Is Homosexuality a Sin?

The answer to this question is “No.”   Homosexual acts are a sin as is clearly stated in Sacred Scripture and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  Paragraph 2357 of the Catechism declares that homosexual acts are “acts of grave depravity” and “intrinsically disordered.”  Yet there are an alarming number of persons within the Catholic Church who are actively working to change this.  This is especially evident in the most recent actions of the Synod on Synodality.  

This past Tuesday, the Vatican General Secretariat of the Synod released the Final Report of Study Group 9 Theological criteria and synodal methodologies for shared discernment of emerging doctrinal, pastoral, and ethical issues. This report included two testimonies of homosexual Catholic men.  (See https://www.synod.va/en/the-synodal-process/phase-3-the-implementation/the-study-groups/final-reports/group-9.html )

The first testimony is offered by a homosexual man from Portugal who is “married” to another man.  In his testimony, he relates how he struggled to deal with his same sex attraction and how he came to become “married” to another man.  “The breakthrough moment came when I realized that Christ was not waiting to condemn my relationship, but was peacefully waiting for me to find him in my secrecy and loneliness,” he writes. “The real sin was not my love, but my lack of trust in His desire for my fulfilled life.”  

Later in his testimony, the man says, “Although living a gay relationship, I truly believe the sign of God in my life was the gifts He gave me of fidelity and courage, required to build a life of shared faith and service with my husband.”  

I find his conclusions about Jesus and God endorsing his homosexual marriage impossible to accept in light of Jesus’s teachings in Mark Chapter 10 and Matthew Chapter 19.  When questioned by a Pharisee about divorce, Jesus gives him a Scriptural lesson in marriage.  “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.  For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother [and be joined to his wife], and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh,” Jesus tells the Pharisee (See Mark 10:6-8).  

Jesus does not say “a man shall leave his father and mother [and be joined to his husband], and the two shall become one flesh.”  And since Jesus says “God made them male and female,” he clearly did not mean two men or two women being married.

The second testimony comes from a homosexual American man who is also “married” to another man.  Like the first man, this man struggled with his faith and his homosexuality for a number of years before accepting his homosexuality.  He is now “married” to another man.  He is also a theologian at a Catholic university and a leading pro-LGBT+ advocate.  Though he is not identified by name in the Synod document, he reveals that he is the author of the book LGBTQ Catholic Ministry, Past and Present.  A quick search of Amazon reveals that the author of Testimony #2 is Jason Steidl.  Given that he mentioned the title of his book in his Testimony, it’s obvious that Steidl did not want to remain anonymous.   Not surprisingly, the Foreword of his book was written by pro-LGBT+ Father James Martin.  

Steidl begins his Testimony by stating “My sexuality isn’t a perversion, disorder, or cross; it’s a gift from God.” 

Really?!  

The Bible – the written Word of God – and the Catechism of the Catholic Church say otherwise.    

In Leviticus 18:22, God himself commands “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; such a thing is an abomination.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church unequivocally states “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’”  (See Paragraph 2357.

Further on his testimony, we learn that Steidl earned his PhD in theology at Fordham University, which he relates was not only “overwhelmingly supportive of LGBTQ people” but also his department was “around 1/3^rd LGBTQ.”  At Fordham University, Steidl learned the theological and Biblical justifications to erroneously conclude that homosexual marriage is compatible with the Church’s teachings and Sacred Scripture.   

These testimonies and the Vatican’s willingness to entertain these testimonies are both alarming and disturbing.  

Our Church has clearly and consistently taught that homosexual acts are a sin.  Prohibitions against homosexual sin are stated in the Old Testament (Leviticus 18:22), St. Paul’s Epistles (Romans 1:26-28) (1st Corinthians 6:9-10) and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Paragraph 2357). 

To repeat, God himself commands “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; such a thing is an abomination.” (Leviticus 18:22)

Paragraph 2357 of the Catechism clearly states:

“Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always 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 a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.” (Author’s Note:  Footnotes have been omitted). 

True, the Catechism also talks about treating persons with “homosexual tendencies” with “respect, compassion and sensitivity” in the following paragraph, as we all should.  But that same paragraph also declares those tendencies to be “objectively disordered.”  

Our Church’s fundamental teachings are crystal clear on homosexual sin, yet there are efforts underway within the Church to obfuscate or ignore or change those teachings.  Pro LGBTQ+ advocates are actively using the Synod on Synodality to advance their agenda as we have seen throughout this Synodality process for the last several years.  Worse, these efforts are receiving support from some of the most prominent leaders of the Catholic Church including Cardinal Robert McElroy Archbishop of Washington DC, Cardinal Joseph Tobin of the Archdiocese of Newark (NJ), Cardinal Blaise Cupich of the Archdiocese of Chicago, Cardinal Victor Fernandez of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and numerous German bishops and cardinals.  

The persistent efforts to normalize homosexual acts in contradiction to Sacred Scripture and Church teachings remind me of how Satan tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden. God had commanded Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Then Satan in the form of a serpent questions Eve, “Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat from any of the trees in the garden’?”  And Satan successfully convinces Eve and Adam to defy God, thus causing their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and sin to enter into the world.  

Pro-LGBT+ advocates are in essence saying “Did God really say ‘“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; such a thing is an abomination.”  Did God really say not to marry someone of the same sex?”   

Homosexuality acts are a sin as is clearly defined in Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Catholic Church.  There is no ambiguity here.  No amount of obfuscation or misinterpretation or rhetoric or Synod on Synodality can change that reality.