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Dear catholic.com visitors: This Catholic Answers website, with all its free resources, is the world’s largest source of explanations for Catholic beliefs and practices. We receive no funding from the institutional Church and rely entirely on your generosity to sustain this website with trustworthy, accessible content. If every visitor this month donated $1, catholic.com would be fully funded for an entire year. If you’ve never made a gift, now is the time. Your donation will be matched dollar for dollar this week only. Thanks and God bless.
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Q&A

How can I defend the Church’s teaching on homosexuality?

Jim Blackburn

Question:

How can I explain the Church’s teaching on homosexuality to my friend in a way that won’t make her hate the Church? She thinks it’s an issue of the Church being judgmental and exclusionary and that it is wrong to condemn homosexuals to a life of involuntary celibacy.

Answer:

Persons who suffer from homosexuality are called to chastity—as are we all. The Church recognizes that homosexuality is a disorder (see CCC 2357) and, while the desires are not in themselves sinful, acting out on them is clearly offensive to God (see Rom 1:26-27, 1 Cor 6:9-10). It is appropriate to judge homosexual acts as wrong. But far from being “exclusionary,” the Church teaches that persons suffering from homosexuality “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition” (CCC 2358).

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