Pope Leo recently said, in response to a question about the effect of Cardinal Marx’s promotion of blessings for same-sex couples on church unity,
The unity or division of the Church should not revolve around sexual matters. We tend to think that when the Church is talking about morality, that the only issue of morality is sexual. And in reality, I believe there are much greater, more important issues, such as justice, equality, freedom of men and women, freedom of religion …
I won’t comment on the true significance of Leo’s response within his pontificate—it was, after all, an unstudied comment made in a particular situation, and I haven’t followed his doings as closely as many others. But it reflects a tendency of thought among many Catholics, so it seems worthwhile to think about its implications when viewed from that perspective.
It evidently supports the “progressive” or “social justice” wing of Catholicism in opposition to the “conservative” or “culture war” wing. The opposition lacks nuance, but is real. Some Catholics believe that the Church should emphasize social reform in the interest of a more free, equal, and compassionate society; others that she should emphasize personal transformation that enables believers to turn toward God and away from sin, and her social involvement should emphasize ways of propagating that.
Each side says that its approach is the best way to further the other’s goals. “Social justice” Catholics note that personal holiness includes avoidance of injustice and active love of neighbor. They also say that support by social authorities for religion and personal morality leads to cynicism and hypocrisy, since it leads people to pretend concern for such things for the sake of personal advantage, while tolerance and progressive social policies free people from pressures that tempt them to do things they shouldn’t.
“Culture war” Catholics are more likely to view changing the heart as the leaven that ultimately transforms the world. They note that socialism has led to poverty, and progressive policies—refusal to prosecute shoplifters is a current example—often facilitate bad conduct by minimizing its consequences. They further note that personal moral conduct has to do with how each of us orients and carries on his life, and undercutting its importance undercuts human dignity, a basic concern of Catholic teaching.
They also note that most of Catholic morality, especially the part that coincides with natural law, has to do with fundamental features of human life, such as sex, property, and language. Standards forbidding sexual and financial misconduct, along with lying and other forms of dishonesty, are therefore basic to good social relations, even though they count as “personal morality.” Sex in particular has to do with our most basic personal and social connections, so it obviously matters a great deal, not only to individuals but to the whole society.
So the personal and social aspects of morality cannot be separated. What then does it mean to say that sexual matters are much less important moral concerns than freedom, justice, and equality, to the point that even fundamental disputes over the former shouldn’t affect the unity of the Church?
When a Catholic official says “we” tend to identify Catholic and sexual morality, he doesn’t mean Catholic officials. Sermons on the latter topic are rare, and popes and bishops don’t emphasize it much in their public statements. He means ordinary laymen; I am sure it gets mentioned much more often in the confessional than from the pulpit.
A man trying to make a good life for himself, his family, and others around him focuses on his personal situation and how he should act in it. Sex is an area in which ordinary people often struggle with the temptation to violate clear standards in ways that deeply affect their lives and the lives of others. So it looms large among their everyday moral concerns, and they evidently need the pastoral support of the Church in their efforts to act as they should. The contentiousness of current discussions makes it all the more important that the Church speak clearly when it has something clear and relevant to say.
There are instances in which justice, equality, and freedom are grossly violated, and settings—extreme tyranny, for example—in which public evils overwhelm people’s everyday dealings with each other as a moral concern even for ordinary people.
But aggressive war and the like are not practical temptations for anyone who’s not a high government official. Participation in state crimes can present more of a practical problem—for example, when soldiers are ordered to commit atrocities. But such occasions are rare for most people, so their own conduct in everyday life is normally their primary moral concern.
Catholics are also citizens, voters, and sometimes public officials. The Church does them a service when she reminds them of the basic principles that should guide them in their public involvement. To the extent those principles are a matter of natural law, that service extends to non-Catholics as well. We should all take those principles seriously, but their application depends on the situation, and in most cases the Church has no special competence to advise people on what the situation and its implications are. It also depends on complex and often debatable considerations: the Pope favors equality, but I am far from his equal in the Church or society generally, and I doubt he or any other Catholic wants to make me so.
