Catholic progressives and the development of sexual doctrine – Catholic World Report

In 2023, the newly minted cardinal Robert Prevost was asked by CNS about comments he made a decade earlier on “beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel,” including abortion and the “homosexual lifestyle.” Had his views changed? Prevost responded—as is his wont—with nuance and balance: “I would say there’s been a development in the sense of the need for the Church to open and to be welcoming. And on that level, I think Pope Francis has made it very clear that he doesn’t want people to be excluded simply on the basis of choices that they make, whether it be lifestyle, work, way of dress, or whatever.” But then he hastened to add, “Doctrine hasn’t changed. And people haven’t said yet, ‘We’re looking for that kind of change.’”

It’s true that many people outside of the Church have clamored for dramatic changes to the Church’s sexual doctrines. But Pope Leo is right: Doctrine hasn’t changed, and it won’t change, because it can’t change—at least, not in the sense of becoming radically different. The faith “was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3), who in turn instructed others “not to teach any different doctrine” (1 Tim 1:3).

But as John Henry Newman observed, doctrine can and indeed must develop, becoming ever more expansive, nuanced, and refined. Might the Church gradually change on sexuality precisely along these developmental lines—an organic evolution not unlike the Church’s modern approach to usury? Might various changes in praxis—changes in pastoral approach, tone, and style—augur well for a development in theoria, with the former perhaps even conducing to the latter in the long run?

Catholic progressives relentlessly seek to push the Church in this direction. Consider just one prominent example, the National Catholic Reporter, which the local bishop has twice directed to drop the word “Catholic” from its masthead—the first time being in 1968, in large part for its “policy of crusading against the Church’s teachings on the transmission of human life.” In recent years, NCR has published articles resisting the Church’s ban on artificial birth control, defending a book on “the sacrament of same-sex marriage,” and promoting gender ideology.

Priests and even bishops have also long joined their voices to this lay crowd. Consider—again, as just one illustrative example—Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck, a champion of Germany’s fraught “synodal way” amid a veritable collapse of the faith in that country. In 2019, Bishop Overbeck published an editorial titled “Let’s Overcome Prejudices! The Catholic Church Needs to Change Its View of Homosexuality”.

The same calls have echoed through the media in the wake of Pope Leo’s election. On The View, Sunny Hostin, describing herself as a “devout Catholic,” immediately framed Leo in terms of his 2012 comments on homosexuality: “I’m a little concerned about this choice for the LGBTQ+ community. . . . I think that Pope Francis certainly made great changes in terms of embracing the LGBTQ+ community and extending blessings to the community, and I hope that this pope doesn’t roll back the progress.”

This press for doctrinal evolution, as NCR’s history demonstrates, isn’t new. Instead, it first began to emerge during the sexual revolution, which overtook America in two distinct phases: first, a proto-revolution of the 1920s, when a massive market boom and the jazz age saw a rush of sexual liberation—however tame “flappers” may look today by comparison—and second, the sexual revolution proper of the 1950s and 60s, a Dionysian eruption of “free love” amid a broader revolt against social authority.

At the heart of this revolution was artificial birth control, especially the availability of the pill beginning in 1960. Contraception made possible a new social fabric separating sex from babies—the most sudden and dramatic change in sexual behavior in the West in two thousand years. Though the revolution would expand from there in various directions—the hook-up culture, gay marriage, pornography, the legalization of abortion, and most recently, the transgender movement—these tributaries ultimately flowed from, and were strengthened by, this cordoning off of sex from procreation in the average American family. Within two years of the pill’s approval, more than a million American women were taking it; today, 65 percent of women use some form of contraception, and nearly all women have used contraceptives at some point in their lives.

Christians, too, have for the most part capitulated to the revolution’s inner logic. Although contraception was universally forbidden by the Church since the earliest centuries, one by one, mainline Protestant denominations broke with the teaching, beginning with the Anglican Communion at the 1930 Lambeth Conference. Today, contraception and new technologies like IVF are widely taken for granted by most Christians as morally permissible, even pro-life.

