Sodomy: Vice or Punishment
By Cristiana de Magistris | 13 February 2026
Profanation of the nature created by God
The Catholic doctrine on the sin of sodomy is crystal clear and irrefutable, but it is not being taught by the overwhelming majority of Church leaders: it is a sin against nature that cries out for vengeance before God. St Thomas Aquinas relates St Augustine’s teaching on sodomy:
“Those foul offenses that are against nature should be everywhere and at all times detested and punished, such as were those of the people of Sodom, which should all nations commit, they should all stand guilty of the same crime, by the law of God which hath not so made men that they should so abuse one another. For even that very intercourse which should be between God and us is violated, when that same nature, of which He is the Author, is polluted by the perversity of lust.” (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 154 a. 12 ad 1)
It is therefore a profanation of the nature created by God, a profanation that deserves punishment.
A sin of the intellect
St Paul, in his letter to the Romans, lashes out at this sin with fiery words and asserts that, before being a sin of the senses, it is a sin of the intellect, and that as such it is a punishment that God inflicts as a consequence of a perversion of the intellect that leads to idolatry: it is a terrible, but just punishment for those who “changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man… Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness, to dishonour their own bodies among themselves… to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient” (Rom 1:23-28).
God “abandons man to sin”
Commenting on this passage from St Paul, the well-known Italian biblical scholar Monsignor A Martini (1720–1809) writes:
“Here is the punishment corresponding to such an enormous crime: just as man was not horrified to attribute to the beasts themselves the being of God, so God allowed the divine part of man to become subject to what man has of similarity to the beasts, that is, to sensual appetite. It is not said that God abandons men to impurity … because He orders everything for His glory, to which sin is opposed: but it is said that He abandons man to sin, inasmuch as He with justice takes away from the wicked the grace by which they were held back from sinning. ‘I let them go,’ says God in Psalm 80, ‘according to the desires of their heart: they shall walk in their own inventions.’ Hence it often happens that the first sin is the cause of the second and the second is the punishment of the first; so says St Thomas after St Augustine.”
And commenting on verse 27, in which St Paul states that, with their unnatural actions, sodomites receive “in themselves the recompense which was due to their error”, Martini comments:
“In the deformation of their nature (degraded and debased to the condition of beasts, which do not know such infirmity), they receive, according to the order of divine justice, the punishment due to their voluntary and fatal error, by which, having dishonoured the divine nature within themselves, they were abandoned to the point of dishonouring their own nature.”
St Augustine speaks of sodomy as a vice deserving punishment. St Paul speaks of it as a punishment in itself, that is, as a punishment for a previous sin of the intellect, specifically idolatry (in its many forms). It is both, and this gives a measure of the gravity of this sin.
Proclaiming the truth is of little use if error is not condemned. And the condemnation of error is the healthiest aid for the errant, who, without it, would remain mired in sin. This is true supernatural charity, which aims not to please others in their earthly desires, but to enlighten them about their eternal destiny and the means to achieve it.
The relentless attempts to normalise sodomy, unfortunately also advanced by the ecclesiastical hierarchy — as recently occurred with its scandalous silence during the so-called LGBT Jubilee at the Vatican — cannot change the substance of things. Let us repeat with St Augustine: “Should all nations commit, they should all stand guilty of the same crime, by the law of God.”