Note: This essay, which I originally wrote in 2018 and did not publish at that time, has been resurrected and refurbished to reflect the current state of play around Fiducia supplicans and its reception. Much of the forthcoming is theologically speculative and does not reflect the editorial stance of Where Peter Is.

Much of Pope Francis’s papacy, at least in its mediatic form, has been taken up with questions about a common theme in criticism of the Catholic Church, and in secular and some religious prognostications about its future. This is the familiar charge that Catholicism’s moral teachings seem to speak to a world other than the one that now exists. Thus, sooner or later, the Church will have to alter either the teachings or the degree to which the teachings are presented as binding in order to retain any cultural or moral relevance across much of the globe. This is an argument that goes back several hundred years, but its current phase, which is especially concerned with the Church’s theology of sexuality (and abortion, an issue causally connected to sexuality), it might be dated from around 1930 and Pope Pius XI’s promulgation of the encyclical Casti connubii. In this document, Pius reaffirmed the teaching against artificial contraception shortly after the Anglican churches formally began the process of setting that teaching aside. More recent watersheds in the development of this argument took place in 1968, with Pope St. Paul VI’s reaffirmation of Casti connubii’s core teaching in the encyclical Humanae vitae after about a decade of speculation that the Church was ready to abandon it; in 1975 and 1986, with the publication of two successive Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith documents reaffirming the teaching against same-sex sexual activity; and in the 1990s, with Pope St. John Paul II’s solidification of the moral teaching against procured abortion as irreformable in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the encyclical Evangelium vitae. A common point made in this context is that the Catholic faithful, over time, have become more and more at odds in their own practices and opinions with the constant reaffirmation of teachings against behaviors present in most modern couples’ sex lives.

The election of Pope Francis in 2013 and his subsequent deemphasis of theology of sexuality as the marquee subject matter of Catholic moral thought has led to persistent speculation and, in some circles, anxiety that the Church may finally be ready to put aside aspects of its traditional teachings. This would constitute a rapprochement with the so-called sexual revolution, the revaluation of values concerning sexual behavior that has been underway in the developed West since the 1960s, perhaps communicated in a similar way to the Church’s gradual rapprochement with liberal political philosophy throughout the twentieth century. Circumstantial evidence for such a change does exist, as indeed it did under Paul VI (and it must be noted here that the arguments and presuppositions at play in Humanae vitae are very different from those in Casti connubii). The idea, advanced by many Traditionalist Catholics and other conservatives in the Church, that Pope Francis is advancing an unapologetically liberal theology, does not comport with reality, but it is true that figures who more or less openly question the prudence or correctness of adhering to past teaching on sexuality are being heard out more under Francis than under his two immediate predecessors. In some cases these figures have been appointed to bodies such as the Pontifical Academy for Life that were previously bastions of the sorts of people who would probably want to be buried with copies of Casti connubii, “so that the boys will know that they died standing pat,” as the old blues song says. What, then, practically, in the context of Catholic theology as it has organically developed over the past two thousand years, is the likelihood of the Church coming to terms with the sexual revolution? This essay seeks to provide one possible answer to that question, informed by movements that have already occurred with Amoris laetitia and Fiducia supplicans, two banner documents of the Francis pontificate.

It was a maxim of John Paul II that “truth cannot contradict truth.”[1] This was an idea that he presented in the context of the relationship of faith and science, but I believe that it can be applied to current debates in the Church concerning possible changes to doctrine on sexuality (and concerning Amoris and Fiducia, which many assert, without (in my view) sufficient evidence, already have attempted to change elements of doctrine on divorce and homosexuality, respectively). The two truths relevant here are:

1. The Church is indefectible, meaning that it cannot cease to be a reliable avenue to salvation. This is stated in the Bible at Matthew 16:17-18, at which we read “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades [or the gates of hell or the powers of death] will not prevail against it” (NRSV). This is not only a key dogma of Roman Catholic belief but the core of the Catholic Church’s raison d’être as such. The relationship between this idea and the institution of the papacy is what distinguishes the Catholic Church from the other apostolic churches.
2. The content of settled Catholic doctrine cannot substantively change over time. This is marginally less of a dead certainty than indefectibility only because it is not as logically necessary to the Church’s mission. Some form of it is logically consequent of the dogma of indefectibility, since a Church that changed settled teachings would at some point or another be binding at least some of its faithful to believe things that weren’t true and that would thus jeopardize their salvation, unless the content of religious and moral truth was itself changing. The idea was pronounced repeatedly by various popes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (through denunciations of its contrary, the so-called “evolution of dogmas”—note that this is not the same as the “development of doctrine,” an idea that Catholic orthodoxy accepts and affirms), and was reaffirmed in the Second Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution Dei verbum, in which we read “Now what was handed on by the Apostles includes everything which contributes toward the holiness of life and increase in faith of the peoples of God; and so the Church, in her teaching, life and worship, perpetuates and hands on to all generations all that she herself is, all that she believes.”[2]

