As an historical theologian, I continue to study the evolution of Christian beliefs, doctrines, and interpretations of Scripture across different eras. This week, several readers have asked me for a contemporary clarification of Roman Catholic perspectives on LGBTQ people.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is a reference work that summarizes the Catholic Church’s doctrine. It was promulgated by Pope John Paul II (1920-2095) in 1992. The Catechism names “homosexual acts” as “intrinsically immoral and contrary to the natural law,” and names “homosexual tendencies” as “objectively disordered.”

In his last personal work, Memory and Identity, published in 2005, Pope John Paul II referred to the “pressures” on the European Parliament to permit “homosexual marriage.’’ He wrote: “It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927-2022) basically agreed with John Paul II, holding the traditional Catholic position that while individuals with homosexual inclinations should be treated with respect and compassion, homosexual acts and same-sex marriage were considered “intrinsically disordered”

Pope Francis (1936 – April 21, 2025) adopted a significantly more accommodating tone on LGBTQ topics than his predecessors. In July 2013, his televised “Who am I to judge?” statement was widely reported in the international press, becoming one of his most famous statements on LGBTQ people. Nevertheless, on topics directly effecting LGBTQ people, his words and actions, during his 12-year leadership, were mixed at best.

On September 25, 2023, in a responsum to conservative cardinals before the 16th World Synod of Bishops, Francis expressed an openness to blessings for same-sex couples as long as they did not misrepresent the Catholic position that marriage is not possible for same-sex people and can only be between one man and one woman.

On May 27, 2024, during a closed-door meeting of the Episcopal Conference of Italy, Pope Francis, using words that denigrated gay men, strongly opposed the admittance of gay men as seminarians.

On July 30, 2025, in a wide-ranging interview with Crux Senior Correspondent Elise Ann Allen, Pope Leo XIV (born 1955 and elected pope on May 8, 2025)  said that his approach to LGBTQ Catholics would be similar to that of his predecessor, saying the Church must accept “everyone, everyone, everyone.” Yet, he rejected doctrinal changes such as recognizing same-sex marriage, asserting that “the teaching of the Church will remain unchanged.”

Nevertheless, starting especially in 2023, elements of change have begun to appear in the Catholic Church.

 

On March 10^th 2023, for example, the German Catholic bishops approved same-sex blessings, as part of a vote by the Synodal Path. The resolution called for blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples to be officially allowed in German Catholic dioceses.

An especially significant moment came on September 6, 2025, when LGBTQ Catholics in rainbow attire took part in the first officially recognized LGBTQ pilgrimage to Rome during the Roman Catholic Jubilee Year. The pilgrimage included a procession through the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica. The event saw over a thousand participants from around the world. A Mass was celebrated for the pilgrims in Rome’s Church of the Gesù, presided over by Bishop Francesco Savino, Bishop of the Diocese of Cassano and Vice President of the Italian Bishops’ Conference for Southern Italy.

In his homily, Bishop Savino spoke about restoring dignity to those who have been denied it. “Before sharing what the Word of God generated in me and what the Spirit generated in me, I would like to obediently listen to its action and invite you all to look at each other. Look at each other! Look at each other! We are a group of faces facing. We are a group of real stories. We are a group of people who ask with dignity, authenticity, and truth to be recognized. Each one with their own story. Each one with their own wounds. But each with their own beauty, with the beauty that lives within each of us, regardless of our fragilities. And we want to leave this celebration more joyful and more hopeful than ever. We want to leave convinced that God loves us, of a singular and unique love, of an asymmetrical love, of a love without conditions.”

Yes. There has been positive development in the Roman Catholic understanding of human sexuality. I was thinking recently about my theologian friend Todd A. Salzman and his colleague Michael G. Lawler, at Creighton University, in Omaha, Nebraska. In 2008, they published their ground-breaking book The Sexual Person (Georgetown University Press). They stressed that two principles had captured the essence of the official Catholic position on the morality of sexuality: first, that any human genital act must occur within the framework of heterosexual marriage; second, each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life.

Remaining firmly within the Catholic tradition, they contended that the Catholic Church has been inconsistent in its teaching by adopting a dynamic, historically conscious anthropology and worldview on social ethics and the interpretation of scripture while adopting a static, classicist anthropology and worldview on sexual ethics. While some documents from the 1962-1965 Vatican II, like Gaudium et spes (“the marital act promotes self-giving by which spouses enrich each other”), gave hope for a renewed understanding of sexuality, the church had not carried out the full implications of this approach.

In short, Salzman and Lawler emphasized relationships, not acts, and recognized Christianity’s historically and culturally conditioned understanding of human sexuality.The Sexual Person draws historically, methodologically, and anthropologically from the best of Catholic tradition.It provides a context for theological conversations between “traditionalists” and “revisionists” regarding marriage, cohabitation, homosexuality, reproductive technologies, and what it means to be human.

In a 2024 article in Theological Studies, Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler stressed: “There is ambivalence in definitions of Catholic sexual human dignity and Catholic social human dignity, which lead to inconsistencies in the foundation and justification of moral doctrine.” They warn about “harm that results from inconsistent definitions of human dignity in doctrinal teaching.”

Their most recent book, which I strongly recommend is Sexual and Gender Doctrinal Language: A Source of Pain and Trauma in the Catholic Church (Paulist Press, 2025). Here they underline that official doctrinal language on sexual and gender issues causes pain and trauma for many contemporary Catholics. Relying on the sources of ethical knowledge (tradition, scripture, reason, and experience), Todd and Michael propose revisions to Catholic anthropology, ecclesiology, and ethical methodology supporting those doctrines. This would continue to move the Catholic Church forward and to realize the synodal ecclesiology and “new pastoral methods” of Pope Francis (1936-2025), as exemplified in his April 8, 2016, apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia.

