Natural law is not immutable
Sexual morality
Forty-two years ago, the National Pastoral Congress in Liverpool called for “development” in the Catholic Church’s teaching on sexual morality, largely resulting from dissatisfaction with the encyclical Humanae Vitae published 12 years earlier. The encyclical had repeated the Church’s teaching that the use of contraceptives in marriage was gravely sinful; the congress did not think this should be left as the last word on the matter. There is a parallel here with what the German “synodal pathway” process has been calling for – a review of Catholic teaching on sexual morality. The German emphasis has been on homosexuality, and on the harmful effect the declaration in the Catechism that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered” has had on gay Catholics.
The two issues are related, as both arise from a particular reading of natural law. In essence this states that the procreative and unitive ends of sexual intercourse must not be separated, and to do so is “unnatural” and therefore always wrong. Contraception separates them, and homosexual acts have no reproductive function and are therefore wrong likewise. But natural law is not beyond evolution and may even be a product of it, and how it is understood may be different in different contexts.
The International Theological Commission, in a paper published by the Vatican in 2009, called natural law “the moral law inscribed in the heart of human beings and of which humanity becomes ever more aware as it advances in history. This natural law ... does not consist of definitive and immutable precepts. It is a spring of inspiration flowing forth for the search for an objective foundation for a universal ethic” (In Search of a Universal Ethic: A New Look at Natural Law).
That is justification enough for the German Church to ask for a review of the Church’s teaching on sexual morality. It ought to be borne in mind, furthermore, that when the Birth Control Commission set up by Pope John XXIII looked for a clear argument against contraception based on natural law, it failed to find one. Would a similar commission say the same about homosexuality, seeing how the relevant natural law principles are the same? Indeed, there has been a significant shift in the understanding of homosexuality: that it is hard-wired rather than a free choice, for example. Thankfully, words like “perversion” have dropped out of the vocabulary: for someone who is gay, it is natural to be gay, just as for someone who is straight, it is natural to be straight. Gay people and straight people are equally capable of forming committed relationships which become an “intimate partnership of life and love” (Vatican II; Gaudium et Spes), and equally capable of being predatory or disordered in their sex lives. Could these be the reasons why the application of natural law reasoning to produce absolute prohibitions, depending neither on the good intentions of the actor nor on beneficial outcomes, is no longer regarded as a binding moral intuition by many Catholic faithful? These questions need addressing – and better late than never.
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