I CAN'T BE SILENT. AN EXTRAORDINARY MARCO PERFETTI BETWEEN CONFIDENT CANON LAW AND «SCANDAL IN THE SUN»: THE DECEASED AUGUST SAID THAT HOMOSEXUALITY IS A SIN

We can only thank the creator of the blog I cannot be silent, whose interventions, sometimes characterized by an argumentative ease that raises more questions than certainties, they constitute a healthy exercise for us. They remind us that the task of the priest and the theologian is not to chase media coverage, but distinguish, clarify and faithfully safeguard the order of truth, to then defend it from error and pass it on.

— Theology and canon law —

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This video from three years ago continues to circulate online - which I discovered and listened to only a few days ago - but which retains its relevance not due to the solidity of the theses supported, but for the persistence of the ambiguities on which they are based. It often happens that argumentative constructions erected on well-packaged misunderstandings survive longer than structurally based analyses..

Every time a Pontiff gives an interview, a small media ritual is now taking place: a sentence is extracted, it is isolated from the context, clarifications are lightened, it is stripped of all distinctions and relaunched as if it were a doctrinal earthquake. This time the title is already a manifesto: “Homosexuality is a sin”. Segue, with studied gravity, the subtitle: "We're going back".

First of all, it would be interesting to understand what happened. To the constant doctrine of the Church? To the Catechism promulgated in 1992 and definitively edited in 1998? To the moral tradition that distinguishes - with that conceptual finesse that today seems to have become a rare commodity, especially among certain young people who have improvised as keyboard lawyers - between people, inclination and act? The problem is not the "going back" indignation, but the ease with which one handles categories that would demand, even before passion, competence combined with solid intellectual maturity, doctrinal and legal.

When the Roman Pontiff states that homosexuality It's not a crime but it's a sin, it neither introduces anything new nor inaugurates a regression. It makes an elementary distinction between the penal order and the moral order, between crime and sin, between the external hole and the internal hole. A distinction that belongs to the very structure of Catholic thought and which precedes today's controversies by centuries. It would be enough to have a minimal familiarity with the law - the real one, not the one evoked by hearsay - before claiming to impart lessons or using it as a polemical cudgel, sometimes with effects that are more revealing than convincing.

However, if you are unaware of what "sin" means in Catholic moral theology and the judgment on the act is confused with an ontological judgment on the person, then every word becomes material for the tabloid headline and every clarification is dismissed as a reverse. Theology is not done through titles: it is done by distinguishing. And the right, for its part, demands even greater precision, especially the one structured on a Roman basis, less elastic than common law but precisely for this reason less inclined to those ambiguities that, in inexperienced hands, they risk transforming a distinction into an accusation and a clarification into a regression.

Here the real sophistry emerges, as simple as it is effective on a media level. The author states in this video: «Acts of homosexuality are intrinsically disordered: the acts". As if the word "acts", marked with particular emphasis, was sufficient to resolve the problem and protect against any moral evaluation of the person. The question that consequently follows is therefore elementary: who carries out the acts? Given that the acts are not entities suspended in the air, they are not atmospheric phenomena, they are not metaphysical accidents that are produced by self-combustion, It is obvious: the moral act is always a human act. It is posed by a free subject, endowed with intellect and will, of freedom and free will. If we talk about an "act"", we are necessarily talking about an action performed by someone. And that “someone” is man.

Catholic moral theology — and here it would be enough to open a serious manual, not an offhand comment on social — accurately distinguishes between inclination, personal condition and freely posed act. But distinguishing does not mean ontologically separating what is united in reality. The act belongs to the person; the person is the subject of the act. Denying this to save a formula means slipping into a moral nominalism that dissolves responsibility in the lexicon and ends up arousing a certain tenderness towards sorcerer's apprentices convinced that with a terminological device they can resolve structural issues that are evidently bigger than them. St. Augustine, before I can say «I can not remain silent» — I cannot remain silent —, from Aurelius of Tagaste as he still was, he listened to that voice that whispered to him «Great doctor» — take and read. Implied: studies. Aurelius became Augustine because he listened, lessons, he studied and learned.

