Sex and the Church

Last week I was struck by something that Pope Leo said regarding the blessings of same-sex partnerships that the German Catholic bishops are planning to authorize, beginning this coming Fall. Answering to a journalist, he said: “We (Rome) disagree, but the unity of the Church does not depend on sexual matters.” It is a pretty obvious sentence to me, but a shattering one in a context in which the unity of the church for many centuries did depend very much on sexual matters. Unofficially, of course, but substantially nonetheless.

As theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid taught me — more clearly than any other scholar — one can read the sexual beyond any power arrangement, especially the Church. The Catholic Church in particular was held together, at least since the XVII century, by how heterosexual marriages, priestly celibacy, and nuns’ virginity were conceived and enacted. Not just the unity of the Church was at stake, but the cohesion of the societies in which the Church operated and dominated. It was a patriarchal arrangement of its own kind, which was also exported from Europe to Central and South America.

If now, however, the pope hints at the fact that in Germany there will be Catholic “blessings” of same-sex couples that will in everything look like a marriage — and, yes, if it looks like a marriage, it sounds like a marriage, etc., it is a marriage — and the same pope states that he is not in agreement but the Church will not break down for this, something of seismic proportions has happened.

Matthew Fox has been, of course, one of the most vocal opponents of the ban on homosexuality within the Catholic Church, which amounts to one of the biggest hypocrisies ever enacted under the sun. Matthew’s main argument has constantly been that homosexuality should not be treated as a moral issue, when in fact the ban on it depended on faulty science. If you are convinced that everybody is naturally born heterosexual, you will be inclined to think that homosexuality is a deviation that could be corrected or at least kept in check. But we all have known for many decades that this is not the case. Thus, those religions who keep excluding, abusing, and even torturing homosexuals through pretended “conversion therapies” should be morally censured.

In an article published in 2019, Matthew quotes an explosive book by sociologist Frédéric Martel titled In the Closet of the Vatican, which reveals at length the hypocrisy, but he also declares that the issue of homosexuality has become the Galileo issue of our age, and that the refusal to listen to science will bring down the Church as we know it, although this is not necessarily a bad thing. Some smaller churches shifted their position on homosexuality a few decades ago, most notably the Episcopal Church, but a change of the same kind in the Roman Catholic Church would produce much larger effects.

From the spiritual point of view, the blessing of same-sex couples — call it marriage or not — means blessing the flesh and sensuality. Nobody wants to be especially identified with carnality, of course, as if their love would not include and express the same qualities of tenderness and fidelity as everybody’s else. But the Catholic ban on homosexuality was based on the distrust of sensuality and the conviction that sexual desire was “bad” in itself. Following Saint Augustine, the Church has taught for ages that procreation as the final aim of sexual intercourse was the main reason why sex itself was permissible. The blessing of same-sex couples is instead a visible declaration that sex is good in and of itself, it is part and parcel of intimate relationships, and thus it enhances moral values rather than challenging them.

The Catholic Church as we know it will be destroyed. That’s right. The conservative fears are correct, in my view. It’s not the holy faith transmitted since Apostolic times that will disappear, but the patriarchal power arrangement which conservatives regularly mistake for the tradition.

Any step beyond the hypocritical and anti-scientific ban on homosexuality is a step in the right direction. We must applaud the Roman Catholic German bishops for their courage, late as it looks from our vantage point. Not just because this step makes the Church more inclusive but especially because it challenges at its core the (sexual) structures of domination and submission which held together the Catholic Church as we have known it. Structures which gave her consistency and a dominant social position for centuries — despite the conservative claims that the Church has been kept together instead by true faith, only recently challenged by those evil homosexuals. 

Matthew Fox, “Dopo la religione” in Una spiritualità oltre il mito, Gabrielli Editori, 2019, p. 218.

Banner image: Thousands of people gathered at the Minnesota state capitol building during the Minnesota Senate debate on a same sex marriage bill. The bill passed the Minnesota House of Representatives on May 9 by a vote of 75 to 59. The Minnesota Senate passed the bill this day by a vote of 37 to 30. The law delineates the rights of gay and lesbian couples to marry. Photo by Fibonacci Blue. Wikimedia Commons

Queries for Contemplation

If you were/are Catholic, how does this essay resonate with you? If you have never been/are not Catholic, what parallels can you draw foryourself?

Related Readings by Matthew Fox

LETTERS TO POPE FRANCIS: Building a Church with Justice & Compassion

Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest

Editor, Charles Burack, Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality

A New Reformation: Creation Spirituality & The Transformation of Christianity

A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality