Destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah (Genesis 19: 1-29) & the Church?

Joe Tevington | 07/28/2025

The Church treasures the monogamous and forever marriage of one man and one woman. It is the only acceptable place and situation for conjugal relations, which must also always be open to new life.

From Genesis 19, we get the notion of the sin of Sodom as homosexual acting out. The Church has a wider understanding, viewing Sodomy as all non unitive sexual acting out not open to new life.

In recent years, some have claimed the sin of Sodom to have actually been a lack of hospitality!

[St Peter Damian condemns] various forms of sexual perversion, which he places under the heading of ‘sodomy,’ including contraception, masturbation, same-sex pederasty, and adult homosexual acts....The strongest punishments in the Church’s historic legislation are reserved for those who abuse children and adolescents….

His counsel to prohibit the entry into the priesthood of those with sodomitic tendencies was confirmed by the Sacred Congregation for Religious under Pope John XXIII in 1961 and reaffirmed (after much painful experience following the lack of compliance with the directive) by the Congregation of Catholic Education with the express approval Pope Benedict XVI in 2005 (The Book of Gomorrah and St. Peter Damian’s Struggle Against Ecclesiastical Corruption, 2015)

As to the "much painful experience," money is just one part. "Over two decades, Catholic dioceses, eparchies and men’s religious communities spent more than $5 billion on allegations of sexual abuse of minors....4 in 5 victims were male, and one-fifth were female" (National Catholic Reporter, 1/17/25).

What Will Assuredly Be Different for the Church?

Way back in 1969, a future pope shared realistic but ultimately hopeful thoughts about the future:

From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge – a Church that has lost much. lt will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. lt will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices it built in its palmy days. As the number of its adherents diminishes so will it lose many of its social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of its individual members. But in all of the changes at which one might guess the

Church will find its essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was al ways at its center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer it will again recognize its true center, and experience the sacraments again as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship....

I am equally certain about what will remain at the end....it will enjoy a fresh blossoming, and be seen as man‘s home where he will find life and hope beyond death.

(Father Joseph Ratzinger, 1969)

Unlike S & G, the Church will NOT be destroyed. The gates of Hell will not prevail against her!

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About the Author

Joe Tevington

Joe Tevington is a proudly orthodox Catholic, a husband since 1986, a dad to two adult children, a grandpa to two, and a civil service retiree. He is a sign language fluent certified rehabilitation counselor with graduate degrees in deafness rehabilitation, religious studies/moral theology, & Christian counseling psychology, as well as a catechetical diploma and certificates in benefits planning and Catholic social ministry. He deeply appreciates Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life and the sanctity of the transmission of human life, as well as how they are to inform us in our apostolates and ministries.

On much lighter notes, he fancies himself to be the foremost authority on his native Brooklyn, when it comes to architecture, cinema, geography, history, Italian food, stick ball, stoop ball, or wiffle ball.