First of all, it is necessary to recover the category of the moral object. According to the constant doctrine, taken up with clear clarity by Saint John Paul II in the encyclical The Splendor of Truth, the human act is morally qualified on the basis of three elements: object, purpose and circumstances. The object is not the subjective intention, nor the psychological condition of the subject; it is that towards which the act is ordered in itself. When Tradition states that "acts of homosexuality are intrinsically disordered", he is not making a judgment on the dignity of the person, but on the objective structure of the act in relation to the natural law and the specific purpose of sexuality. This means intrinsically evil: that the object of the act is such that it cannot be ordered to the good under any circumstances or intention. It's technical language, not moral slogan. Confusing the judgment on the moral object with an ontological judgment on the person means not having understood the metaphysics of the act, the grammar of Catholic morality e, sometimes, not even that right that one sometimes presumes to want to teach even to others (see, who).

At this point it is best to read the text for what it is, not what you would like it to be. The N. 2357 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

«Homosexuality refers to relationships between men or women who experience sexual attraction, exclusive or predominant, towards people of the same sex. […] Tradition has always declared that "acts of homosexuality are intrinsically disordered". […] Under no circumstances can they be approved.".

It is not an improvised text, nor a marginal note. It is a systematic exposition that clearly distinguishes between inclination and act, between personal condition and morally qualified behavior. The Catechism does not state that the person "is disordered". It does not formulate an ontological judgment on the dignity of the subject. He talks about acts and qualifies them in relation to the natural law and the teleological structure of sexuality.

This distinction does not arise from a disciplinary whim, but from a precise anthropological framework: sexuality, in the Catholic vision, it is ordered to the complementarity between man and woman and to openness to life. If the act is structurally closed for this purpose, the moral object is judged disordered. Not because it was decided in some obscure Roman office by presumed custodians of trembling prejudices, but because the act is evaluated according to a conception of human nature that the Church considers to be inscribed in the order of creation.

One can dispute this anthropology? Certainly and legitimately. But you can't ridicule it by pretending not to understand it, in the hope that others will stop understanding it. The same goes for the inconsistency of the accusation of "going backwards". The text of the Catechism is from 1992, with typical edition the 1998. It was promulgated under Saint John Paul II and drafted under the supervision of then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. We are not faced with a sudden doctrinal regression of 2023 - as claimed by those who repeatedly accuse the Supreme Pontiff of having defined homosexuality as a sin - but to the simple repetition of a constant doctrine. Talking about "backsliding" means ignoring thirty years of Magisterium or pretending that it does not exist. The problem, so, it's not that the Holy Father Francis has said anything new, but that someone has decided to discover today what the Church has never hidden.

If you then really want to understand what "sin" means in Catholic language, it would be enough to remember a formula that every believer hears - or should hear - in the liturgy: «I have sinned a lot in thoughts, words, works and omissions'. Sin is not a sociological label, it is not an identity, it is not a permanent ontological condition, but a morally qualified human act, something that is accomplished, or that you fail to do. So thoughts, words, works and omissions are four ways in which freedom is exercised. E, practicing, it can be ordered towards the good or be disordered with respect to it.

Saying that an act is a sin means to say that, in that concrete choice, man has posed an action contrary to the objective moral order. It does not mean stating that the person is reducible to his act. It does not mean denying its dignity. It does not mean transforming an existential condition into a permanent guilt. The distinction between person and act is not a modern attenuation: it is the very grammar of Catholic morality. Therefore, when the Supreme Pontiff states that homosexuality is not a crime but a sin, he is simply placing the issue in the moral sphere and not in the criminal sphere. He is recalling that the Church does not invoke civil sanctions, but formulates an ethical judgment on the acts. It's a huge difference, which anyone with only an elementary notion of law should be able to recognise.

