Exploring Amoris Laetitia and paths forward for LGBTQ inclusion in the Catholic Church
Introduction
In Amoris Laetitia, the 2016 Apostolic Exhortation following the Synod on the Family, Pope Francis describes the Catholic Church as “a family of families, constantly enriched by the lives of all those domestic churches” (AL, 87). As “a family of families,” the Church has a particular obligation to model what it means to be a “Mother called to show them God’s mercy” (AL, 49). For there are those in the Church and in domestic churches who do not experience the mercy of God, and for whom families and churches have not modeled a commitment to love strengthened by generosity, fidelity, and patience (AL, 5). Take for instance those people in Catholic circles who are pushed to the margins such as people who are divorced and remarried, LGBTQ people, or those living in "irregular relationships" like cohabitation. In such circumstances, the Church and families are called to renewed conversion through dialogue.
The vision of the family presented in Amoris Laetitia is one that is always growing in learning how to love, and so it is the task of the Church and families to constantly strive “towards something greater than ourselves and our families, and every family must feel this constant impulse” (325). A core principle of modern Catholic social teaching is the call to participate in community life. No person is an island unto themselves. Family is an integral component of Catholic social teaching because it is in the human experience of family where one first encounters the common good (AL, 70). And yet there is no perfect family, and for much of Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis highlights the diversity of family situations while also reflecting on the many challenges and concrete realities that families face today.
Amoris Laetitia lays a path for dialogue with those who have felt marginalized by the institution of the Church and/or their families. While healthy families are an integral part of the Church’s vision for community participation, an ideal nuclear family does not exhaust the types of relationships that one can engage in. The Church does not deny any good fruits produced by relationships and social connections outside marriage, “for where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” (Matthew 18:20) This essay will examine the development of Christian marriage and how a historical perspective can better help us examine today’s context. In today’s Church, as demonstrated by listening sessions for the Synod on Synodality in 2022, many LGBTQ people expressed their, “experience of abiding joy accompanied by deep pain,” being in the Church. These are the voices the Church needs to listen to and learn from to better love the children of God and be a better family for families of these times.
Constants in Context
In examining the theology of family and marriage, it’s important to take a wide historical view. Not only is the understanding of marriage bound in large part to the culture in which one belongs, but the practice of marriage in the Western Church has also changed significantly over the centuries. In taking a historical view, one can see how the Church has influenced marriage over time. We can also see how the practice of families can influence the Church of today. “‘The call and the demands of the Spirit resound in the events of history,’ and through these ‘the Church can also be guided to a more profound understanding of the inexhaustible mystery of marriage and the family’” (AL, 31). In other words, the Church must listen to history both past and in-the-making to better live out our commitment to community.
In the earliest centuries of Christianity, common law or free marriages were the norm for most Christians. Marriage was not as ritualized as it is today, requiring no license or written agreement, only the public consent of the couple. Marriage was a civil commitment more than a religious one. There were no formal rites or prayers for marriage ceremonies until later in the Church’s history. According to theologian Diarmuid O’Murchu,
after the reign of the Christian emperor Justinian (527-65) Christians were married in more formal, civil ceremonies according to the Justinian code. But although prayers and blessings were sometimes added to the ceremony, marriage was not a sacrament of the church, and it did not directly involve the church. The first known instance in the West of a blessing by a priest during a wedding ceremony is the 950 ritual of Durham, England. Although the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 required the blessing of a priest, it was unnecessary for the validity of the marriage. Only after the Council of Trent in 1563 was a ceremony compulsory for Roman Catholics. Today, almost one-third of the Code of Canon Law deals with marriage, a canonical preoccupation that evolved from Trent onward (O'Murchu, 149)
The theology of the family and traditional marriage was not always of such central importance to the Church, in fact for many centuries the Church had little to do with marriage. The shift in focus came at a time when the Catholic Church became overly concerned with centralization and control in response to the Protestant Reformation. Christian marriage became highly regulated post-Trent. The nuclear family understood as a single household comprised of a mother, father, and children, did not become the norm in Europe until the 13th century in England and even later elsewhere in Europe. Families before this time had been defined by clan membership and extended family households. The “simple homes” of England leading up to industrialization were mobile and flexible enough to adapt to shifts in economic realities and therefore the nuclear family thrived as a model of family for the modern era in the industrial West (Berger, 99-139).
