The Christian tradition has generally proscribed any and all noncoital genital activities, whether engaged in by couples or individuals, regardless of whether they were of the same or different sex. The position of the Roman Catholic Church with regards to homosexuality developed from the writings of Paul the Apostle and the teachings of the Church Fathers. These were in stark contrast to contemporary Greek and Roman attitudes towards same-sex relations which were more relaxed.
Canon law regulating homosexual activity has mainly been shaped through the decrees issued by a number of synods, starting from the 4th century Council of Elvira. Initially, proscriptions against "sodomy" were aimed simply at ensuring clerical or monastic discipline; and were only later widened in the Middle Ages to include laymen. By the Middle Ages, the Catholic clergy increasingly encouraged the pious to hunt out those committing homosexual acts, and to hand them over to secular authorities for punishment. The Spanish Inquisition tried nearly a thousand individuals for sodomy, where near 500 cases were of sodomy between persons, with only a few cases where the couple were consenting homosexual adults. The relationship between the Catholic church and the modern day LGBT community has been difficult, especially during the height of the AIDS crisis.
Early Church
Influence of the Church Fathers
The Catholic Church's position on homosexuality developed in substance from the teachings and Scriptural interpretations of the Church Fathers. This was in stark contrast to Greek and Roman practice of pederasty, the "(usually erotic) homosexual relationship between an adult male and a pubescent or adolescent male".
The early 2nd century treatise the Didache (which influenced thinking by early theologians) includes in a list of commandments: "You shall not corrupt boys." David F. Greenberg cites it as an example of early Christian writings that were "unequivocably opposed to male prostitution and pederasty—probably the most visible forms of homosexuality in their time".
Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–c. 215) rebuked heathens for worshipping gods who indulged in debauching of boys. Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260/265–339/340) wrote of God "having forbidden all unlawful marriage, and all unseemly practice, and the union of women with women and men with men".
The Apology of Aristides of Athens, presented to Emperor Hadrian around 117–138 CE (himself homosexual), scorned the practices and acts of the Greek pagans who worshiped gods some of whom "polluted themselves by lying with males".
Basil of Caesarea (c.329 or 330–379) was among the first to talk about penalties, advising in a letter that "He who is guilty of unseemliness with males will be under discipline for the same time as adulterers." Taking Basil's lead, Gregory of Nyssa's Canonical Letter to Letoius of Mytilene (Epist. canonica 4, 390 CE) also prescribes the same period of penance for adultery and for "craving for the male".
John Chrysostom (c. 347–407), the Archbishop of Constantinople, was particularly vocal on the subject—loathing homosexuality. His most notable discourse in this regard is his fourth homily on , where he argued that those who have sex with the same gender must do so because they are insane: "All of these affections then were vile, but chiefly the mad lust after males; for the soul is more the sufferer in sins, and more dishonored than the body in diseases. ...[The men] have done an insult to nature itself. And a yet more disgraceful thing than these is it, when even the women seek after these intercourses, who ought to have more shame than men." He went on to describe homosexuality as a worse sin than murder. Punishment will be found in hell for such transgressors. He noted that women could also be guilty of the sin as much as men (although the former additionally disrupted the patriarchal hierarchy through such as act). Chrysostom believed that the male passive partner had effectively renounced his manhood and become a woman; such an individual deserved to be killed, "driven out and stoned". Chrysostom was particularly influential in shaping early Christian thought that same-sex desire was an evil that ultimately resulted in social injustice, altering the traditional interpretation of Sodom as a place of inhospitality, to one where the sexual transgressions of the Sodomites became paramount [note: this claim is highly contested. Second Temple Jewish literature is replete with references to the sexual sins of Sodom and Gomorrah (see "Testament of Levi" 14:6, "Testament of Naphtali" 3:4, 5; 4.1, "Testament of Benjamin" 9.1, "Jubilees" 16:15-16, Philo's "Quaestiones Et Solutiones in Genesin," 4:37, 38; "De Abraham" 26:134-6; see also "2Enoch" (Slavonic) 10:4, 34:0, 34:2), as is earlier Christian literature].
Early Church Councils
Canon law regulating same-sex sexual activity has mainly been shaped through the decrees issued by a number of ecclesiastical councils. Initially, canons against sodomy were aimed at ensuring clerical or monastic discipline, and were only widened in the medieval period to include laymen.
The early 4th-century Council of Elvira (305–306) was the first church council to deal with the issue directly, excluding from Holy Communion anyone who had sexual intercourse (stuprum) with a boy:
Canons 16 and 17 of the Council of Ancyra (314 CE), which "became the standard source for medieval ecclesiastical literature against homosexuality", imposed on "those who have been or who are guilty of bestial lusts" penances whose severity varies with the age and married status of the offender, allowing access to communion only at death for a married man over fifty years old (canon 16); and imposed a penance also on "defilers of themselves with beasts, being also leprous, who have infected others [with the leprosy of this crime]".
