Some thoughts on the Catholic View of Homosexuality

So I've seen recently that (1) Cardinal Cupich refused to affirm any causal connection between homosexuality and the sex abuse crisis, and (2) the notion of homosexuality is nowhere to be found in the discussions at the summit concerning the same crisis, which has inclined me to write on the Church's view on homosexuality. (I also think I just heard it on the radio, unless I misheard, which is pretty likely.)

The usual way that I think most Catholics try to appease their non-Catholic opponents on the issue of homosexuality is to make the distinction between homosexuality or a homosexual tendency, on the one hand, and homosexual actions, on the other. The Church, these Catholics will say, condemns the latter as sinful but not the former. The above stories, however, indicate to me that many Catholics, including Church prelates, it seems, are now interpreting homosexuality or a homosexual inclination being "not sinful" to mean that there is in fact nothing wrong with it--or, even worse, that it is in fact good. But that is quite contrary to the Catholic view.

The traditional way of understanding evil, broadly speaking, is that it is the privation of a good; that is, it is the lack of something which ought to be there. There are certain privations (or "absences") of things which, by themselves, are not evil; it is only when the absence is undue or not natural to the thing that we call it evil. My nostrils, for example, are "holes" in my head or a certain lack of flesh in a certain spot in my face--but they are "holes" which ought to be there. I am supposed to have nostrils as a human being. Hence, simply because they constitute a certain "lack" of flesh in my face or head, so to speak, i.e. a privation, we do not call them evil; and, in fact, because they are supposed to be there, we would say that it is good that they are there. On the other hand, if an iron rod were driven through my skull (like in the case of Phineas Gage), the result would be that there is a hole in my head which is not supposed to be there. Hence we would call that hole an evil since it is the privation or lack of something which ought to be there.

Now, taken in this sense, evil can be considered in two ways. There is what might be called "natural" evil, which is evil that occurs independently of any human agency, e.g. natural disasters; and there is what might be called "moral" evil, which occurs because of human agency, e.g. murder. Note that both natural and moral evil fulfill the definition above, i.e. the privation of a good: if someone dies in a hurricane, that person is being deprived (de-prived) of the good of life, but this is not because of any human action--we would not blame any particular person for that person's death (or at least, it would be unreasonable to do so). But if someone is murdered, while we would still say that person suffered the same evil as the person who died in the hurricane, namely, the deprivation of the good of life, the latter person's death is the result of some human action--we would blame and bring to court (once found) the murderer. For murder is a voluntary action, one which results from the murderer's intellect and will and, hence, which the murderer had control over, so he could have chosen not to perform it. For this reason we say that the murderer is responsible for the action and hence blameworthy.

Now, when Catholics try to distinguish between homosexuality and homosexual action, it seems to me they are presupposing precisely this distinction. For sin is defined as some sort of moral evil, i.e. one that arises out of some human intellect and will. Thus when Catholics say that simply having a homosexual inclination is not sinful, they are saying that it is not morally evil to have such an inclination or tendency, since such an inclination could arise in a wholly involuntary way. However, it does not follow, then, that, strictly speaking, there is absolutely nothing wrong with having a homosexual inclination. For there is another sort of evil, namely, natural evil, which, although of a different kind than moral evil as independent of voluntary human action, is still evil, still a privation of some good. On the other hand, homosexual actions, insofar as they are human actions, i.e. voluntary acts beginning in a human intellect and will, are in fact morally evil and hence sinful. Consequently, homosexual inclinations are evils of the "natural" kind and so cannot be said to be "good" or even "not wrong." (This is even exacerbated by the fact that they are in fact naturally ordered to homosexual actions in the sense that they can only be fulfilled in homosexual action, and anything naturally ordered to something morally evil cannot in any way be said to be good.)

There is much that could be said about why homosexual actions are morally evil, but I don't presently have the time or will to take that up. Maybe later. For now, I'll simply say that homosexual actions frustrate the natural end of the reproductive organs, namely, to reproduce, and any act that frustrates the natural end of something is morally evil.