Pope Francis does not think older models of marriage should simply be rejected because they are older. He believes that marriage is something that can be reformed and renewed. The family is not a static institution, but a living organism that benefits all and is benefitted by all. “Surely it is legitimate and right to reject older forms of the traditional family marked by authoritarianism and even violence, yet this should not lead to a disparagement of marriage itself, but rather to the rediscovery of its authentic meaning and its renewal” (AL, 53). Integral to the Pope’s understanding of the family is the idea that the practice of marriage and family life is always changing, always being renewed and brought back to its original purpose of loving in deeper ways.
Today’s Context
Pope Francis outlines various challenges that affect the stability of family life today, including individualism, material poverty, the lack of adequate housing, the immigration crisis, domestic and child abuse, and a lack of work, healthcare, and leisure time. Francis also points to various cultural influences that convince young people today to avoid marriage, to cohabitate, or to divorce or remarry. Francis argues that such instability of marriage and the family leads to more societal dysfunction and “poses a threat to the mature growth of individuals, the cultivation of community values and the moral progress of cities and countries” (AL, 52). Pope Francis also admits that the Church herself bears responsibility for the instability of the family today and must approach these "irregular situations" with humble self-criticism. The Church has often presented marriage as purely procreative, ignoring the unitive goal of marriage. The church has struggled to support young couples and understand their perspectives, and “at times we have also proposed a far too abstract and almost artificial theological ideal of marriage, far removed from the concrete situations and practical possibilities of real families. This excessive idealization, especially when we have failed to inspire trust in God’s grace, has not helped to make marriage more desirable and attractive, but quite the opposite” (AL, 36).
As the Church continues to grapple with what it means to be a Christian family, Christians should adopt new models that do more to reach out to those in need. The family should adopt a posture of missionary openness, and not fall into the temptation of closing in on itself. “We should not be trapped into wasting our energy in doleful laments,” says Pope Francis, “but rather seek new forms of missionary creativity” (AL, 57). The family does not exist for itself but rather exists to continue the mission of spreading the good news in the world. Pope Francis explains in greater detail that,
"The family is thus an agent of pastoral activity through its explicit proclamation of the Gospel and its legacy of varied forms of witness, namely solidarity with the poor, openness to a diversity of people, the protection of creation, moral and material solidarity with other families, including those most in need, commitment to the promotion of the common good and the transformation of unjust social structures, beginning in the territory in which the family lives, through the practice of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy" (AL, 290)
The Church has a vested interest in marriage and family in so far as it is living up to its call to be a sanctuary of life. A family that rejects life instead of protecting it is, as the pope describes, a “horrendous contradiction” (AL, 83). Unfortunately, many in the Church have not found the Church or their families to be spaces conducive to healthy human development or their safety. In 2022, in response to the call to listen to the laity for the Synod on Synodality, New Ways Ministries organized three listening sessions where more than 1,000 LGBTQ Catholics were able to share their feelings and concerns about their experience in the Church. Among the many joys they experienced in the Church, celebrating the eucharist, or praying in community, were just as many sorrows at the rejection they felt by many in the Church, including their pastors.
“The harm identified by participants comes in different forms: the denial of sacraments, employment, and vocational discrimination, being forced to hide one’s full self in church spaces, faith-based conversion therapy attempts, derogatory comments from some church leaders, and, in extreme cases, witnessing support for criminalizing homosexuality” (From the Margins to the Center, 6). These actions are concrete ways in which the Church has been targeting certain members of the community and introducing roadblocks to the realization of their human dignity. At the root of all these injustices is a failure to recognize the image of God in LGBTQ individuals and to see their differences as gifts to the Church instead of problems. If the Church claims to love these individuals, it is love at a cost, the cost of changing who one is to conform to the ideals of another. Pope Francis says a true family is marked by a love that does not count the cost and gives without pay. This kind of love, while radical, is not impossible, “because it is demanded by the Gospel: ‘You received without pay, give without pay’ (Mt 10:8)” (AL, 102).
Ultimately, LGBTQ people do not feel as though their differences have been acknowledged or respected and the result of this failure to love is varied depending on the individual.
