Before he died, Pope Francis put together "listening sessions" for input from lay Catholics on issues that affect the Catholic Church. One of those meetings resulted in a report, published earlier this week, that suggests "reframing" homosexuality.
LifeSiteNews CEO John-Henry Westen calls the document a "bombshell," as it endorses the claim that "sin at its root does not consist in the same-sex-couple relationship."
The report concludes the sin is instead in "a lack of faith in a God who desires our fulfillment."
Westen says the conclusions were from a flawed source.
"The 32-page document relies on the testimonies of the lived experience of two individuals with same-sex attraction," he notes, and it openly questions whether such unions could be considered analogous to marriage."
Austin Ruse of the Center for Family & Human Rights (C-Fam) says the listening tour to include more "lay voices" in the running of the Church was fanciful from the start.
"This report … has really no authority," he asserts. "The Church teaches that same-sex relationships are objectively evil, and that's never going to change."
While the Southern Baptist Convention has moved in the opposite direction institutionally, strengthening enforcement of its biblical stance on the subject—citing Genesis 1:27-28; 2:24; Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; and 1 Timothy 1:9-10—by disfellowshipping or distancing churches that affirm same-sex marriage or LGBTQ-affirming theology, other mainline Protestant bodies have already moved further along a trajectory similar to that of the Catholic Church.
The Episcopal Church, for example, officially approves same-sex marriage rites, ordains openly LGBTQ clergy and treats same-sex relationships as potentially holy and sacramental in practice.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America allows openly LGBTQ clergy, blesses same-sex marriages and holds that scripture can be interpreted to support affirming positions.
Though the United Church of Christ strongly emphasizes local church autonomy, it fully affirms LGBTQ relationships and clergy and fully supports and normalizes same-sex marriage.
For many Protestant denominations, doctrinal change often occurs through synods, assemblies or conferences that directly revise practice, but in the Catholic Church, even synodal reports do not change teaching.
Ruse adds that even Pope Leo XIV's left-leaning politics will have no effect on Catholic theology.
