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.”