Sin belongs to the forum of conscience and the relationship with God, crime belongs to the legal system and the public sphere. Confusing the two levels means understanding neither moral theology nor the general theory of law. And it is precisely here that the controversy shows all its fragility. Why accuse the Holy Father of "backtracking" for having reiterated that a morally disordered act - in this specific case the practice of homosexuality - is a sin, equivalent, in reality, to reproach the Church for continuing to be what it is: that means, simply, itself.

At this point a further node emerges, more delicate and more serious. Because behind the media controversy there is not only a problem of distinction between sin and crime, but an ecclesiological question: l'Idea, more or less explicit, that acceptance must necessarily translate into moral approval. And here we need to be extremely clear: the Church is mother, welcomes everyone, always and without preconditions. He did it towards the adulteress - «I don't condemn you either; go and from now on don't sin anymore " (GV 8,11) — of the publican — «O God, be merciful to me a sinner! ' (LC 18,13) — of the persecutor transformed into an apostle — «Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?» (At 9,4) — of the manifest sinner sitting at table with the Master — «It is not the healthy who need the doctor, and in sickness» (MC 2,17). He never asked for a moral certification upon entry. But hospitality has never been synonymous with legitimization of the act. Nor has mercy ever been equated with the normalization of disorder.

To the number of the Catechism mentioned above (cf.. n. 2357) the one immediately following follows with precise calls to respect and welcome homosexual people:

«A non-negligible number of men and women have deeply rooted homosexual tendencies. This inclination, objectively disordered, constitutes a test for most of them. Therefore they must be welcomed with respect, compassion, delicacy. In their regard, any sign of unfair discrimination will be avoided. Such people are called to carry out God's will in their life, e, if they are Christian, to unite the difficulties they may encounter as a result of their condition to the sacrifice of the Lord's cross " (CCC n. 2358).

The point, however, is precisely this: there are subjects who do not ask for hospitality - which the Church already offers - but for moral recognition of the practice, of the exercise of moral disorder. They don't ask to be welcomed as people, but that the act is removed from moral judgment and normalized. And here we are no longer in the pastoral sphere, but in the doctrinal one. If you intend, in other words, that the Church modifies its anthropology to adapt to a dominant cultural paradigm. Who rereads his own morality in the light of contemporary identity issues. May he bless what until yesterday he defined as intrinsically disordered, without changing the theological structure of reference. Now, everything can be discussed, but the Church cannot be asked to cease being itself without openly declaring it.

The topic is usually presented in a more suggestive rather than rigorous way: inclusion is evoked, we talk about rights, the specter of discrimination is raised, to the point of manipulating the objective data by openly reproaching the Holy Father who, calling homosexuality a sin, it would offer legitimacy to the Islamist regimes that prosecute it criminally. But here what is at stake is not the dignity of the person - which the Church forcefully affirms - but rather the moral qualification of the act. And confusing the two dimensions is a suggestive rhetorical device, but theologically inconsistent and juridically cumbersome.

The truth is that someone would like to let you into the Church what we might call a rainbow Trojan horse: not the person, but the entire ideological package that claims to redefine anthropological categories, moral and sacramental. The Church does not reject people, but he cannot accept that hospitality becomes the tool to undermine his own vision of human nature. The mother hugs, but it does not rewrite the moral law to make the embrace more culturally acceptable to those who would like to transform sin into a right. Whoever asks the Church to declare what it is morally good, in the light of his own theological anthropology, considers it objectively disordered, he is not asking for a pastoral act, but a doctrinal revision. And a doctrinal revision is not achieved through media pressure, nor for effective titles, nor for personal needs, nor through reckless denunciations that alter the level of confrontation.

It is necessary to thank the creator of the blog I cannot be silent, whose interventions, sometimes characterized by an argumentative ease that raises more questions than certainties, they constitute a healthy exercise for us. They remind us of the priest's task, of the theologian and the true jurist is not chasing media coverage, but distinguish, clarify and faithfully safeguard the order of truth, to then transmit it and defend it from those ideological Trojan horses that, with rainbow hues and seductive language, they try to introduce into the Church what does not belong to it, to the point of considering the Supreme Pontiff's words about sin a real scandal in the sun.

From the island of Patmos, 28 February 2026

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