An Explainer for Evangelicals: Here’s Where the Catholic Church is Headed on LGBT Issues
By Zachary Mettler, from Daily Citizen (Focus on the Family)
Christians who believe in a biblical sexual ethic may be concerned over several stories that have emerged out of the Vatican in recent weeks. Their concerns are not without warrant.
First, the Catholic Church’s recent Synod on Synodality produced a document which asserted that the Church’s teaching on gender identity and sexual orientation may need to be updated. The document stated,
Sometimes the anthropological categories that we have developed are not sufficient to capture the complexity of the elements that emerge from experience or scientific knowledge and require refinement and further study.
Such as statement is indeed troubling. Bishop Robert Barron, a leading American prelate who serves as the bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester and is the founder of the evangelistic organization Word on Fire, participated in the Synod. He recently said he is in “frank disagreement” with that part of the final synodal report.
Second, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), which is the Vatican’s head doctrine office, released a three-page document which affirmed that transgender-identified people can be baptized “under the same conditions as other believers, if there are no situations in which there is a risk of generating public scandal, or disorientation among the faithful.”
Numerous mainstream media outlets ran with this story, publishing headlines like, “Transgender people can be baptized, Vatican says.”
The document also said that a child of a same-sex couple – obtained through adoption or surrogacy – may be baptized if there is a “well-founded hope that a child presented for baptism will be educated in the Catholic faith.”
It failed to explain how – given the church’s clear teaching on the immorality of sex outside of a monogamous heterosexual marriage – there could possibly be a “well-founded hope” for a child of a same-sex couple to be brought up in the Catholic faith. The two certainly do not go together.
The DDF’s document was signed by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect for the DDF, and approved by Pope Francis.
Third, Pope Francis recently welcomed a group of transgender individuals to the Vatican as guests for lunch to celebrate the Catholic Church’s World Day of the Poor.
For those who affirm biblical beliefs on our culture’s hot button moral issues – including abortion, same-sex marriage, contraception and transgenderism – the Vatican was generally seen as the archetype of stable and clear moral teaching under the pontificates of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI (who collectively headed the Catholic Church from 1978 until 2013).
However, confusion and ambiguity seem to have grown under Pope Francis’ leadership.
So, what does this all mean? Has the Catholic Church changed its teaching on LGBT issues? And where is the church headed in the years to come?
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