Indefectibility means that the Church cannot “lapse” from the true faith simply because it starts putting a concept into different words or entertaining new ideas. The rejection of the evolution of dogmas means that, if the Church does put a concept into different words or entertain new ideas, then it is not definitively teaching something substantively contrary to something that has previously been definitively taught.[3]

Ironically, many conservative proponents of John Paul II’s theology do say things that indicate a lack of faith in at least one of these truths. The fact that Francis has changed certain expressions and entertained some ideas that previous popes did not entertain, such as in Amoris and Fiducia, means, to these people, that he is leading the Church astray. They maintain a lip service belief in indefectibility but are obviously animated by an inconsolable fear that the Church might in the very near future cease to teach true religion.

There are certain ways of framing development of doctrine on sexual theology that would indisputably contradict one or both of these facts of Catholic belief and that are thus inadmissible if the Church is to maintain any degree of intellectual seriousness. The most famous of these is the idea that the Church needs to “get with the times,” i.e. that the pacemaker for moral thought is the felt sense of society as a whole and religious authorities are under some sort of obligation to ratify this sense. The entire Catholic hierarchy has such a justified horror of surrendering to this idea that even figures whose fire in the belly for the second of the truths listed above is questionable take care to stop short of asserting it. The other one that comes to mind is the idea that previous teachings on sexuality were, simply, consistently incorrect, and that developments in secular thought and the thought of other Christian denominations have finally demonstrated that incorrectness to the Catholic Church’s satisfaction. This would be more intellectually satisfying than the Church “getting with the times.” It would also be less pernicious conceptually; evolution of dogmas is such a uniquely dangerous idea—to the point that one pope, Pius X, called it the “synthesis of all heresies”[4]—because it holds that a defined teaching can be true at one point in time and false at another, thus allowing any Catholic theologian to introduce almost literally any idea he or she likes. It is, however, still unsatisfying because it still suggests that the Church’s judgment can consistently be dead wrong about something until it is “corrected” by the outside world. Even so, this framing remains markedly less objectionable than the “get with the times” framing, particularly since there are other at least apparent examples of the Church eventually conceding that a moral attitude that it held was mistaken.[5]

Another class of possible rationales for changing the Church’s sexual teaching is based upon the idea that, while moral facts cannot change, empirical facts can and do, and the practical state of the modern world is such that the way one ought to apply historical Christian sexual theology to it has changed. At their worst, these rationales are essentially restatements of “get with the times,” but at their best, they are significantly more admissible. The weakest of these, but also probably the most common, is the idea that the widespread failure of the Catholic faithful to live by or agree with the official teaching on moral sexual behavior demonstrates that the official teaching simply cannot hold any more and has to be abandoned. This is a weak argument because the idea that a moral standard should be given up on just because it is difficult to attain or commonly flouted or disagreed with is facially ridiculous. As Bishop Robert Barron has pointed out, nobody would make the same argument about the Church’s teaching on just war.[6] Applying it here is essentially a form of special pleading; it indicates exactly the belief that has bewitched many conservatives that sexual behavior is somehow special or inviolate or uniquely morally consequential above all other forms of behavior.

Another argument based upon changes in the phenomenal, empirical world is sociological and has to do with issues like overpopulation or women’s rights. In this argument, the Church’s sexual teaching may well be true for what it is and helpful as a moral lodestar or ideal, but expecting everybody to live by it would create serious practical problems and negative externalities beyond what the perceived salubrious effects on people’s souls would justify. There are two objections that I would raise to this argument, the first being that it has a historical pedigree that one ought to be skittish about, the second being that it is too consequentialist.

I base the first objection on the fact that, among the considerations in the debate on contraception within the Church under SS. John XXIII and Paul VI, one was the complex of midcentury fad ideologies around population control, particularly population control in the developing world. Humanae vitae demonstrates some awareness of this and rejects it as a form of quasi-eugenicist paternalism. “For there are other ways by which a government can and should solve the population problem,” says Paul VI, “that is to say by enacting laws which will assist families and by educating the people wisely so that the moral law and the freedom of the citizens are both safeguarded.”[7] Pope Francis has on several occasions referred to the ideologies that Pope Paul rejects here as “neo-Malthusianism.” If one is going to make similar arguments today, one to be very careful not to readmit these ideas, even in the context of a genuinely-felt ecological conversion. I base the second objection on the maxim that the ends do not justify the means and that one cannot intend a bad action as an avenue to a good outcome. (It’s also worth noting that Humanae vitae anticipates a number of negative consequences of allowing artificial contraception, although it is obviously a matter of deep controversy whether all, some, or any of these have come to pass.)