There are examples of punishments. In the sixth century, the Greek chronicler John Malalas recorded that a certain Isaiah (the Bishop of Rhodes) and Alexander (Bishop of Diopolis) had been punished by the Prefect of Thrace for "homosexual practices". Isaiah was tortured severely and exiled, while Alexander had his genitals amputated and paraded around the city on a litter to humiliate him. As a result, the Christian Emperor Justinian (482–565 CE) decreed that all caught for pederasty should have their genitals amputated. Many gay men were arrested in the wake of this, and died from their injuries. An atmosphere of fear followed.
In Iberia, the Visigothic ruler Egica of Hispania and Septimania demanded that a church council confront the occurrence of homosexuality in the kingdom. In 693, the Sixteenth Council of Toledo issued a canon condemning guilty clergy to degradation and exile and laymen to a hundred lashes. Egica added an edict imposing the punishment of castration.
The matter was also dealt with at the Council of Paris (829) in canons 34 and 69. These went beyond Elvira and Ancyra in explicitly endorsing the death penalty for sodomy—claiming that it had led God to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and send the Great Flood. The concern at Paris was that toleration of sodomy might provoke God to give victory to the enemies of Christianity (with particular concerns about the growth of Islam at this time). At about the same time, the set of (forged) capitularies produced by the deacon Benedict Levita implied that Charlemagne had likewise supported the death penalty. Finally, canon 15 of the Council of Trolsy (909 CE) warned against "pollution with men or animals".
Alongside this, penances for such sexual transgressions may increasingly be found in a few of the penitential books which first emerged in the 6th century in monastic communities in Ireland (including for women having sex with other women).
Medieval and Early Modern period By the late Middle Ages, the term "sodomy" had come to cover copulation between males, bestiality, non-vaginal heterosexual intercourse, coitus interruptus, masturbation, fellatio and anal sex (whether heterosexual or homosexual); and it increasingly began to be identified as the most heinous of sins by authorities of the Catholic Church. In Italy, Dominican friars would encourage the pious to "hunt out" sodomites and hand them to the Inquisition to be dealt with accordingly: "These clerical discourses provided a language for secular authorities to condemn sodomy, ...By persecuting sodomites as well as heretics, the Church strengthened its authority and credibility as a moral arbiter."
Pope Leo IX labeled homosexuality in the 11th century as "filthy," an "execrable vice," and "obscene." Likewise around 1051, Peter Damian penned the Liber Gomorrhianus in which he argued for stricter ecclesiastical punishment for clerics guilty of "sins against nature."
Klaits writes: "From the twelfth century on, outsiders came under increasing verbal and physical attack from churchmen, allied secular authorities, and, particularly in the case of Jews, from the lower strata of the population"; and Jews, heretics, homosexuals, and magicians were among the most significant "outsiders."
The Council of London in 1102, called at the urging of English Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury, explicitly denounced homosexual behavior as a sin for the first time at an English council. Anselm felt that sodomy was widespread and not condemned strongly enough or regarded with the seriousness that it should have. Confessors were urged to take account of such ignorance when hearing confessions, but take into account mitigating factors such as age and marital status before prescribing penance; and counselling was generally preferred to punishment. In Canons 28 and 29 the Council decreed that the people should be informed of the gravity of the sin and their obligation to confess (particularly if they derived pleasure from it). Nevertheless, Anselm deferred publication of the proceedings, arguing that further time was needed to clarify certain matters. Boswell argues the decrees were never published at all.
In 1179, Pope Alexander III presided over the Third Lateran Council in Rome which decreed (canon 11) that all those guilty of sodomy be removed from office or confined to penitential life in a monastery, if clergy; and be strictly excommunicated, if laity: "Let all who are found guilty of that unnatural vice for which the wrath of God came down upon the sons of disobedience and destroyed the five cities with fire, if they are clerics be expelled from the clergy or confined in monasteries to do penance; if they are laymen they are to incur excommunication and be completely separated from the society of the faithful." The French theologian Alain de Lille complained in 1202 that "such a great body of foul men roam and riot along the breadth of the whole earth," spreading perversion and impurity with "monstrous acts" endangering the wider community.
At the same time, the German Abbess Hildegard of Bingen in her Liber divinorum operum described homosexuality as the "supreme offence against God." In her book Scivias, she describes a vision of God, and quotes him condemning homosexual acts, saying "a man who sins with another man as if with a woman sins bitterly against God" and therefore is "guilty of death."
Canon 14 of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated that if a priest suspended for unchastity of any kind—especially the vice that "on account of which the anger of God came from heaven upon the children of unbelief" (sodomy)—dared to celebrate Mass then he was to be deposed permanently from the priesthood.