Homosexuality and the Desire for God: A Response to Falsehoods

Same-Sex Attraction, True Mercy, and the Path to Eternal Happiness

Following the Italian bishops overwhelming approval of a document that expresses official support for homosexuality and transgender lifestyles, Robert F. Cassidy was inspired to write this excellent analysis for Catholic Unscripted:

ABOVE: Bishop Francesco Savino who delivered the homily at a Mass celebrated on 6 September 2025 at the Church of the Gesù for a congregation of LGBT Catholic pilgrims gathered in Rome to participate in the 2025 Jubilee.

To try and peel back some mistaken thinking with regards to homosexuality and homosexual behaviour, it may be helpful to look at something analogous to it. Recently on Catholic Unscripted, Dr. Sean Walsh heroically and honestly gave testimony to what it is like to be someone who suffers from alcoholism. Dr. Walsh’s story is typical of alcoholics. Each one is a unique individual created in God’s image and likeness, but each one turns away from the common good and makes his life into one choice: the drink. Alcohol becomes his god.

Anyone who has lived half a life knows someone who is consumed by the tragedy of alcohol addiction. This compulsion rips apart marriages, families, workplaces, and whole societies. It is not something only men succumb to; women also fall into this trap and become some of the most tragic figures one could ever meet. Be they famous or unknown, they seem at times to be beyond reach, and many do succumb to never escaping their self-destructive decisions, becoming physical and psychological wrecks. Many try to help them, many pray for them, and yet the temptation is to believe their situation is irredeemable.

What is the proper response to the alcoholic and alcoholism? How should the Church, and society in general, respond? Is mercy the answer? Should they be celebrated as “alcoholic persons” and invited to lecture the sober members of society on the joys of their freedom to drink? Should the Church change Her teaching so that they will not be offended by someone saying that drunkenness is a mortal sin? Should Alcoholics Anonymous groups be banned from meeting in parish halls since they may offend “free-drinkers” who feel threatened by them?

Such a pastoral approach sounds ridiculous. It would be. Most people with common sense know that alcoholics need help to overcome their difficulty. Not as many, however, know that Step One of the Twelve Step Programme involves brutal honesty. The alcoholic faces the truth and confesses: “I am an alcoholic and powerless over this condition.” No self-promotion here; no BS. Yet, if it were up to the alcoholic (whether he be the parish priest, the church cleaner, or even one of the older altar servers), he would manipulate the “pastoral care of alcoholic-persons” to ensure that they are “not excluded” from any position, especially being the sacristan with access to a certain alcoholic substance!

So what would a truth-based pastoral approach to an alcoholic look like? To some it would look cruel and anti-merciful. Why? Firstly, because it would use the term, “No!” And secondly, it would look for a change in behaviour. Not a forced change, but a change by the help of God’s grace. It would recognise the feelings of the alcoholic but it would not build a parish or a diocese based on his disorder. Instead, it would teach about the road of virtue in Christ. Especially, it would stress the virtue of sobriety (an auxiliary virtue to temperance) as the road to liberation and true flourishing for a child of God. It would help him build a society in which his weakness would be recognised. It would help him carry his cross. In doing so, it also would teach others of the need for true friendship in Christ – a friendship that does not promote self-destruction and narcissism, but instead is properly ordered according to right reason illuminated by supernatural faith. These same principles apply with regards to questions surrounding same-sex attraction (SSA).