Some participants echoed the words ‘the hurt is too much’ as an explanation of why they left the church (or, rather, as they perceive it, why the church left them). One participant said mistreatment by pastoral ministers had left them in ‘an ecclesiastical desert.’ Several people mentioned that they had been pushed to suicidal thoughts because of LGBTQ-negative church teachings and language. Parents expressed pain at watching the church mistreat their LGBTQ children. One parent commented: ‘Catholicism is killing our kids and they’re leaving the church.’ (From the Margins to the Center, 6)
In the United States and other parts of the world, Same-sex marriage or non-traditional unions are part of the concrete realities of today. In Obergefell vs Hodges, the Supreme Court of the United States effectively legalized same-sex marriage across the United States in 2015. As recently as 2021, the US Census Bureau estimated there was a total of 1.2 million same-sex households in the US (US Census, 2022). It is not enough to say that gay marriage is not “real” because it does not hold up to one’s definition of marriage. Whether it fits one’s definition or not, couples other than heterosexuals are in committed public relationships and some of these same couples sit and worship in the pews of Catholic churches. Such a reality cannot simply be ignored or dismissed. None of this means the Catholic Church suddenly changes its teachings. However, it does indicate that interactions with other families and households that differ from a “traditional nuclear family” do occur and should lead to mutually beneficial dialogue, not further marginalization.
In response to these “irregular unions” (AL, 78) the Church has often taken a defensive approach against the LGBTQ community. People report that institutions such as Catholic schools have fired employees if they are openly homosexual or enter into public relationships with same-sex partners. Such was the case for Jocelyn Morffi who worked at Sts. Peter and Paul School in Miami for seven years, before being fired upon marrying her same-sex partner (Gehring). According to New Ways Ministry some dioceses have even instituted “new teacher contracts for Catholic schools which require employees to promise they will not professionally or personally support same-sex relationships,” (New Ways Ministry, Employment Updates) such as the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, Ohio, the Archdiocese of Honolulu, Hawaii, the diocese of Columbus, Ohio and others. On a national level, organizations like Catholic Social Services have a policy of denying same-sex couples the ability to adopt or sponsor foster children, a policy that was challenged by the City of Philadelphia and was resolved when the Supreme Court in 2021 sided in favor of Catholic Social Services in Fulton v. Philadelphia. It does not fall within the scope of this paper to discuss the nuances of this Supreme Court decision, but it is important to mention to demonstrate that the Church does not always have the appearance of a Mother of mercy, but a judge who allows no differences.
Pope Francis is calling the family, and therefore the family that is the Church, to realize its mission as an instrument of fraternal communion. Such a communion is only realized when diversity is seen as a strength and not a weakness. “The unity that we seek is not uniformity, but a ‘unity in diversity,’ or ‘reconciled diversity.’ Fraternal communion is enriched by respect and appreciation for differences within an overall perspective that advances the common good. We need to free ourselves from feeling that we all have to be alike. A certain astuteness is also needed to prevent the appearance of ‘static’ that can interfere with the process of dialogue” (AL, 139). One wonders why people stay in a community that in many cases seeks to marginalize their voice and minimize their participation. According to New Ways Ministries,
Most participants remain committed to reforming and renewing the church even while a tension exists. One participant expressed this tension as the church needing “to go where people are broken but to also stop breaking people.” Another said, “Catholics could help the world to love everyone.” The importance of community, belonging, and welcome at the local level to really live out what church can and should be was repeated constantly. A Hopeful Church “We would not be here if we did not care about the church we know and love.” A significant number of participants referred to the church as family. One small group wrote a manifesto for “Our Dream” of the church: “a church where all truly are welcome,” “a church that celebrates and rejoices in differences,” “a church that reaches out to the margins until there are no more margins” (From the Margins to the Center, 8)
The Family Beyond Families
Family ultimately means more to the Catholic Church than just the presence of a mother and father and children. Healthy and holy community life requires one to think of family as extending beyond the boundaries of a nuclear family. Jesus talks about family in the gospels as something that transcends mere blood ties. In Matthew 12:48-50, upon hearing that his blood family is outside, Jesus asks “‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ And pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’” Jesus introduces a new relational category, whereby we can all participate in his family by doing the will of God. This new familial relationship between disciples is essential to our understanding of family because it is the only instance of Jesus making a “family” in the gospels. Jesus does not marry or have children, and yet he invites us into his family founded on gospel loving.
Pope Francis describes this as a revolution in the family, bringing about new ways of understanding familial relationships. In an address to the pilgrimage of the diocese of Astee in May, 2023, Pope Francis reflects on this gospel passage as it relates to the word family. He reflects,
Do you see? At the beginning I addressed you by calling you “brothers and sisters”. It is not merely a formula, a conventional turn of phrase. No. It is a reality, a new reality generated by Jesus Christ. And as I was saying, this word of Jesus radically renewed the family, so that the strongest, most important bond for us Christians is no longer that of blood, but of the love of Christ. His love transforms the family, freeing it from the dynamics of selfishness, which derive from the human condition and from sin; he frees it and enriches it with a new bond, even stronger but free, not dominated by the interests and conventions of kinship, but animated by gratitude, recognition, and reciprocal service.