With that in mind, the deep subordination of sex to grand concerns regarding overall institutional structures looks very much like the clergy seeing themselves more as public figures taking part in general social governance than as pastors of a particular society oriented toward the blessedness of its members and their struggles to attain it. They do have both roles, but the one-sidedness suggested by the Pope’s offhand comment seems a misstep.
The extreme emphasis on general social concerns in some parts of the Church presents other problems as well.
Most people who say they are deeply concerned about social justice are comfortably situated. Even so, they idealize democracy, and want to present their projects—which are based on a top-down view that emphasizes overall social structures rather than the everyday doings of ordinary people—as the popular will. Within the Church, this desire has supported initiatives like synodality, and—with respect to social engagement—the convening of the World Meeting of Popular Movements (WMPM).
It has also led to a great deal of fraudulence. The popular will mostly exists at the grassroots level. But a participatory process to define it in a way that is concrete and coherent enough to be usable by an organization like a government or universal church will be complex and multilayered, and its results will be determined far away. It seems inevitable that such a process will end up controlled by organized activists, with strong views of their own, who resemble in character other people who maneuver themselves into dominant positions in complex situations.
Recent news regarding the success of well-placed activists, like Fr. James Martin, SJ, promoting their goals through the synodal process, confirms such concerns. As to popular movements, I don’t doubt that the people the Holy Father worked with during his years in Peru were good local people trying to do good local things. But the official pronouncements of the WMPM, and the public comments of its leaders, sound like standard leftist jargon more than the voice of ordinary people. And a recent report from the Lepanto Institute, whatever flaws it may have, presents persuasive evidence that its steering committee is dominated by organizations with troubling Marxist and socially radical connections.
With such things in mind, it is not surprising that there tends to be something hollow about such efforts. Official voices talk them up, but ordinary people don’t listen, and the more the Church emphasizes them, the more people lose interest in her. That has especially been true in Latin America, where the proportion of the people who are Catholic has been declining steeply since the late 1960s, when the Church there began emphasizing social and political causes, and the decline accelerated after Francis became pope.
Numbers aren’t everything, but they suggest something about the pastoral effectiveness of post-Vatican II initiatives. The indispensable role of the Church is to help people deal with ultimate human concerns as they enter into their everyday lives. These concerns matter to everyone, including—even especially—people in difficult situations. Does it appear from the popular reception of her recent initiatives that the Church has chosen the route people find most helpful?
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Eighth paragraph, even the pope? “When a Catholic official [!] says…”. Some would say that the linguistic division of the Mystical Body of Christ. Into those who are official and those who are ordinary is, unwittingly and in itself, the insidious Marxist paradigm.
Another “unstudied comment,” not far from the synodalist caricature of diocesan bishops (the sacramentally ordained successors of the Apostles commissioned by Christ) “primarily as facilitator.” Very “official”, this facilitator thingy.
I agree it’s an odd usage, and I’m not sure of it, but part of the reason for it was that the Pope’s remark seemed to invoke the Church as participant in officialdom rather than the Church as sacramental and hierarchically ordered Body of Christ.
Regarding the “insidious Marxist paradigm”, the Faithful would be justified in saying, that those who desire to reorder persons according to sexual desire/inclination/orientation, in order to justify the engaging in of demeaning sexual acts that no person should be engaging in because they sexually objectify the human person and are physically, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually harmful, and thus not being ordered to authentic Love, are, in fact, devoid of Love , and having denied Christ’s Teaching regarding Lust and the sin of adultery and replaced it with atheist materialist overpopulation alarmist globalism , the goal, which from beginning to end is the objectification of the human person, no doubt, have defected from The One Body Of Christ, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, which should be obvious to those who still believe.
“When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker Himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man.” – Pope Benedict’s Christmas Address 2012
Thank you, CWR, and thank you, Mr. Kalb. Reason at last. At last. Reason seasoned by truthful charity. Amen.
Social justice, it seems, consists of spending other people’s money and apologizing for other people’s sins.
