Platforming active dissent from Church teaching on homosexuality while also giving a hat-tip to that same teaching, the latest advisory document from the synod is a textbook case in the style of the entire affair.

On May 5, the final report of Study Group 9 of the Synod on Synodality was published. Led by Peruvian Cardinal Carlos Gustavo Castillo Mattasoglio, the group is one of 10 established at the direct command of Pope Francis.

It is the latest study group report to emerge from the synod and it demonstrates why so many notable prelates raised concerns about the event, given that it makes a token nod to Church teaching on homosexuality while simultaneously undermining it somewhat by the nature of the views the report platforms and promotes.

Firstly, to dispel many misleading reports online which are apparently aimed at deliberately misrepresenting the report in order to conjure up rage, the text does not present some official stance from the Vatican or Pope Leo regarding some change in the morality of homosexual actions.

The text is purely a committee paper, designed to summarise the thoughts only of those people who took part or were consulted. There is absolutely no teaching weight, or indeed any other significance, to it – unless the Pope decides to take sections of it and form his papacy around them. The group report is also a product of Pope Francis’s running of the synod.

Titled ‘Theological criteria and synodal methodologies for shared discernment of emerging doctrinal, pastoral, and ethical issues’, the text includes treatment of homosexuality as part of its theme. The group states that it is referred to not as one of the ‘controversial issues’ but as one of the ‘emerging issues’, since the latter phrase ‘points toward the qualities, dispositions, and dialogue necessary for the “relational conversion” that the entire People of God is called to embrace on its synodal journey’.

Two testimonies from individuals present the ‘experiences of people of faith with same-sex attractions’. It is in summarising the details of the first of these testimonies that the group report presents this controversial passage:

‘The account bears witness to the discovery that sin, at its root, does not consist in the (same-sex) couple relationship, but in a lack of faith in a God who desires our fulfilment. This new awareness becomes the starting point for moving beyond a conception of the Christian community merely as a place of welcome and compassion, to arriving at the experience of the Christian community as a place where we are all loved.’

While not arguing for this itself, the report nevertheless presents such a summary of the homosexual individual’s account without clarification of what Church teaching actually is.

It also documents that other testimonies – from those with same-sex attraction – received by the group ‘further confirm how arduous it is for individuals and Christian communities to reconcile “doctrinal firmness” with “pastoral welcome”’.

The report presents classic language of the synod, arguing that the Church needs to overcome ‘the theoretical model that derives praxis from a “pre-packaged” doctrine, “applying” general and abstract principles to the concrete and personal situations of life’. Stereotypically verbose and dense, the study group thus avoids directly arguing against Church teaching on homosexuality while giving a strong platform to those who do indeed reject such morality in their lives.

Such language is regularly used by those wishing to undermine traditional teaching, arguing for the triumph of conscience over actual moral laws.

Another example of platforming this kind of ideological language is found in the report’s approach to marriage and same-sex unions. Seeming to issue a call for some ecclesial recognition of same-sex unions, the report reads:

‘Finally, while listening to the Word of God lived in the Church, it is necessary to address with parrhesia the currently recurring question of whether one can speak of “marriage” in relation to persons with same-sex attractions, equating their relationship to heterosexual conjugal union without recognising the differences.’

‘These include, primarily, the evident impossibility of procreation per se linked to sexual difference, regarding which techniques of medically assisted procreation pose further difficulties. Consequently, we must ask how the Christian community is called to interpret and address questions relating to the educational commitments towards children within family, ecclesial, and social life, in relation to the de facto unions between believers of the same sex.’

Yet despite all this activist argumentation, the report is fundamentally at war with itself.

It platforms those who reject Church teaching, and appears to side with their ideology, yet it simultaneously cites and promotes that self-same teaching. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s two texts – Persona Humana (1975; PH) and Homosexualitatis Problema – are both referenced, with the report noting that the latter document instructs bishops ‘to provide pastoral care in full accord with the teaching of the Church for homosexual persons of their dioceses’ (HP 15), grounded in Scripture and the living Tradition of the Church.

Such a statement directly contradicts both the testimonies platformed by the report and the ideologies seemingly promoted by the study group itself.

As with much of the synod, therefore, it is racked with self-contradictions. The lack of understanding of Catholic morality and true pastoral care for those with same-sex attraction is lamentable, but hardly surprising given the widespread crisis of catechesis.

Leo XIV has already indicated more than once that he has no intention of changing Church teaching on homosexuality, nor could he.

Tuesday’s study group report represents nothing more than the collective work of an irrelevant committee woefully misinformed about Church teaching and which platforms contradictory views.