But from Pope St. Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae to the present, the Catholic Church has remained steadfast in her opposition to contraception—the only major Christian group to do so—even though the vast majority of Catholics, at least in America, align with their Protestant brethren in calling for its permissibility. And in sharp contrast to the revolution’s logic, it proposes a path of permanent union: Sex must come under the aegis of self-gift, and thus, any sexual activity outside of the marriage of a man and woman—both unitive and procreative—is inherently sinful, as is the intentional killing of any child that might result from it. These two visions of sexuality are equally total—and, though they both use the language of love, totally incompatible. Only one can win the day.

Here, in the face of this stark opposition, Catholic progressives ought to stop and consider whether they haven’t fallen into the dark side of Newman’s development thesis—namely, doctrinal corruption. Indeed, Pope Paul VI’s encyclical warns, prophetically, about the spiritual, moral, and social corruption that would flow from the acceptance of contraception. There can be good changes in the life of the Church, yes, but there can also be bad ones—false developments masquerading as authentic. Newman laid out no less than seven litmus tests to determine which was which, and the “development” of sexual doctrine to adopt the logic of the sexual revolution, while it arguably fails them all, at the very least, plainly fails the tests of conservation and continuity of principle. A true development, Newman argues, won’t reverse course but rather conserve it, and it won’t change its ethical principle, which is permanent, but rather continue it. The development of usury passes both tests: The Church still condemns usury, but has become more precise in its thinking. But the kind of change called for by progressives would undoubtedly be a reversal of course, an upheaval of principle. It would, in short, be a bad change, a false development, a moral corruption—ultimately, a calling evil good (Isa. 5:20).

If this movement is as pervasive and corrupting as it looks, why is it so tolerated? Is it because “people already know the Church’s sexual teachings, so we ought to focus on other things”? But the lived reality is that people don’t know them, or at least don’t know their gravity—and in any event, don’t much care to live by them. Or is it because “these are all private matters of conscience”? But since everything is connected, no sin is private—and as John Paul II reminded us, “As the family goes, so goes the nation, and so goes the whole world in which we live.” Could it be because “the Church has to get its own house in order first”? But the sexual abuse crisis resulted in some of the most rigorous institutional procedures around, and abuse cases have plummeted since their peak in the 1960s and 70s. Or is it because, ultimately, “the Church is behind the times”? But the actual signs of the times point to a deep misery sown by the revolution and an even deeper longing for eternal truth.

This is a moral crisis—in fact, the great moral crisis of our time—and the great moral opportunity. What if, rather than placating or ignoring or wishing away the progressive push, the Church simply began to resist it like never before? This sounds counterintuitive, especially in this hour of Catholicism contra mundum. But as Fulton Sheen emphasized in his last interview, this contrast between the Church and the world is precisely where the Church taps into her deepest identity. Think of David going to meet Goliath’s sword and spear and javelin with “the God of the armies of Israel” (1 Sam 17:45), or of Thomas More cleaving to his conscience in the Tower of London when everyone else had signed off on the king’s remarriage. Think of the blood of the martyrs, which is the “seed” of the Church.

Indeed, think of Christ, the Head of the Church himself, suffering and dying utterly alone for the salvation of the world. When the Church is weak, she is strong (2 Cor 12:10).

None of this is to say that the Church ought to make its sexual teachings center stage, or fall into a kind of Jansenist obsession with moral rigor at the expense of inclusion and accompaniment. Pope Leo is right that his predecessor inaugurated good and true developments; Francis reminded the Church to keep Christ at the heart of the faith, and to strive to meet people with mercy, where they are. But the progressive campaign to extend these developments into a corrupting change is quite literally a dead end, one that trades the Spirit of God sent to teach us everything (Jn 14:26) for the spirit of the age sent to teach us dissolution (Rom 12:2; Eph 2:1-2).

On May 16, Pope Leo remarked to the diplomatic corps that the family is “founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman,” reiterating the Church’s timeless teaching on sex and marriage. And he went even further: “Harmonious and peaceful civil society” can be built “above all by investing in the family.”

This message, not one of change, is timely—not only because it’s excitingly counter-cultural, especially to young people, but because it slakes a deep cultural thirst, behind closed doors, for goodness, truth, and beauty. Now isn’t the time to shrink from it timidly; on the contrary, it’s the time to own it boldly.

People’s souls—and the very soul of society—depend on it.