In the first part of the 20th century, the Church’s position on sexuality was clear: Sex outside of marriage was sinful; sex between a married man and woman was normal, as long as every act of intercourse was open to pregnancy; sex between two males or two females was both unnatural and sinful; marriage between males or between females was unthinkable.
From that time to this, moral clarity has faded into confusion. When science developed a contraceptive pill, married couples, particularly those with a number of children, prayed that the Church would approve its use. Many theologians found its use morally acceptable and said so at Vatican II. However, Pope Paul VI rejected that view, and the Church’s formal position remained that using contraceptives was a grave sin. Married couples who confessed to using “the pill” and intended to continue doing so were denied absolution.
Though maintaining the Church’s view of contraception caused great (and continuing) disappointment, it did not cause confusion because the teaching did not change. In contrast, the Church’s view of homosexuality changed significantly and caused considerable confusion. That confusion has been greatest among the most traditional and faithful Catholics. They remain stunned that the hierarchy of the Church restrict normal sexual expression while tacitly approving abnormal sexual expression!
The tacit approval of homosexuality has been most evident in Catholic seminaries. In Goodbye, Good Men (Regnery, 2002), Michael Rose wrote:
“The problem in vocations offices and in seminaries is a profound spiritual problem, a sickness of untold proportions” that “has long been known within the inner circles of the Catholic Church . . . Qualified heterosexual candidates for the priesthood are often screened out while homosexual candidates are accepted and once in the seminary, rewarded.” His book “exposes this corruption: the deliberate infiltration of Catholic seminaries by what [Father] Andrew Greeley has dubbed the ‘Lavender Mafia,’ a clique of homosexual dilettantes, along with an underground of liberal faculty members determined to change the doctrines, disciplines, and mission of the Catholic Church from within.” [Emphasis added.]
Pope Benedict spoke out clearly and firmly against the situation Rose identified. In Light of the World, Benedict wrote:
“Sexuality has an intrinsic meaning and direction which is not homosexual. The meaning and direction of sexuality is to bring about the union of man and woman and in this way give humanity posterity, children, future. . .Homosexuality is incompatible with the priestly vocation . . . The selection of candidates to the priesthood must therefore be very careful. The greatest attention is needed here in order to prevent the intrusion of this kind of ambiguity and to head off a situation where the celibacy of priests would practically end up being identified with the tendency to homosexuality.” [Emphasis added.]
In contrast with Pope Benedict, Pope Francis has been unclear—on some occasions seeming to oppose clerical homosexuality; in others to support it. The latter include his statement in 2013, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” And in 2024 when a young homosexual man who wanted to be a priest expressed sadness that he had been turned away by the seminary, Francis reportedly told him, “keep going.”
Furthermore, in 2025 it was reported that “The Vatican has approved new guidelines making it easier for gay men to enter the priesthood.”
As if all this confusion were not enough, the Catholic Catechism continues to condemn homosexuality just as it has for centuries: “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has aways declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from an affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.” (Catechism, paragraph 2357) Many in the hierarchy seem to be unaware of this passage.
The confusion of Catholic teaching about sexuality has made a mockery of both logic and traditional moral theology and led many laypeople to conclude that the hierarchy have abandoned the guidance of the Holy Spirit and embraced the guidance of “progressive” culture. The hierarchy’s formidable challenge is to overcome that confusion and regain the laity’s respect and trust.
Copyright © 2025 by Vincent Ryan Ruggiero. All rights reserved.