One must discern which direction the Current Church desires to lead the laity….historically the Catholic Church has been in the business of conforming the world to God (however imperfectly at time) in stark contrast of the modern Church intent on conforming their god to their world. The increasing polarization between the RadTrads and Modernists has all but eliminated any, all common ground the result being in many cases that the confusion, the chaos and disorder results that apostates simply leave the Church to find seek the Truth elsewhere, insufficient traditional Churches and an overwhelming number of modernist churches.
Kalb analyzes contemporary globalization trends toward ‘social and political causes’ to which the Church has been drawn. Although “the personal and social aspects of morality cannot be separated”.
At trial is Leo XIV and the larger social issues v sexual matters. Furthermore, however we splice the issue, sex runs deeply through all. Kalb suggests that the result of our focus on the wider general moral interests has adversely impacted the concrete practice of the faith. And with that acceleration of apostasy.
It’s a raw observation of results that cannot be denied and which requires the obvious change in Church policy in how it conveys the Christian message. Our difficulty in this from my perspective is that Church hierarchy is not personally if not sexually attuned to make that change.
Kalb analyzes contemporary globalization trends toward ‘social and political causes’ to which the Church has been drawn. Although “the personal and social aspects of morality cannot be separated”.
At trial is Leo XIV and the larger social issue v sexual matters. Furthermore, however we splice the issue, sex runs deeply through through all. Kalb suggests that the result of our focus on the wider general moral interests has adversely impacted the concrete practice of the faith. And with that acceleration of apostasy.
“Church hierarchy is not personally if not sexually attuned to make that change.”
“And with that acceleration of apostasy.”
AMEN.
It seems me that if one does not have shelter, food, clothing, education, freedom from violence and medicine, below the belt concerns are definitely secondary for the ordinary layman.
Fenian: In which case, what we need are Social Workers and not priests. It was never lost on me that far too many bishops held their Graduate degrees in Social Work (or Political Science).
If one does not have shelter, food, clothing, education, freedom from violence and medicine, then one obviously struggles to survive. The evidence is apparently mixed. Some report interest as higher in times of stress and worry about survival (i.e., in times of war). OTOH, if one struggles for food and ‘starving to death,’ there is likely little energy for much of anything else.
Question: How many Christian Westerners and how many Christians worldwide suffer within a starvation or survival mode?
Also, does the encyclical specifically addresses the issue of belt concerns in relation to survival issues?
Finally, as an educator, it has been my American experience that one suffers a lack of education primarily because one does not put effort into acquiring it.
God’s Commandment regarding lust and the sin of adultery certainty is not a secondary concern. You just made that up!
Jesus said much more about the poor than sexual sin. It’s written in the Gospel so you know I didn’t make it up.
Maybe He thought this was sufficient.
Matthew 5:27-30
27 You have heard that it was said to them of old: Thou shalt not commit adultery.
28 But I say to you, that whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart.
29 And if thy right eye scandalize thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. For it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather than that thy whole body be cast into hell.
30 And if thy right hand scandalize thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather than that thy whole body be cast into hell.
He made sexual standards more demanding (no divorce, no thoughts of adultery etc.) while suggesting some punishments (literal stoning) were too brutal.
He praised generosity to the poor, especially because it loosens our attachment to secular concerns and so frees us for better things. He also suggested poverty itself brings openness to God and so has its advantages. So voluntary poverty was good in itself.
He did not preach secular reform, predicting instead that the world would end in self-generated catastrophe. And he said the Kingdom, which was not of this world, would come “not by observation” but through the leavening effect of the Gospel.
Put it all together and I see more basis for a Church that focuses on personal transformation, which would emphasize love of God but include less pursuit of our own material interests and more concern for the situation of those around us, than for a Church that emphasizes support for grand secular schemes of social reform, especially at a time when those efforts are based on a thoroughly non-Christian view of man.
Well put.
The Commandments are Divine Law including God’s Commandment regarding lust and the sin of adultery. They are certainly not secondary concerns.
Ignoring below the belt issues (especially fornication and single motherhood) lead to problems in obtaining “shelter, food, clothing, education, freedom from violence and medicine…”
Minus things that concern “below the belt ” there would be no laypeople in the first place.