When Christian families are true to their vocation, they are marked by an openness to a diversity of people who feel safe to be who they are before God. This is the love that does not count the cost, as stated above. It is a fraternal love inspired by St. Francis of Assisi and encouraged in Pope Francis’ Encyclical Fratelli Tutti. Quoting Eloi Leclerc, OFM, the pope argues that “only the one who approaches others, not to draw them into his/her own life, but to help them become ever more fully themselves, can truly be called a father” (FT, 4). Fostering this kind of love is an important task for families today as well as the church as she struggles to make all children of God feel safe within her care.
The practice of fraternal love requires constant dialogue whereby both parties commit to listening and sharing vulnerably with one another. If one is really listening in dialogue, the story of "the other" becomes real and should be held with great empathy and compassion. By entering into dialogue, families and individuals admit that there is something in every person that is worth listening to and appreciating. Implicit in dialogue is the belief that each person is a gift of God, a seed that bears God’s Word. The discernment of the seeds of God’s word in other religions was encouraged in the Vatican II document Ad Gentes but references an ancient tradition dating back to Justin Martyr in the second century. Pope Francis also utilizes this same theology to talk about discerning what is good and true in other family structures that deviate from the norm.
“We can readily say that ‘anyone who wants to bring into this world a family which teaches children to be excited by every gesture aimed at overcoming evil – a family which shows that the Spirit is alive and at work – will encounter our gratitude and our appreciation. Whatever the people, religion or region to which they belong!’” (AL, 77)
All families as well should be discerning the good seeds among their members and the good seeds in the families that they encounter. LGBTQ people have the seed of God’s word planted in their hearts; they too were wonderfully made in the image of God. It is the task of the Church to examine its biases and discern the good in its members. All domestic churches as well as parish communities should ask themselves how they might need to grow and learn how to love their LGBTQ siblings better. How are our LGBTQ siblings good seeds in our communities? What gifts and good fruits do they bring to their families, friends, and relationships? How can we all be better brothers and sisters to one another? These are questions worthy of family and community discernment.
In 2022, Pope Francis encouraged parents who live with children with different sexual orientations never to hide behind a condemning attitude. “Never condemn a child,” Pope Francis said (Winfeld). These words meant for parents ring true also to every individual in the Church who is meant “to be a sign of mercy and closeness wherever family life remains imperfect or lacks peace and joy” (AL, 5). May the Church moving forward treat LGBTQ Catholics with the dignity inherent in every child of God and learn to appreciate them and their loved ones as the gifts to the Church that they are.
Endnotes
Berger, Brigette. 2002. The Family in the Modern Age: More than a Lifestyle Choice. New York, NY: Transaction Publishers.
Bureau, US Census. 2022. “Key Demographic and Economic Characteristics of Same-Sex and Opposite-Sex Couples Differed.” Census.gov. November 22, 2022. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/11/same-sex-couple-households-exceeded-one-million.html.
“Employment Updates.” n.d. New Ways Ministry. Accessed October 12, 2023. https://www.newwaysministry.org/issues/employment/employment-updates/#unique-identifierPOSITIVE.
“From the Margins to the Center: a Report on Spiritual Conversations Held for LGBTQ People & Allies as Part of the Synod on Synodality.” 2022. https://www.newwaysministry.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Synodal-Report_FINAL.pdf.
Gehring, John. 2018. “The Scandal of Firing LGBT Catholics | Commonweal Magazine.” Www.commonwealmagazine.org. February 16, 2018. https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/scandal-firing-lgbt-catholics.
Ó Murchú, Diarmuid. 2016. Religious Life in the 21st Century: The Prospect of Refounding. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books.
Pope Francis. 2016. “Amoris Laetitia” www.vatican.va. March 19, 2016. https://www.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20160319_amoris-laetitia_en.pdf.
Pope Francis. 2020. “Fratelli Tutti.” www.vatican.va. October 3, 2020. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20201003_enciclica-fratelli-tutti.html.
Pope Francis. 2023. “To the Participants in the Pilgrimage of the Diocese of Asti (5 May 2023) | Francis.” Www.vatican.va. May 5, 2023. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2023/may/documents/20230505-pellegrinaggio-asti.html.
Winfield, Nicole. 2022. “Pope Urges Parents to ‘Never Condemn’ Their Gay Children.” AP News. January 26, 2022. https://apnews.com/article/pope-francis-lifestyle-europe-religion-vatican-city-cff2246764bf73dcbf894bb6bb5cc4fe#:~:text=Citing%20parents%20who%20have%20to.
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