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Catholicism has always viewed homosexual acts as unnatural based on the fact that such acts could never lead to procreation, which was seen as the only “natural” outcome of sexuality. That this remains the fundamental position of the Church was demonstrated by the Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1975. In that document, the CDF declared that “objective moral order” dictates that homosexual acts are unnatural because they “lack an essential and indispensable finality,” meaning procreation. In 1986, the CDF issued another letter describing the inclination of the homosexual to a particular type of sexual activity an “objective disorder.”
The Catholic approach to homosexuality differs from certain other Christian religious institutions in that it accepts the findings of contemporary sexual researchers that homosexuality is not something chosen by an individual but a tendency that is innate and cannot be altered. As a result, the Church emphasizes that all discrimination of homosexuals is to be avoided and that those with homosexual tendencies “must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity.” The “gravely sinful” failure of homosexual acts to conform to natural law, however, means that homosexuals are expected to live lives of chastity, thereby condemning them to loneliness and sexual frustration.
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