Because only the secure will find a Savior.
As St. James said, ” For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.”
And as Jesus said, “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.”
If a person waits to seek personal holiness until we have no needs, no lack of education or opportunity, and no insecurities, he will never seek it. Granted that suffering tends to feel like it’s lasting an eternity, it’s really quite short relative to actual eternity.
Kalb analyzes contemporary globalization trends toward ‘social and political causes’ to which the Church has been drawn. Although “the personal and social aspects of morality cannot be separated”.
At trial is Leo XIV and the larger social issues v sexual matters. Furthermore, however we splice the issue, sex runs deeply through all. Kalb suggests that the result of our focus on the wider general moral interests has adversely impacted the concrete practice of the faith. And with that acceleration of apostasy.
It’s a raw observation of results that cannot be denied and which requires the obvious change in Church policy in how it conveys the Christian message. Our difficulty in this from my perspective is that Church hierarchy is not personally if not sexually attuned to make that change.
Our Pope, it seems to me, has muddied the waters (more than a little) by his recent remarks that ‘the Church is about more than sexual morality”, or words to that effect. Yes, I suppose. But, true sexuality pervades every aspect of life – economic, social, human, medical, familial, aspirational, political, vocational, and even human survival
Two world-wide generations have evaded the God-given meaning and purpose of sexuality through the use of birth control and its various mechanistic means in favor of what may appear to be personal, material. political or economic gain. It has left the world on the very cusp of a virtual total population collapse. (Don’t believe it? Check out the UN or Wikipedia published materials, e.g.) Population is not turned on or off based on societal whim or planning. Since only women under 46, more or less, can contribute to the population. Their normal proportion of the world’s population has virtually collapsed in absolute numbers since contraception and abortion started to dominate the human ‘life-generating’ urge (1930, + or -). Margaret Sanger was its herald. Today, Population has peaked at 10 billion. The collapse in absolute numbers begins, in total numbers, before 2100. Today, there are 10 billion persons in the world. By 2200, the world will have about 1 billion, and an uncertain future dependent on a ‘remnant’ that believes in life and its God-given sexual means.
So you want the world to be like Bangladesh? You want overpopulation and poverty? No thanks.
Fertility rates have been plummeting across the globe. Overpopulation was a concern to previous generations & we had films like “Soylent Green”. But today the worry is about increasingly elderly populations without enough working young people to fund things like Social Security & healthcare.
You could end up with Soylent Green after all.
🙂
“Overpopulation was a concern to previous generations”
You forgot the adjective contrived.
Malthus in 1798 and William Forster Lloyd in 1833 created the sort of diabolic “blackboard economics” (a derisive term for the confusion that models are reality coined by Ronald Coase, the brilliant, if oddly laconic for his craft as an economist) that are easily grasped and almost universally adopted by the patched elbow set as irrefutable facts. So popular was the idea that Disney did cartoon propaganda (1968) on “family planning”.
Malthus in particular was wrong. He claimed populations grow ad infinitim as exponential functions. That’s wrong on at least two scores. First, populations don’t grow exponentially, but as a second order linear differential equation, where part of the curve appears to be exponential, but it begins to grow slower and resembles a slanted S. It is the mathematical exposition of an inherent ceteris paribus fallacy.
Second, organism populations are subject to periodic external shocks (famine, plague, war, etc.).
Paul Ehrlich, the failed butterfly entomologist took up this noxious misanthropy and made a series of “doom porn” predictions that the late great Julian Simon ( a rarity in academia, a seriously religious man, who as a Jew did not work on the Sabbath) destroyed. Simon’s 1981 book The Ultimate Resource is a valuable counterpoint. I note that for all his histrionics about “surplus populations”, Ehrlich
It’s not that a sudden drop in fecundity has ended fears of overpopulation, it never was real problem except in the minds of academics with delusions of omniscience and deviant psychopaths such as Bill Gates, who shows no sign of caring, as he made sure he reproduced. I note also that Ehrlich dug his claws in to his seat in this realm until this past March, where he expired as a nonagenarian.
