In light of Pope Leo XIV’s statement that the family is founded on the “stable union between a man and a woman,” the responses of the critics and boosters of the late Pope Francis’s view of conjugal marriage are striking. The former imply that Leo’s view of conjugal marriage as the two-in-one flesh union of a man and a woman reaffirms what Francis had denied, and the latter defend the continuity between Francis and Leo on marriage.

On the one hand, the critics are wrong. Throughout his pontificate, Pope Francis consistently taught – even if his teaching was not in the limelight compared to his teaching on environmental issues – the conjugal view of marriage: marriage as the two-in-one-flesh union between a man and a woman. And sexual differentiation being the fundamental prerequisite for the two to become one flesh. Furthermore, St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis all affirmed the moral and sacramental significance of the two-in-one-flesh bodily unity as foundational to the marital form of love.

Pope Francis upheld the objectivity of God’s “primordial divine plan” (see Genesis 1:27, 2:24) of the deepest reality of marriage, grounded in the order of creation. He, as well as Leo, insisted on marriage’s ontological nature: “‘Marriage’ is a historical word. Forever, throughout humanity, and not only in the Church, it is between a man and a woman. You can’t change it just like that. It’s the nature of things.” This teaching is reaffirmed in the Apostolic Exhortations, Evangelii gaudium and Amoris Laetitia, as well as in the encyclical Laudato Si’.

On the other hand, the boosters are wrong. Despite Francis’s affirmation of conjugal marriage, there are five things that he contributed to undermining it, at least to the perception that he could not unequivocally support conjugal marriage.

First, Pope Francis was an advocate of legal support of same-sex civil unions. Doesn’t the advocacy of such a union, which has sinful acts at its core constituting the union, corrupt the good of human nature and hence the culture of marriage?
Second, he affirmed that “homosexuals experience the gift of love,” implying thereby that homosexual “love” is not an inherently disordered form of love, an offense against chastity. Did he think that the homosexual is able to live the vocation to chastity, and hence, of love in a same-sex relationship? How could the homosexual do so? The vocation of chastity involves sexual differentiation between a man and a woman, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which, according to Christian anthropology, means “the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being.”
Third, he allowed the controverted practice of same-sex blessings, legitimized in the “Declaration” Fiducia Supplicans. This declaration died the death of a thousand qualifications: from the blessing of a union, to a couple, and, finally, to an individual (see Pope Francis on “60 Minutes”). Regardless, as John Finnis correctly notes, “there is no crucial moral or pastoral difference between (a) blessing people who happen to be sinners, and (b) blessing people as parties to a relationship expressed in sinful acts.”

The Marriage Feast at Cana by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, c. 1672 [The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham, England]

Fourth, in Amoris Laetitia, Francis attempted to carve out a moral space for the divorced and civilly remarried people to receive communion. On this view, the moral law ceases to have an obligatory force but only an aspiring force as an ideal; hence, despite Francis’s disclaimer, there is a confusion between the law of gradualness and the gradualness of the law. Francis’s logic of pastoral reasoning is such that the morally permissible choice is made under a lesser-of-two evils calculus.
Fifth, the pope’s support for same-sex ministries, such as that of Fr. James Martin, who presupposes the legitimacy of homosexual identity, and his openness to morally problematic relationships, such as cohabitation. Regarding the former, how does Fr. Martin justify the legitimacy of this self-description? The only criterion he suggests that legitimizes it is individual experience, which becomes a supreme court for adjudicating the Gospel and the teachings of the Church. This leads him to the conclusion that a person’s homosexuality is a creational given rather than being in itself inherently disordered. Regarding the latter, Pope Francis encouraged the pastoral practice in which people who prefer to live together without being married, are welcomed into the Church precisely as cohabiting couples. Where is the illuminating truth expressed in the moral norm prohibiting fornication (CCC 2353) and all its consequences, that offend the dignity of marriage and family, and that weaken the sense of conjugal chastity (CCC §2390)? Why don’t we hear: “The sexual act must take place exclusively within marriage. Outside of marriage, it always constitutes a grave sin and excludes one from sacramental communion.”?

Now, these five things fail to take into account the unprecedented threats, in our time, against Christian sexual ethics. The 1975 document of the then Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Persona Humana, succinctly affirms that doctrine:

The observance of the moral law in the field of sexuality and the practice of chastity have been considerably endangered, especially among less fervent Christians, by the current tendency to minimize as far as possible, when not denying outright, the reality of grave sin, at least in people’s actual lives.

          Oxford philosopher John Finnis describes these as threats to Christian sexual ethics because of

the disappearance of legal, social, and cultural norms that once supported the doctrine;
the emergence of norms that undermine it among the faithful, their children, and anyone they might evangelize; and
the spread within the Church of theological opinion and pastoral practices that defy that doctrine. These threats are far more intense now. And to them one can add a factor undreamt of by Persona Humana;
the Holy See’s favors toward – and appointments of – people in the Church who are notorious for their open or insinuate rejection of that doctrine.

Pope Leo XIV must dispel the confusion in Francis’s teaching by reclaiming the doctrines on sexual ethics of the Church.