“God Made Me This Way”: A Theological Error with Serious Moral Consequences

The claim reflects a striking ignorance of basic Catholic moral distinctions.

The crisis in Anglicanism is in many ways best demonstrated by the growing number of women in key positions. Cherry Vann is an exemplar of this crisis and, in her latest statement, she demonstrates a shocking lack of understanding of basic Christian teaching and reasoning as well as a lack of concern for the scandal which she herself is creating.

The BBC, somewhat gleefully reports:

The Most Reverend Cherry Vann, who is also Bishop of Monmouth, became both the UK’s first female Archbishop as well as the first openly gay Archbishop in the world, in July.

Speaking ahead of delivering her first Christmas message as Archbishop, she said she had been hurt by attacks over her sexuality, but added those with different opinions should not be forbidden from expressing their views.

[snip]

Speaking to BBC Wales, the Archbishop said: “There are still patches all over the place where people continue to struggle with women in leadership and I have to respect that.

“The Church in Wales is working hard to welcome LGBT+ people, but also I respect that there are people in the Church in Wales who find that really difficult.

“Some, sadly, have felt the need to leave and I take that very seriously”.

The quote that really struck me as important was this one:

"But it does nevertheless hurt because it feels like an attack on who I am and who God has made me to be.”

It is a bald attempt to manipulate people.

Rather than explaining why a moral teaching is true, or how a Christian lives faithfully under moral constraint, she invites the audience to evaluate doctrine through the lens of her emotional experience. The claim “this feels like an attack on who I am” does not function as an argument. It functions as an appeal to sympathy.

When Anglican Archbishop Vann says, “it feels like an attack on who I am and who God has made me to be,” she gives voice to a claim now frequently heard in ecclesial and secular discourse alike. The argument is simple and emotionally compelling: if a person experiences a sexual orientation as innate, persistent, and deeply personal, then to question the moral legitimacy of acting upon it is to question the goodness of God’s creative will itself. In short, God made me this way, therefore this way must be morally affirmed.

From a Catholic perspective, however, this argument rests on a profound theological and philosophical confusion. It collapses key distinctions that lie at the heart of moral theology and, if accepted, would render coherent moral reasoning impossible.

The first error is the failure to distinguish between inclination and action.