People like Paul Ehrlich were wrong but people became concerned nonetheless & some still operate today under that misinformation.
Speaking of over-population worries today:
“Chile’s Fertility Hits Record Low: Chile’s demographic crisis deepened in 2025 as births fell to just 146,446, down 46.9% from 275,916 in 1993. The nation’s fertility rate dropped to a historic low of 0.99 children per woman—the first time it has fallen below one child per woman and a 59.4% decline since 1993. Experts warn that Chile, already the most aged country in Latin America, could soon see deaths outnumber births. ”
Population Research Institute
Mr. Kalb aptly presents the deep disjunctions within the Church, most specifically where a silence on moral teaching belies a clear ecclesial obligation to teach. Little wonder that “the pastoral effectiveness of post Vatican II initiatives” are comfortably set aside for the more congenial forays into social justice and the “popular reception of her recent initiatives (social justice)that the Church has chosen (as) the route people find most helpful?”
Consider: biologically alive, comatose patients are harvested for their organs. That is murder, even if legally sanctioned.
1. This is a clear homicide, without any scientific sanction. But doctors are silent.
2. This is a manifestly clear violation of the Fifth Commandment. But the Church is silent (although it is ready to condemn killing in social justice issues!)
One can contemplate the high, and necessary, coherence of moral and social teaching in the Good Samaritan parable, wherein “A Priest happened to be going down the the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side.”
The laity pray that Pope Leo might reconcile the disparate Church (moral and social) voices first, and then teach, authoritatively, the faithful and the world.
Sexual sin is a personal sin. The subjects that the social justice types like to talk about make it possible to shift the blame to other people and groups. Their outlook is that they want to feel good more so than actually doing good. They are generally resistant to being held to account for the consequences of their actions. Psalm 36 talks about the malice of sinners:
*
Sin speaks to the sinner
in the depths of his heart.
There is no fear of God
before his eyes.
*
He so flatters himself in his mind
that he knows not his guilt.
In his mouth are mischief and deceit.
All wisdom is gone.
*
He plots the defeat of goodness
as he lies on his bed.
He has set his foot on evil ways,
he clings to what is evil. (From Divine Office)
*
This pretty much describes the behavior of the clergy who were involved in the clerical abuse scandal. That Pope Leo could make his statement about sexual sin makes me wonder if he learned anything from the clerical abuse scandal.
He likely learned a lot about humanity’s concerns serving as he did in South America. First issues of survival then issues of sexual pleasure.
I imagine Pope Leo did learn a great deal while serving in Peru but just from my experience, folks in Latin America have standards about decency also.
It shouldn’t be a competition between survival & decency.Both are important.
Thank you, mrscracker. Thank you very much.
You are very welcome Miss Linda.
🙂
June 3, the day of my comment, was the Memorial for Saint Charles Lwanga and Companions, Martyrs. Sexual sins, and the refusal to engage in them, played a part in their martyrdom. The Psalm that I cited was from Divine Office Morning Prayer for that day’s memorial. There is an article about them on this website:
“The real reasons behind the deaths of the Ugandan martyrs”:
*
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2026/06/03/the-real-reasons-behind-the-deaths-of-the-ugandan-martyrs/
GregB writes: “That Pope Leo could make his statement about sexual sin makes me wonder if he learned anything from the clerical abuse scandal.”
No, homosexual bishops and those bishops who support the likes of Fr. Martin SJ and their homosexualist agenda are mightily content to put the Homosexual Abuse Crisis behind them and never learn the moral lessons.
The hierarchy was forced by governments to pay reparation for the Homosexual Abuse Crisis but they never admitted the nature and root cause of the problem. It’s left to the laity to root out the evil agenda of these bishops.
The clerical abuse scandal is pretty much a replay of the fall of the House of Eli in 1 Samuel. Eli’s sons, who were called wicked and worthless in the passages concerning them, were guilty of adultery and treating the offerings to God with contempt. In addition to the sexual abuse component of the clerical abuse scandal, many of the offenders were found with their hands in the Church till. Turning the Church funds into a clerical slush fund. Treating the offerings to God with contempt, no different than Eli’s sons.
