It could also be referring to temple prostitution, something completely alien and irrelevant to most modern people. It isn't nearly as clear cut as homophobic Christians wish it was.

As one other example, the story of Sodom is actually about not providing shelter and assistance to travelers who come to you needing help. The licentiousness is secondary to the main moral teaching of that bit, which a lot of Christians conveniently ignore when they are actually called upon to support strangers in need.

Here's a bit on difficulties translating arsenokoites if you're curious: https://www.stopbibleabuse.org/biblical-references/paul/arse...

I don't know as much about the Old Testament, so can't really speak to that. Personally I find most of that stuff much harder to relate to than the reforms Jesus was trying to lead people into, so I have a harder time imagining how or why you might try to build a modern ethical framework from it. That said, it seems to me that Judaism generally does a better job of acknowledged the ambiguities and interpretative nature of translating religious texts; debate has always been a central part of Jewish religious discourse.

Lots of things are in the Bible. Catholics are not Biblical literalists; I mean, that's a big part of what the reformation was about. If the Church of England can square this particular circle, Catholicism probably can, too.