We are not “heterosexuals”; we are simply male and female

On the Pope’s Remarks about Homosexuality

by Scott P. Richert

The media-manufactured brouhaha over Pope Francis’s impromptu remarks on homosexuality has finally begun to die down, and there must be few, if any, Catholics who still think that the Holy Father’s words represented a departure from 2,000 years of Christian teaching on the immorality of homosexual activity (not counting those, of course, who have let themselves be misled by their wishful thinking). While many may still not fully understand the context in which he made his remarks—he was, as I explained elsewhere, addressing primarily the case of a specific priest accused of homosexual activity years ago, and more broadly the question of priests in the Curia who have homosexual inclinations—everyone should, by now, at least realize that Pope Francis was not condoning, much less endorsing, homosexual activity. “Hate the sin but love the sinner” remains the rule of charity of this pope, as of every pope on back to Saint Peter—who, as the Holy Father recalled, “committed the biggest sin of all, he denied Jesus.”

Yet Pope Francis’s remarks point to a discussion that still needs to be held. There is indeed something in what the Holy Father had to say that requires deeper examination—not because he contradicted the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, but because what he said was in conformity with a perplexing part of it.

That something was summed up in the title of a provocative article by Fr. Hugh Barbour, O.Praem., written months before Pope Francis’s press conference and published in the July 2013 issue ofChronicles: A Magazine of American Culture: “Do Homosexuals Exist?”

Father Hugh, the prior of St. Michael’s Abbey in Trabuco Canyon, California, zeros in on “a change in tone” in how the Catechism (in paragraphs 2357 and 2358) treats “the sin of sexual relations with one’s own sex” versus every other sin. The Catechism, of course, upholds the traditional teaching that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered,” “are contrary to natural law,” and “[u]nder no circumstances can … be approved,” but whereas (in Father Hugh’s words) “[t]raditional moral theology evaluated acts,” the Catechism speaks of the “experience” of “sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex” and the “psychological genesis” of homosexuality, as well as “deep-seated homosexual tendencies.” What Father Hugh does not note, though it is more evidence for his argument, is that paragraph 2359 goes on to refer to “homosexual persons,” which seems to place these “tendencies” and “attraction” at the very heart of such a person. Indeed, we might say that he or she becomes defined by them: He or she is no longer a man or a woman (with all that those words imply) but a “homosexual.”

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