Catholics and Evangelical Protestants on Homoerotic Desire: Augustine vs. Pelagius

Abstract

Catholic and Protestant religious responses to the emergence of the late nineteenth-century concept of a more or less fixed sexual orientation have taken three different directions: some have largely abandoned doctrinal hostility to homosexuality (“Mainline” Protestants, roughly speaking); some have conjoined the belief that homoerotic relationships are sinful with the conviction that homosexuality is a product of malleable individual choice, curable through reparative therapy (Evangelical Protestants, roughly speaking); while others contend that, although still potentially sinful, homoerotic dispositions are typically innate and immutable (chiefly the Vatican and other clerical authorities among Roman Catholics). This article offers a theological analysis of the dramatic divergence of opinion between the second and third groups. It is suggested that the differences depend on divergent theological commitments to the disparate accounts of human nature and sexual ethics implicit in Paul, Pelagius, and (more explicitly) Augustine. It is argued that both the Evangelical and Catholic positions on the morality of homoerotic relationships are internally incoherent.