Pro-change Catholics' understanding of Catholic identity is at odds with the official Catholic view on such issues as homosexuality, women's ordination, and abortion. It is important, therefore, to consider the origins and basis for the Vatican's position on these controversial issues. This chapter provides an encapsulated outline of the church hierarchy's teaching, and of the Vatican's disposition toward Catholic theologians. Theologians' institutional position as professional experts within the church is clearly very different from the status of gay, lesbian, feminist, and pro-choice Catholics. Nonetheless, theologians' calls for the church hierarchy to recognize their intellectual autonomy similarly challenge the Vatican's interpretive authority. The “proper” role of the theologian, therefore, has also become a focus of Vatican concern. This chapter's review will illustrate the firmness of Vatican opposition to homosexual relations, women's ordination, abortion, and theological pluralism, and the clarity with which it denounces interpretations of Catholicism that deviate from this.

VATICAN TEACHING ON SEX, GENDER, ABORTION, AND THEOLOGICAL EXPERTISE

HOMOSEXUALITY

The Vatican's stance on homosexuality derives from its view of natural law. The Catholic Church differentiates between natural law, the law of the Gospel, and civil and ecclesiastical law (all of which have their source in divine law). Independent of scripture and church law, the Catholic moral theological tradition emphasizes “the goodness of the human and of human reason in arriving at moral wisdom and knowledge” (Curran 1992: 45).