Can Pope Francis Alter Catholic Doctrine On Homosexuality?

On papal statements, papal infallibility, and timeless truths

Despite what some of the media have reported, Pope Francis is not changing the Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality — nor can he. However, his word choice is vague enough to cause confusion about what he is implying.

Juan Carlos Cruz, a victim of sexual abuse from Chilean clergy, discussed a private conversation he had with Pope Francis concerning homosexuality. Cruz, who has same-sex attraction, alleged that the pope told him “God made you like that and he loves you like that and I do not care.”

While the Vatican does not confirm or deny the pope’s comments from private conversations as a matter of policy, the comment is similar to the pope’s 2013 statement when he asked, “Who am I to judge” if a gay person is searching for the Lord? These statements must, however, be understood within the context of Church teaching and other comments the pope has made.

Just last week, after these reported comments, Pope Francis discussed homosexuality in the priesthood with a group of Italian bishops and affirmed Church teaching. According to reports about the closed-door meeting, Francis said “deeply rooted” homosexual tendencies “can compromise the life of the seminary beyond that of the young man himself and his eventual future priesthood.”

This reaffirms a 2005 Vatican document that said the same thing under his predecessor, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. In 2016, the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy released a document that directly quoted the 2005 document as well.

According to Persona Humana, a document published by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of.” The Catechism states that such acts “do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity.”

While the Church can change its word choice and its pastoral approach for prudential purposes (as has done before, most notably in the Second Vatican Council), it cannot change divinely revealed truths, such as the immorality of homosexual acts.

So is the pope contradicting himself, and possibly Church teaching, by what he said to Cruz?

Father James Martin, S.J., a consultant to the Vatican’s secretariat for communications, told me via email that the pope’s comments reaffirm the teaching of God’s love and that they do not contradict Catholic teaching.

Martin said the comments shouldn’t confuse anyone because “the Pope is speaking about God loving the person as they are created, not [about] homosexual activity.” Martin is the author of Building a Bridge, which argued that Catholics must be respectful, compassionate, and sensitive when discussing LGBT issues, but he has also been accused by some Catholics of watering down doctrine.

Martin said that every reputable psychiatrist, psychologist, and biologist says that people can’t choose their sexual orientation and that “Cruz may remind people of this, and so perhaps lessen their hatred of LGBT people.”​

Despite Martin’s optimism, some journalists have run with the story and inferred much more than he did. CNN called the comments “a significant departure from the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.” Jay Michaelson at the Daily Beast went further and said the comments were “in contradiction to official Catholic dogma” and could be implying that homosexual desires are part of God’s plan. Damon Linker at the Week said the comments were part of the pope’s “Machiavellian,” “cunning long game” to officially change doctrine without a schism.

While the comments didn’t actually do any of this, the vagueness gave opponents of Catholic teaching something to latch onto and they expanded into elaborate theories about the Catholic Church pushing away divinely revealed truths to embrace whatever popular opinion happens to be these days.

Fr. Gerald Murrary, a canon lawyer and Pastor of Holy Family Church, told me via email that the comments could “certainly” cause confusion.

I think the pope’s alleged comments will cause confusion by giving the misimpression that the Catholic Church no longer considers sodomy to be a sin because God, it is claimed, made some people to have a desire to commit acts of sodomy. If God did that in fact, then how could it be considered sinful to act on that desire since God gave them that desire?

Murray added that he sees a serious problem with some clergy propagating heterodox interpretations of Church teaching. He used Bishop Franz-Josef Bode’s suggestion that the church bless same-sex unions as one example of this and he said that Fr. James Martin is guilty of this as well based on an interview from a year ago. In that interview, Martin said the Catechism’s use of the term “disordered” is “needlessly hurtful,” and said that one Italian theologian suggested that the phrase “differently ordered” might convey the teachings more pastorally. Martin told me in an email, however, that he is “not challenging church teaching” regarding the text in the Catechism.

Only God and the pontiff himself know the pope’s intentions, but it’s important to note that popes do not have the authority to change divinely revealed truths. “Truth” is not subject to time, so if a moral absolute is proclaimed in Scripture or by the Church, then it is binding at all times.

A pope’s private comments, regardless of intention, do not have any bearing on official Catholic teaching. The pope only speaks infallibly when he speaks ex cathedra, which is a very specific instance of pronouncement enabling the proclaiming of dogma.

In describing papal infallibility, the First Vatican Council declares that God gives this authority to the pope, not so he may declare new doctrines, but so that, by the assistance of the Holy Spirit, he may “ religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles,” which, by definition, does not include the possibility of altering a divinely revealed truth.

Even if the pope would have bad intentions, Matthew 16:18–20 teaches that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church, so there is no serious threat to a pontiff changing official dogma.