By Robert Royal
Pope Leo traveled to four African countries this month, which included not only the usual calls for peace, justice, and fraternity, but also several moving and profound moments with local communities. Let us hope that the presence of this Successor of Peter, who possesses a natural gentleness and piety, bears much fruit. Unfortunately, on the flight back to Rome on Thursday, we encountered another confusing papal press conference aboard, which grabbed the headlines and has left many Catholics confused and dismayed. A Pope has multiple appropriate channels to express himself; a press conference is not one of them.
By their very nature, these informal question-and-answer sessions make it seem as if the Church’s teachings, and the Pope’s own words, are like those of a politician commenting on current affairs. The usual rhetorical and moral tangle could already be foreseen, for example, in this exchange with a German journalist:
I would like to know how you assess the decision of Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Archbishop of Munich and Freising, to authorize the blessing of same-sex couples in his diocese and, given the different cultural and theological perspectives, especially in Africa, how do you intend to preserve the unity of the global Church on that particular issue?
[Pope Leo XIV, in English:] First of all, I think it is very important to understand that the unity or division of the Church should not revolve around sexual issues. We tend to think that when the Church speaks of morality, the only moral issue is the sexual one. And in reality, I believe there are much greater and more important issues, such as justice, equality, the freedom of men and women, religious freedom, which would take priority over that particular issue. The Holy See has already spoken with the German bishops. The Holy See has made it clear that we do not agree with the formalized blessing of couples.
«We do not agree» is a weak response to a strong challenge. It is not a matter of agreement or disagreement, but of the teachings of Jesus and His Church from time immemorial. And, like it or not, sexual ethics—which runs deep in the Christian conception of the human person («male and female he created them»)—is a central issue. It is not the only one, certainly. But trying to nuance what amounts to a rebellion within the Church and a surrender to the spirit of the world is a poor tactic for maintaining the unity of the Church. And it will not work against the unstoppable advance of the global LGBT movement.
The only thing that could work is a firm theological and doctrinal stance.
Furthermore, while it is true that the Church teaches that there are more and less serious sins (as we often say here, see Dante’s Inferno for a graphic image)—and it is, in fact, an Augustinian theme that has been expounded more clearly by other recent popes—is this a good way to speak to our current culture?
[By the way, next month I will offer a short course on «Leo and the Augustinian Tradition» (here) in which we will delve into several of the central issues in greater detail].
What would be better? The Pope has his own appealing style, and he could decide on that. But the substance would have to be something like this to remain a good Augustinian, that is, faithful to the fullness of Catholic reality:
All mortal sins are serious. In fact, all sins, however venial they may be, distance us from God, from our fellow men, and from our true selves. The human person has been created by God in such a way that, from Cain and Abel, the most obvious way we deviate from God’s order and being is by physically harming each other, even to the point of killing one another.
This would be just the beginning and would at least be biblically grounded. But it could not stop there. It would have to establish some distinctions that have always existed in the Church. Something like this:
Sexual sins are the easiest to understand, because they closely resemble the love that God has placed in us to love other people, especially God Himself. They are also among the most common sins, as we see around us, which is why the Church has constantly warned about them. Very few of us will commit a physical assault or a murder, and much less will we be in a position to start wars or perpetrate social injustices. Therefore, although we recognize the gravity of such matters, for most of us those are distant temptations (almost entirely theoretical), hardly the stuff of most human lives.
When the Church presents itself as someone primarily concerned with the big public problems, already sufficiently present in secular culture, is it any wonder that people are not in the pews on Sundays?
And while we try to gauge the relative gravity of sins, let us not ignore a massive and undeniable fact of our time. Every year, 60 million children are killed through elective abortion. «Sexual sins» also have murderous consequences, far greater than the supposed «much greater and more important» issues in Pope Leo’s statements.
In addition to broken families and marriages, fatherless children, and the social chaos caused by the sexual revolution, the Church claims to believe that abortion is taking an innocent human life; violence masked with talk of «reproductive rights» and «reproductive health.» The numbers alone never tell the whole story. But if that many human beings (nearly 1 million per year in the United States alone) were killed annually by wars, poverty, climate change, or political oppression (which, even combined, manifestly they are not), the world would be in total upheaval.
In four years, World War I, which many believe began the destruction of our Western civilization, resulted in the death of perhaps 20 million people. World War II, in six years, added maybe another 75 or 80 million. So, looking at the figures again, two of the greatest cataclysms of modern times produced, over a decade, a body count lower than that of two years of our global abortion regimes.
And we are only just beginning to see how disrespect for life at the beginning is impacting life at its end. Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID, as the Canadians cleverly call it) has only just begun, but already accounts for 1 in 20 deaths north of the border.
To be clear: Pope Leo has spoken out against abortion, euthanasia, the persecution of Christians, and other «Catholic issues,» just as Pope Francis has. But is there in the Church that sense of urgency about them that we see in other matters?
The Pope and the Church are right—despite American politicians of the right and left—to comment on immigration, fraternity, war, care for creation, and much more. But we also need courage and frankness to name the greatest threats to humanity and the most widespread offense against God in our current moment.
About the author
Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent books are The Martyrs of the New Millennium: The Global Persecution of Christians in the Twenty-First Century, Columbus and the Crisis of the West and A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.