The largest Catholic university in the United States by enrollment is DePaul University in Chicago. And given that it has had an LGBTQ studies minor for more than two decades, in blatant violation of Church teaching, it needs to stop calling itself Catholic.
DePaul claims to be a “Catholic university in the Vincentian tradition” that is “[m]otivated by the examples of Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, who instilled a love of God by leading their contemporaries to serve urgent human needs,” and that its "mission proceeds from the heart of the Church and remains grounded in the values and life example of Jesus of Nazareth.”
On the other hand, it also meaninglessly apologizes “for being “on traditional Native lands” and blathers about “social transformation,” “the communal context of integral human development,” “an integral ecology aware of the interconnectedness of all people and nature,” and “the interplay of diverse value systems.” None of that is Catholic, but it is woke. I went to a Catholic college where we studied the Bible, Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Jerome. But at DePaul, you can attend a Queer Prom or a Lavender Graduation and study sexual identity. From the LGBTQ Studies minor, which is about to enter its 22nd year:
Established in 2005, the LGBTQ studies program offers students the opportunity to complete a minor in the developing interdisciplinary field of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer studies. The program of study examines the history, politics, culture and psychologies of LGBTQ individuals and communities. Courses in LGBTQ studies consider sexual identity within and across many traditional fields of study, from literature to political science, religious studies, nursing, philosophy, and women's and gender studies—to name just a few.
Why is this such a problem for a Catholic university? The Catholic Church teaches that homosexual acts are both gravely sinful and a perversion of nature, meriting damnation if not repented of before death. This teaching is firmly founded on the Bible. St. Paul very clearly warned:
Who changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature. And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error…Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things, are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them. —Romans 1:25-27, 32
St. Paul also addressed homosexuality in another passage (1 Corinthians 6:9-10), where he made a list of the sins so serious they prevent the sinner from entering Heaven: "Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of God." The Greek word translated here as "liers with mankind," ἀρσενοκοῖται, means literally “men engaged in sexual activity with the same sex.”
The Old Testament has something to say about homosexuality too. Leviticus 18:22 says, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” The most famous Bible story about homosexuality is Sodom and Gomorrah, destroyed in Genesis 19 by God for a sin that the narrative makes clear is homosexuality. When angels visited Abraham's nephew Lot to warn him, the locals believed new men had come to town and they demanded the guests of Lot come out that they might "know" them, a common Biblical term for sexual relations (e.g., Genesis 4:1). Lot stunningly offered his daughters instead, but the Sodomites were uninterested in women — they wanted only men. God then destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah with “brimstone and fire” (Genesis 19:24). The traditional name for homosexuality is “sodomy” because of this passage.
And while transgenderism is a very modern invention, Genesis 1:26-28 said without any ambiguity that God created two sexes, male and female, with the difference grounded in biology. DePaul therefore is defying God by spreading LGBTQ propaganda.
