• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Catholic Review

Catholic Review

Inspiring the Archdiocese of Baltimore

Menu
  • Home
  • News
        • Local News
        • World News
        • Vatican News
        • Obituaries
        • Featured Video
        • En Español
        • Sports News
        • Official Clergy Assignments
        • Schools News
  • Commentary
        • Contributors
          • Question Corner
          • George Weigel
          • Elizabeth Scalia
          • Michael R. Heinlein
          • Effie Caldarola
          • Guest Commentary
        • CR Columnists
          • Archbishop William E. Lori
          • Rita Buettner
          • Christopher Gunty
          • George Matysek Jr.
          • Mark Viviano
          • Father Joseph Breighner
          • Father Collin Poston
          • Robyn Barberry
          • Hanael Bianchi
          • Amen Columns
  • Entertainment
        • Events
        • Movie & Television Reviews
        • Arts & Culture
        • Books
        • Recipes
  • About Us
        • Contact Us
        • Our History
        • Meet Our Staff
        • Photos to own
        • Books/CDs/Prayer Cards
        • CR Media platforms
        • Electronic Edition
  • Advertising
  • Shop
        • Purchase Photos
        • Books/CDs/Prayer Cards
        • Magazine Subscriptions
        • Archdiocesan Directory
  • CR Radio
        • CR Radio
        • Protagonistas de Fe
  • News Tips
  • Subscribe
Speakers present at a conference on sexuality and culture at the John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences in Rome March 21, 2024 (CNS photo/Justin McLellan)

Church must rethink its ‘anachronistic’ sexual ethic, priest says

March 22, 2024
By Justin McLellan
Catholic News Service
Filed Under: Feature, Marriage & Family Life, News, Vatican, Vocations, World News

Share
Share on Facebook
Share
Share this
Pin
Pin this
Share
Share on LinkedIn

ROME (CNS) — The Catholic Church’s “established, dogmatic models of the theological approach to sexuality have become anachronistic,” a moral theologian told a conference on sexuality and culture at the John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences in Rome.

Developing a new theological ethics of sexuality is “a task for the entire church community,” Salesian Father Ronaldo Zacharias, a professor of moral theology at the Salesian University of São Paulo, told the conference March 21.

“We cannot ignore that in recent decades there has been a remarkable evolution regarding terminologies, concepts and descriptions related to sexuality,” he said, noting the strong influence such developments have had on people’s conceptions of their own sexuality.

Salesian Father Ronaldo Zacharias, a professor of moral theology at the Salesian University of São Paulo, speaks at a conference on sexuality and culture at the John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences in Rome March 21, 2024 (CNS photo/Justin McLellan)

The church, therefore, “should not talk about sexuality without considering the understanding we have of it today,” he said, while also keeping in mind potential problems with modern understandings of sexuality.

Citing the Brazilian theologian Augustinian Sister Ivone Gebara, he said that the church’s “theology of binary sexuality is no longer able to understand the complexity that we discover in ourselves.”

According to Father Zacharias, Catholic theology has not helped people integrate their sexuality into their personhood — an issue that, among the church’s ordained ministers, has reared its head in the clerical sex abuse crisis.

“Sexuality is a constitutive dimension of each person, a central aspect in the life of human beings that characterizes who a person is to the point that it cannot be left out in the process of personal fulfillment,” he said.

Any person’s sexuality, regardless of their vocation, “has a legitimate role in all phases of their development,” and therefore it “cannot be confined to the context of marriage” or reduced to a means for procreation, he said.

The church, the priest said, must overcome “an essentially negative view of sexual desire, as if it were something to be repressed at every moment” and which suppresses a person’s desire for love.

“Self-control is self-control, it is not a virtue,” he said.

Sexuality, he said, “acquires its true human quality if it is oriented (toward), elevated and integrated into love.”

“Authentic love moves one toward self-transcendence, and makes sexuality a ‘place of reciprocity,’ a place of affirming the good of the other,” he said. “The integration of sexuality does not depend solely on the will of the person.”

Father Zacharias noted that a challenge for the church’s theology is to “affirm the meaning of sexuality in light of an eminently relational anthropology.”

Sex cannot be treated as a “separate entity, an object for ethical reflection,” but must be considered as part of “the whole of the relationships which it serves,” he said.

Read More Vatican News

Ambassadors call attention to starving Israeli hostages, Gazan civilians

Prepare space in your hearts for God’s love to grow, pope urges

The popes at Tor Vergata: From John Paul II’s vision to Leo’s witness

Pope calls for nuclear disarmament, real commitment to peace

Pope visits teen who fell ill during Jubilee of Youth, prays with family

Journey together, seek real encounters, pope advises young people

Copyright © 2024 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

Print Print

Share
Share on Facebook
Share
Share this
Pin
Pin this
Share
Share on LinkedIn

Primary Sidebar

Justin McLellan

Click here to view all posts from this author

For the latest news delivered twice a week via email or text message, sign up to receive our free enewsletter.

| MOST POPULAR |

  • The ‘both/and’ pope

  • Patrick Brice sentenced to home detention for attacks on elderly pro-life supporters

  • Mount St. Mary’s launches new physician assistant program

  • The three questions young people asked Pope Leo XIV — and his answers

  • West Virginia bishop warns on immigration: ‘The final judge of our actions is God’

| Latest Local News |

Patrick Brice sentenced to home detention for attacks on elderly pro-life supporters

Notre Dame of Maryland University joins with Milwaukee college to address teacher shortage

Sister Agnese Neumann dies at 95

Maryland Catholic Conference pleads for peace on 80th Anniversary of atomic bombings

Father Donio receives Knights’ highest award for work as chaplain

| Latest World News |

Catholic MBA programs see business as force for good, blending doctrine, commerce

Amid ‘reverse migration,’ sisters in Mexico accompany migrants trapped by US policies

When nuns perished during adoration in wartime Warsaw, white doves rose into sky

Nagasaki Franciscan monastery that survived atomic blast still stands as messenger of peace

Newark Archdiocese settles abuse claims against retired bishop who denies allegations

| Catholic Review Radio |

CatholicReview · Catholic Review Radio

Footer

Our Vision

Real Life. Real Faith. 

Catholic Review Media communicates the Gospel and its impact on people’s lives in the Archdiocese of Baltimore and beyond.

Our Mission

Catholic Review Media provides intergenerational communications that inform, teach, inspire and engage Catholics and all of good will in the mission of Christ through diverse forms of media.

Contact

Catholic Review
320 Cathedral Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
443-524-3150
mail@CatholicReview.org

 

Social Media

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Recent

  • Catholic MBA programs see business as force for good, blending doctrine, commerce
  • Patrick Brice sentenced to home detention for attacks on elderly pro-life supporters
  • Amid ‘reverse migration,’ sisters in Mexico accompany migrants trapped by US policies
  • Movie Review: ‘The Naked Gun’
  • When nuns perished during adoration in wartime Warsaw, white doves rose into sky
  • Nagasaki Franciscan monastery that survived atomic blast still stands as messenger of peace
  • Notre Dame of Maryland University joins with Milwaukee college to address teacher shortage
  • Newark Archdiocese settles abuse claims against retired bishop who denies allegations
  • Catholic family experts tie marriage to dropping U.S. fertility rate

Search

Membership

Catholic Media Assocation

Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association

The Associated Church Press

© 2025 CATHOLIC REVIEW MEDIA, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

en Englishes Spanish
en en