Our Call to Holiness, is a Call to be chaste in our thoughts, in our words, and in our deeds.
A disordered desire/ inclination to engage in a demeaning sexual act of any nature, does not change the nature of the demeaning act, which denies the inherent Sanctity and Dignity of all our beloved sons and daughters.
Those who desire to reorder persons according to sexual desire/inclination/orientation, in order to justify the engaging in of demeaning sexual acts that no person should be engaging in because they sexually objectify the human person and are physically, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually harmful, and thus not being ordered to authentic Love, are, in fact, devoid of Love have ipso facto defected from The Catholic Church, having denied Christ’s Teaching regarding Lust and the sin of adultery.
It is certainly not The Holy Ghost who allowed for the anathema of The Charitable Anathema of Jesus The Christ.
Speaking of “below the belt,” how many such punches do faithful Catholics need silently accept? I have known numerous “conservative” Catholics who ably uphold sexual sanctity while directly, lovingly, assisting the poor and disadvantaged, including ministering to those who erred in judgment.
They do not preach but outreach.
I have also witnessed Catholics who are all too content to oblige the pro abortion crowd and expect the government nanny to “serve” the least among us.
The government (at least in the U.S.) is of by and for the people. Of course it should serve the least among us and not just the powerful.
I have no pretentions of being an academic or intellectual. I believe that Christ’s words are simply stated and meant to be understood by all readers past, present, and future. What did Christ say about false shepherds, sin, and Hell? I cannot remember the last time a pope or cardinal or bishop spoke on these topics simply and directly to the world. Putting the fear of God into sermons would upset the laity and non-Christians mightily. The mission of the Church is to lead all souls to heaven, not to conform to society nor to make sin not sin. I’ll end my comments with a question: using the two great commandments of Christ, can baby murder be justified by pro-abort Catholics? If the answer is “NO!” why are Church leaders so indifferent to saying so publicly? If they fear cancellation, then let it be known they are doing Christ’s work, and the work of heathens or tax collectors.
I meant to say NOT the work of heathens or tax collectors.
I suspect that a fair number of parishioners would be quite grateful to priests speaking frankly and clearly regarding what things are sins, and what things will lead them to hell, and what things lead them to God. I expect that there are a lot of people who quietly left because they wanted guidance and weren’t getting any.
El Niño punishment from God Pope Leo XIV non-Muslims to convert to Islam and Muslims to apply the Quran 100% to avoid death by floods lightnings hailstorm tornadoes sandstorm heatwave wildfires strong earthquakes more mag 7 earthquake tsunami volcano meteorites Hantavirus Ebola and viruses in Europe in Africa in Asia in Pacific Ocean in North and South America June 6, 2026.
I’m not sure how El Nino affects the rest of the world but here it lessens the chance of hurricanes.
So it’s good news for us.
It appears that you may have not heard that God the Father and the Son may calm (or allow disturbances of) natural phenomenon such as the weather. The Old Testament of the Hebrew people describes God as the Creator of the World. The laws of nature are therefore God’s. Does the Holy Book of Islam not talk of the flood in Noah’s day (c. 2350 BC) or the parting of the Red Sea (13-15 hundred BC)?
Modern day geologists have uncovered evidence of seismic activity in sediment from the Ein Gedi area near the Dead Sea Transform fault dated to 26-36 AD. The New Testament Gospel of Matthew describes rocks splitting and earth quaking at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion. A special star was observed at Jesus’ birth.
During Jesus’ lifetime, He calmed a sudden intense storm of wind and waves in the Sea of Galilee in Israel, proving his authority over nature. He also proved his authority over life and death when he arose from the grave.
SO. Catholics of faith have no fear of nature. Rather, those who do not fear the Father and His Son should.
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away.” ~ Matthew 24:35.
So. No. Catholics of faith will not convert to Islam. A storm may bother good Muslims but others rely on the God of Revelation, the God of Christian Scripture, who saves from all storms.