Despite these objections, this rationale is stronger than the ones discussed previously because Catholics may licitly tolerate a lesser evil to avoid a greater one, provided they are not actively complicit in it. If the Church framed a possible broad rapprochement with the sexual revolution as tolerating, as opposed to ratifying, sexual practices that it teaches to be immoral so as to avoid serious consequences for people’s other moral responsibilities or rights, then this might be an admissible or even a prudent way forward. Indeed, something of the like was introduced into the discussion surrounding Amoris and has come up again regarding Fiducia; nobody involved in implementing Pope Francis’s ideas necessarily holds the “liberal” positions on the substantive moral issues involved, but they do believe that there are some second marriages, blended families, and gay couples in which the boat is best left un-rocked. As somebody with a loving mother and stepfather myself, I am sympathetic to this idea, and as somebody with one foot firmly planted in gay and lesbian culture, I feel that sympathy very immediately and personally. What would analogous approaches look like if they were to be applied to other common sticking points in Catholic morals? It’s a question worth asking. (Of course, limits to this would have to be defined, since it seems to ring false when applied to something like abortion or euthanasia.)

Finally, the strongest and most biblically and theologically grounded rationale for the Catholic Church coming to terms with some aspects of the sexual revolution is founded upon Matthew 19:8, a verse in the very passage in which Jesus institutes the traditional teaching that marriage is to be monogamous and lifelong. In this verse Jesus says “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way” (NRSV). Thus there is an acknowledgment in the Bible itself, from the words of Christ Himself, that, under some circumstances, concessions to human sinfulness can be made from objective moral law, as long as they are acknowledged to be concessions and as long as people are eventually exhorted to conversion. This is in fact the rationale that Eastern Orthodoxy cites for allowing remarriage and in some cases contraception for pastoral reasons, as part of what the Catholic Church calls the “internal forum” of a priest’s care for individual souls, as opposed to the “external forum” of the teachings of the Gospels as proclaimed to the world. It should be remembered here that we are talking about a communion if anything even more averse to change than Catholicism (there are many Eastern Orthodox scholars who argue that doctrine does not develop at all and has not for many centuries). The distinction between the internal and external fora is another one that is present in the discussions surrounding Amoris and Fiducia. It is worth noting, however, that Orthodox second marriages involve harrowing penitential rites for the failure of the first marriage, and are stripped of many of the expressions of joy that attend first marriages. Such should also be the case if Catholicism were to more broadly adopt this approach to issues of sexual morality. It would probably need to be made clear that, at least in some cases, a post-Christian society is essentially being handheld through behaviors that a Christian society accepted should be avoided. This is what would distinguish it from the repudiated “get with the times” and “people won’t listen anyway, so why bother?” models. In such a rapprochement, the sexual revolution and the changed moral perceptions that it ushered in would not be regarded as per se positive developments, but as evidence of new problems and crises inviting new solutions grounded within solutions undertaken within the Jewish and Christian traditions in the past. Any future expansion of groundwork laid by Amoris and Fiducia, be it under Pope Francis or a subsequent pontiff, ought to be interpreted with this model in mind. The Catholic response to change is typological and consistency-building, not free-for-all, and not dismissive or contemptuous of either the future or the past.

Notes

[1] “Truth Cannot Contradict Truth,” Address of Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, October 22, 1996.

[2] Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei verbum, November 18, 1965, §8.

[3] There is one major “odd man out” here: slavery, which the Church for millennia treated as unpleasant but a natural aspect of the way society worked after the Fall and as potentially justifiable in certain circumstances, but which is now taught to be intrinsically wrong (the worm turned at some point in the nineteenth century, as it did for so many). The response to this will either be that the prior teaching was not infallible and the current teaching is (since defined by an ecumenical council and by popes explicitly wielding apostolic authority) or (much more problematically) that “just” bonded servitude can in principle exist but the Church was under a misapprehension of fact rather than principle about the sociological realities of slavery as practiced. I have confidence that all of this could be read with a hermeneutic of continuity through application of the development of doctrine principle. Irrespective, it does the Church no good to deny that this is an oddity and an at least apparent contradiction.

[4] Pascendi dominici gregis, Encyclical of Pope Pius X on the Doctrines of the Modernists, §39.

[5] cf. footnote 3.

[6] Robert Barron, “Extreme demand, extreme mercy: the Catholic approach to morality,” Catholic News Agency, February 10, 2014, accessed February 17, 2024, https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/column/extreme-demand-extreme-mercy-the-catholic-approach-to-morality-2806.

[7] Humanae vitae, Encyclical Letter of Pope Paul VI on the Regulation of Birth, §23.

Image: A stained glass window of Christ’s commission to Peter from the Church of St. John the Baptist in Imigrante, Brazil. From Wikimedia Commons. Cropped by the author.

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Nathan Turowsky

Nathan Turowsky is a native New Englander and now lives in Upstate New York. A lifelong fascination with religious ritual led him into first the Episcopal Church and then the Catholic Church. An alumnus of Boston University School of Theology and one of the relatively few Catholic alumni of that primarily Wesleyan institution, he is unmarried and works in the nonprofit sector. He writes at Silicate Siesta.