Religion: Sexual Dissent

Homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no way be approved of.

—Vatican Declaration on Sexual Ethics, January 1976

When the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued its 5,000-word statement on homosexuality, premarital sex and masturbation, it was responding in part to complaints that the church was not providing sufficient guidelines for sexual behavior and attitudes. Days later, Father John McNeill, a Jesuit priest and former teacher of moral theology at the now defunct Woodstock College and at Fordham University, won the designation Imprimi Potest (it can be printed) for...

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