If you read some of my previous posts, you will find that I wasn’t nearly as progressive as I am today. In fact, the involuntary progressive shifts I made started with Trump mocking the disabled reporter. As a disability practitioner, this is something I couldn’t stomach. From that point on, starting in 2016, difficult yet needed political and theological shifts, deconstruction, and reconstruction are still occurring today. The more ugly and further right the Religious Right/Catholic Right shifts, the more progressive in the opposite direction I become, both theologically and politically. Instead of hyper-focusing on the sexual ethics tradition of the Catholic Church as I once did, I am focusing more and more on the social justice tradition which is Catholic Social Teaching and the Gospel itself. This means, we love and stand by anyone who is oppressed without condition, regardless of who they are.
According to Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest who is a public figure in Catholic LGBTQ+ ministry and other justice-oriented ministries, he states that sexual ethics have permanently changed since the Sexual Revolution, and we must focus on other things. After seeing and knowing what I know today, I couldn’t agree more. According to a current study from Dating Advice, a surprisingly high number of 20% of Americans say they would wait to have sex until they are married. However, according to the Guttmacher Institute, 97% of Catholic women who are of reproductive age use artificial contraception. Also according to Guttmacher studies, 79% of Catholic women in their 20s have already had sex which is a similar percentage to the secular world statistic. In short, we cannot control someone’s sex life. Catholics know what the teachings on sexual ethics are, and it’s up to them individually to address them with a well-informed conscience. We also cannot force Catholic sexual ethics on other Catholics or the secular world for reasons of health, life, and human dignity. Any well-informed Catholic conscience in today’s modern world will most likely be in conflict with at least part of the Church’s teachings on sexual ethics in more cases than not. We must ask ourselves why. For many Catholics, there is a conflict with how the human body is designed, science, and the Church’s teaching. According to a study from Modern Intimacy and many others, sexual repression can lead to not only mental health problems and lasting psychological damage, but it can lead to suicide, especially for LGBTQ+ people. For this reason, I still honor the moral framework for sexual ethics as a guardrail, not as a weapon to harm, abuse, and even kill. According to my own well-formed conscience, I believe that Catholic Social Teaching should leave the individual private lives up to each person out of human dignity which is a tenet of Catholic Social Teaching. As I said above, forcing sexual ethics on anyone, even another Catholic, can potentially lead to harm and death.
I spoke of the dilemma for sexual ethics above because the hyper-focus on sexual ethics has near-destroyed the Catholic Church’s mission in many places to implement Catholic Social Teaching and act upon the Gospel as a Church. According to Pope Francis, Catholics are obsessed with contraception, abortion, and sexuality. The Holy Father also states that the Church must convert to a hospital because the state of humanity is in crisis, that the Church must help the poorest, not dissect theology.
As a Pope Francis Catholic, I couldn’t be more grateful to him and clergy like Father James Martin for showing me what reality actually is in the Catholic world and broader society. Many theologians and Church Fathers throughout the ages have spoken about standing with the poor, the marginalized, and the disenfranchised. If we do this, we will stand with who Hitler called, “The Impure.” After the hatred, attempted harm, and death wishes I’ve received from the Religious Right/Catholic Right for standing by transgender youth, who they wish to exterminate, I choose to stand with the oppressed, the marginalized, and the poor, the same people Jesus stood by, not the religious elite.
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