Why Catholic doctrine on sexual morality cannot change

Can the Catholic Church change her mind and teachings about sexual morality? Is it finally time to listen to progressives and abolish the ascetic elements of Christian morality, bringing Catholicism in line with the rest of the world, which reduces love to eroticism?

These questions have engendered intense debate since the Second Vatican Council. Unlike his predecessors, Pope Francis softened the Church’s sexual teachings, ostensibly to ease their burden on the faithful. His exhortation Amoris laetitia appears to allow Catholics in invalid and adulterous marriages to receive the Eucharist, in obvious conflict with Jesus’ instruction on divorce. And Fiducia supplicans, which sanctioned the blessing of same-sex couples, was an incipient ratification of the LGBT agenda.

These contentious issues will soon take center stage as the Synodal Study Groups issue their final reports this coming December. Will the Synod further embolden those demanding change in the Church’s teaching on same-sex relations and other matters?

In its preliminary report, the study group on controversial issues—including sexual morality—signaled its preference for a “paradigm shift” that prioritizes personal experience, discernment, and “contextual fidelity” to the Gospel, over a set of “pre-packaged” objective norms.

In its second interim report issued last week, the group continued to talk about a “paradigm shift … in continuity with Vatican II” and labeled homosexuality as an “emerging issue” rather than a controversial one. But there were few clues about their specific recommendations. The danger of this prospective heterodoxy is the marginalization of universal moral norms, such as the proscription against artificial reproduction, that have deep ontological and anthropological roots.

How will Pope Leo respond to this study group’s final report if it calls for a major modification of the Church’s moral principles?

There is certainly some cause for concern. During an interview with Crux published in September, Pope Leo intimated that a change in the Church’s sexual teachings might be possible, once there is a transformation in attitude: “I think we have to change attitudes before we even think about changing what the Church says about any given question.” By leaving that door open to doctrinal flexibility, the pope has encouraged a complacent optimism among those seeking emancipation from the Church’s moral tradition.

He should have clarified that such doctrinal revision is impossible. These doctrines are not contingent on the shifting sands of public opinion or the vagaries of personal experience. Rather, they are based on the eternal order of truth and values. The Church’s moral precepts are rooted in the truth that human nature is immutable; that marriage, defined as a one-flesh union between a man and a woman, is indissoluble; and that the conjugal act, which must be confined to marriage, means not only love but also the potential fruitfulness of new life.

These basic doctrines have their foundation in the Sixth and Ninth Commandments and in other key texts of Sacred Scripture (such as Mt.19:1-12; Mt.5:27-28; Mk. 10:1-12; 1 Cor. 6:9; and Gen 1-3). As moral theologian Germain Grisez pointed out, for centuries, the Catholic faithful, from popes to bishops to laity, scrupulously adhered to these timeless orthodoxies. Theologians and catechists taught these doctrines throughout the Church. And when faithful Christians bond together in this sort of communion, they possess an inerrant charism of truth.

According to Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen gentium), “the universal body of the faithful … cannot be mistaken in belief,” because there is a “supernatural sense of faith [that] expresses the consent of all in matters of faith and morals” (¶12).

Some of these teachings have also been expressed in papal encyclicals such as Castii conubii and Humanae vitae. Pope Paul VI’s encyclical, Humanae vitae, which represents an infallible teaching of the Ordinary Magisterium, insists that all sexual acts must be generative in kind. Any attempt to modify these ancient moral creeds by favoring sexual activity outside of heterosexual marriage will threaten the integrity of this encyclical and challenge the whole web of closely related doctrines on sex, gender, and human nature that support that teaching.

Those seeking to sweep away that set of doctrines apparently overlook the fact that revelation was completed in the works and words of Jesus Christ. They must also dismiss the key instructions of the Vatican II document, Dei Verbum (¶7): “whatever He has revealed for the salvation of all nations should last forever in its integrity and be handed on to all generations.” These words echo Jesus’ commission to his disciples: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations … teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Mt. 28:19-20). His command assumes that the truth of the revealed Word transcends the boundaries of culture, space, and time.

Given the continued drive within the Church to normalize homosexual relations, Jesus’ teaching on God’s plan for conjugal love is particularly apposite. In his answer to the Pharisees on the permissibility of divorce, Jesus makes a crystal clear reference to the order of creation, proclaiming that marriage has always been a one-flesh union between a man and woman. That union is made possible because of the predetermined duality of man and woman, for “he who made them from the beginning made them male and female” (Matt 19:4).

In a phrase packed with philosophical density, he declares that these two persons “are no longer two, but one” (Matt 19:6). By natural design, only a man and a woman can achieve a higher unity by becoming a complete and permanent gift for the other. Indissolubility, the Creator’s plan for humanity “from the beginning,” lies at the heart and center of every marital union.

And this plan is disrupted by adultery, divorce and remarriage, sex outside of marriage, and non-heterosexual unions. Fidelity to Revelation and to the Second Vatican Council clearly requires the preservation of these sacred doctrines that have already been confused and compromised by both Amoris laetitia and Fiducia supplicans.

Some moral theologians have argued that it is time to “untie the knots” Humanae Vitae has created in Catholic morality by its insistence that contraception is an intrinsic evil. Fortunately, Pope Francis did not listen to these dissident voices. Every pope should insist that Christianity cannot be reconciled with secular society’s facile validation of sexual liberation. He must affirm that the Church cannot fall into error when it properly teaches these sacred doctrines of faith and morals that are necessary for eternal salvation.

In the current social milieu, changes in attitude about sexual mores do not foster the conditions for a revision in Church teaching, for they can only mean the endorsement of a thinly veiled hedonism. Catholicism must remain centered on asceticism and on a moral vision that flows from the words of Jesus Christ, because they are “the universal source of all saving truth” (Dei Verbum, ¶7).

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