The study postulates that the field of Catholic moral theology has reached an impasse and proposes a way of approaching and understanding that impasse by focusing on the case study of homosexuality. By taking into account scientific research, magisterial teaching, and theological-ethical reflection on homosexuality, it arrives at the insight that the impasse, at least when it comes to the issue of homosexuality, is not to be found in the fact that the magisterium has taken a position on homosexuality, but in the presupposition that the ethical evaluation of homosexuality has been settled at the moment when the magisterium has done so. This insight emerges clearly as one brings various discourses on homosexuality together and allows them to challenge each other, thereby revealing that even the most basic questions such as, "What is homosexuality?", remain disputed and in need of a further discussion. Insofar as that state of the debate is not reflected in the presupposition that led to the impasse in moral theology when it comes to the issue of homosexuality, this "glaring oversight" raises a suspicion that the actual source and nature of the impasse might not be tied to the issue of homosexuality but to how the discipline of moral theology functions or is expected to function



Nenad Polgar, PhD, is professor of theological ethics at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies (Catholic University Leuven) since 2023. He obtained his doctorate at the same university in 2012 and was habilitated at the University of Vienna in 2021.