In his foreword to the book, James F. Keenan, SJ, moral theologian, bioethicist, and professor at Boston College, writes: “We ethicists believe that we must find the truth, and in part that means naming not only what is lacking, but what was not virtuously expressed. In this work, Lawler and Salzman offer their insights into the ongoing discourse to find virtuous pathways for contemporary Christians on the way of the Lord.”

Roman Catholic institutional change often comes slowly. But it does happen.

Jack

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Dr. John A. Dick 

“History gives answers to those who know how to ask questions.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reflecting about news reports around the world this past week, I was thinking about “truth.” Two historic quotations came to mind. The first, from the American writer William Faulkner (1897- 1962): “Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world would do this, it would change the earth.”

The second, from Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975), the German historian and philosopher, who became interested in how the most outrageous lies get a political hold over people, ever since Nazi lies about the Jews and intellectuals drove her from Berlin in 1933 after her arrest by the Gestapo. 

Hannah Arendt wrote: “This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such people, deprived of the power to think and judge, are, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such people, you can do whatever you want.”

When people lose the ability to be critical observers and critical thinkers, they become unable to distinguish between facts and falsehoods. They can no longer recognize “the big lie.”

“The big lie” is a great distortion of truth. It was the propaganda technique, coined by Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) in his 1925 book Mein Kampf. There he wrote: “The great masses of the people… will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.”

Hitler stressed that if a known falsehood was repeated regularly and treated as true, “the big lie” would be taken for granted and no longer questioned.

Confronting today’s “big lies,” we all need to exercise critical thinking skills: observing and asking critical questions. What is the source of the information? Is it a reliable source? People who spread fake news and “alternative facts” sometimes create web pages, newspaper stories, or AI-generated images that look official, but are not.

I very much believe the old Latin proverb Veritas Vincit (“Truth Prevails”). But it can only happen if we all work together.

What sources of news can one trust? A credible news report will include a variety of facts, quotes from bonafide experts, official statistics, or detailed and corroborated eye-witness accounts from people on the scene. If these are missing, one should question the report’s truth and accuracy. Does the evidence prove that something definitely happened? Or, have the facts been selected or “twisted” to back up a particular fabricated viewpoint?

As a good friend observed this past week: “Now, as a major diplomatic situation unfolds, Brian Burch, the American ambassador to the Vatican, has chosen to ignore Pope Leo’s public declaration that the sovereignty of Venezuela must be restored and respected. Instead, he asserts that the Catholic Church and the United States are ‘on the same page’ regarding America’s invasion of Venezuela.”

Ultimately, people will come to the realization that denying the truth doesn’t change the facts. But sometimes the process goes painfully slow.

I often think about the observation of Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), the Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist: “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.”

• Jack

 

Over the 2025 Christmas holidays, contemporary American political leadership, with its staunch support for Christian Nationalist Authoritarianism seems to have been working hard to transform American society and even re-write American history.

Christian Nationalist Authoritarianism promotes a specific kind of conservative Christian civic life and argues that only “Christians” can be “true Americans.” It merges right-wing religious ideology with anti-democratic, pro-authoritarian political views, as it pursues the Seven Mountain Mandate: a belief, promoted by the New Apostolic Reformation movement (NAR), that the current political administration has a divine commission to take over and control the “seven spheres” of society: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government.

I remember the words of Charlie Kirk (1993-2025), speaking on February 27, 2020, at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Fort Washington, Maryland: “Finally we have a president that understands the seven mountains of cultural influence.” Very interestingly a January 2024 poll by Denison University, a a private liberal arts college in Granville, Ohio in Granville, Ohio found that 41% of American Christians believe in the Seven Mountain Mandate.

Promoters of Christian Nationalist Authoritarianism are actually quite ignorant about American history. The incumbent American Vice President is a good example. Speaking at the Turning Point USA  [Turning Point was founded by Charlie Kirk] “AmericaFest” conference on December 21, 2025, the Vice President said, to great applause: “The only thing that has truly served as an anchor of the United States of America is that we have been, and by the grace of God we always will be, a Christian nation.” But that is really not true.

The Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) appealed to “the laws of Nature and Nature’s God” and asserted that all people have basic rights “endowed by their Creator.” The Founders, however, did not want the nation to be controlled by theocrats. They understood the importance of separating “church” and “state” as important for the protection of “church” and for the protection of the “state.”

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted on December 15, 1791, prevents Congress from making laws respecting an establishment of religion; prohibiting the free exercise of religion; or abridging the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. It is one of the ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights.

Already in 1790, the year after he took office as the nation’s First President, George Washington assured a Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, that in the United States of America, “all possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.” The Government of the United States, he wrote, “gives to bigotry no sanction” and “to persecution no assistance.” He hoped that Jewish Americans woukd “continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants, while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

The contemporary United States is a country that is 71% Christian. But more than 20% of older Americans today have no religious preference. Some are atheists or agnostics. Others simply identify as “nothing in particular.” Over 45% of today’s young adult Americans, aged 20 to 34, however, identify as “non-religious,” a significant shift from about thirty years ago.

Contemporary Christian Nationalist Authoritarianism is a dangerous socio-political virus. It not only threatens democracy and denigrates specific groups of people but advocates behavior contrary to the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.

Yes. There will be a lot to think about and react to in 2026, the year that we will celebrate the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, when British colonists on the North American continent launched the experiment of a government based on the rule of law created by the people themselves. I have no doubts that 2026 will be an incredibly significant year.

A good 2026 new year’s resolution for all of us is making a renewed commitment to see and reflect as we work together with compassion, understanding, and mutual respect.

• Jack

 

 

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