On October 21, news of Pope Francis’ comments from a 2019 interview included in a new documentary film, which seem to signal his private and personal support for civil unions of homosexuals, made world headlines.
According to the translation, his specific words were, “Homosexual people have a right to be in a family. They are children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out or be made miserable over it. What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered.”
I was hoping for a clarification of these personal comments from the Holy Father himself or from the Vatican but neither has been forthcoming.
In response to requests for my thoughts on the matter, I offer this reflection.
The most fundamental Church teaching regarding all people is that we are made in the image and likeness of God, we are infinitely loved by the Lord and we carry an inherent dignity.
Every person merits respect, compassion, and welcome as a brother and
sister, as Pope Francis articulates in his newest encyclical, Fratelli Tutti.
Out of His deep desire to draw every single soul into a saving relationship with the Father, Jesus engaged in conversation, offered forgiveness, and gave a challenge of conversion to everyone He met.
He loves us as sinners and then draws us into His life of holiness and grace — every single one of us.
As disciples, we strive to do the same, inviting others into relationship with Jesus and embracing the challenge of fusing both the love and the truth of God’s revelation to us.
It is clear that some people who experience same-sex attraction may feel abandoned, rejected, or even hated by the Church, either because of the Church teaching itself or a negative encounter with an individual.
All of us — Church leaders, lay Catholics, parents, and family members — are called to love unconditionally, warmly welcome, and sustain relationships with people who may feel the pain of such rejection.
The Church hates no one; indeed, she loves every single human being as God does.
As disciples of Our Lord Jesus Christ, we strive to look at each person as God sees them, in the beauty of their immortal soul.
Love and the moral law
With love and respect as a fundamental basis for all human relationships, the Catholic Church has always taught a moral law, grounded in Scripture and Sacred Tradition, inscribed within our embodied experience, and oriented towards virtue for true happiness.
Both the divine law and natural law view homosexual acts as sinful because they are closed to the gift of life and lack the genuine sexual complementarity of man and woman.
In another way, like any sexual expression apart from heterosexual marriage, homosexual acts fall outside God’s intention for man and woman to integrate their relationship into a complete and lifelong mutual gift in sexual complementarity and openness to children.
The two natural ends of sexual love — the unity of a husband and wife and the procreation of children — can only be fully realized in the marital bond of a man and woman whose love is faithful, fruitful, and total.
Sexual activity outside of heterosexual marriage is sinful because it seeks sexual expression for itself, apart from these two natural ends that are intrinsically bound up in the conjugal act. And while adultery, promiscuity, and homosexual sex have all become widely accepted in our culture, the Catholic Church holds to the truth of our humanity and the dignity of marital sexuality, as revealed by God.
In doing so, the Church is not intending its teaching to be punitive, but as essentially protective of human sexuality both for its inherent and sublime worth, and for its fundamental good for the family and society.
The Church is intending to love and to foster love. Not to reject sinners, but to call them to conversion.
A connection coming apart
Due to a multitude of reasons, including the sexual revolution, artificial contraception, the sky-rocketing divorce rate, the legalization of abortion, and changing social norms, the intimate, and logical connection between sexuality, marriage, and the rearing of children came apart in recent decades.
With easy access to contraception and abortion, people started viewing the purpose of sexual activity as mutually-consensual pleasurable recreation, not a consummation of a committed marital love open to new life.
Sex outside marriage has become the new norm; those who do not indulge in it are considered odd. With no-fault divorce, couples can as easily and readily end their civil marriage as they began it.
Having children, and by dangerous extension a child’s perceived dignity, has been reduced to either a reserved choice or a personal right, but not as a gift from God in the secure and logical setting of marriage.
So now, we have sex without marriage, and marriages planned without children. In this new cultural context, civil marriage has become a privatized, sexual relationship with little inherent meaning beyond what the respective partners choose to give it.
With the legalization of civil same-sex marriage, this fundamental civil marital redefinition has reached a new level of societal acceptance.
Pope Francis, while not speaking on Church dogma of faith and morals, which as I mention above upholds the sinfulness of homosexual acts, seems to suggest in his private, political judgment for civil public policy, that supporting same-sex civil unions may be a way to defend the Church’s teaching on marriage and thereby reserve civil marriage to heterosexual couples. Hence, the current controversy.
Since even recognition of non-marital same-sex unions in the civil realm is at least a tacit societal acceptance of immoral homosexual acts, it can be well-argued that civil recognition of non-marital homosexual unions is not only poor public policy contrary to the common good, but is fundamentally contrary to the natural law with profound moral implications.
Dealing with pressures
Today, many question Catholicism’s moral stance on homosexuality, which the Church has embraced through its long 2,000-year history.
The argument made is that people should be free to love and marry whomever they choose. Many people say they were born gay, that their homosexuality was not a choice but a reality they knew, even as young children.
And yet, even with all the developments and insights, psychology has given us, the psychological origins of homosexuality remain largely unexplained; the nature or nurture debate continues.
And regardless of the origins, many no longer accept the Church’s moral distinction between a homosexual inclination, which is not inherently sinful but involves a struggle, and homosexual activity, which has always been considered sinful.
While seeking to know, understand, and love all people, including those who experience homosexual attraction, I resist the current societal pressure simply to jettison our consistent and long-standing Catholic teaching regarding homosexual behavior. That pressure is strong.
Today, if you dare even to question the morality of same-sex marriage or homosexual activity, you will be labeled as intolerant, a hater, as someone on the wrong side of history.
As a bishop, I made a solemn vow on the day of my episcopal ordination to believe, uphold, and defend the Church’s moral teachings, which I happily do so in full acknowledgment of their sublime truth.
Catholicism has never accepted sexual activity outside of heterosexual marriage. Should we now simply acquiesce and surrender the full weight of our Catholic tradition on this subject without question, analysis, reflection, and prayer because our prevailing culture tells us to do so? Should I remain silent for fear of offending?
Many people may live in the tension between a sincere desire to love and accept everyone and to proclaim the “hard” teachings of the Church that fly in the face of today’s prevalent social norms. But that tension is not a bad one, and it calls us to the heights of Gospel action.
This makes for a situation where individual Catholics and other people of goodwill are facing very hard questions — even within their own families: Does loving someone imply that we can never question any of their actions or decisions?
Does accepting another person require that I accept everything they believe and practice?
I know individuals who have embraced a gay identity and lifestyle, only to find it extremely damaging to their soul, psyche, and heart.
Many people with same-sex attraction find hope and peace in the Church’s traditional teaching and loving embrace. Yet this does not imply there is neither struggle nor difficulty.
Many find strength and healing through deep prayer and recourse to the sacraments. We should listen to their experience as well.
This cultural moment asks us to listen to, respect, and love one another more than ever before. The experience and reality of homosexuality is a part of the human situation.
The Church’s teaching on homosexual activity has always been clear.
Can we dialogue and engage one another without surrendering genuine charity, respect, and kindness, on the one hand, nor simply rejecting the teaching of the Church, on the other?
What is God asking of us in all of this? An embrace of love and truth, a genuine dialogue built on reverence and attentiveness, a willingness to move beyond slogans and labels, the courage to live in the tension that always exists between the teachings of the Scriptures and the Church and the reality of people’s struggles.
May the Lord help us all to listen, learn, and love, moving towards the truth, beauty, and goodness of Christ.
In discovering the Lord, we also find our own dignity as beloved children of the Father.
My prayer is for everyone to know the joy of being loved by Jesus.
Sincerely in Christ,
+Donald J. Hying
Bishop of Madison