#OutInChurch Leader Sees Progress, But Warns Against Retrenchment

Germany’s #OutInChurch movement launched with 122 church employees coming out as LGBTQ+ people. Four years later, there is not a simple verdict on the kind of impact the movement has had on the Catholic Church. In a recent interview with Kirche-und-leben.de, Rainer Teuber, the co-organizer and spokesperson for the movement, progress has been real, but hard-won, incomplete, and under threat.

Rainier Teuber

Teuber makes one thing clear: whatever has improved for queer people in the Church has not been handed down from above. It has been fought for by queer church employees themselves. And visibility, once achieved, is not secure. It has to be defended again and again.

Teuber says that from the beginning#OutInChurch positioned itself as a disruption. The initiative challenged the Church’s long-standing habit of allowing only bishops and officials to define the narrative around sexuality, gender, and employment. Instead, around 500 Catholic Church workers, people who identify as gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer, or non-binary, publicly claimed their own voices. By doing so, they moved the institution to confront LGBTQ+ realities it had long preferred to keep invisible. 

One achievement Teuber highlights as a genuine breakthrough is the reform of Catholic Church labor law in Germany. He calls it a “Catholic quantum leap.” In 2022, the German bishops revised employment regulations so that aspects of an employee’s private life such as being in a same-sex relationship or entering a second marriage after divorce are no longer automatic grounds for dismissal. For many church employees, this change meant something profoundly basic: the ability to live honestly without fear of losing their livelihoods.

Yet even here, Teuber’s assessment is cautious. He doubts that this reform was born of moral insight or theological reflection on the part of the bishops. Instead, he attributes it largely to external pressure, especially the public attention generated by #OutInChurch and an accompanying television documentary. The law may have changed, but Teuber sees little evidence of a deeper cultural shift within church leadership.

This tension between symbolic progress and lived reality is also visible in the Church’s approach to blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples. In April, the German Bishops’ Conference and the Central Committee of German Catholics, an official church lay organization, adopted new guidelines allowing blessings for divorced and remarried people, couples of all gender identities and sexual orientations, and others unable or unwilling to receive the sacrament of marriage. On paper, this looks like a step toward inclusion.

The #OutInChurch logo, with the slogan “For a Church Without Fear”

Teuber, however, calls the guidelines “deceptive packaging.” In his view, they lack clarity and binding force, leaving pastoral workers unsure of what they are actually allowed to do, and couples unsure of whether they will be welcomed or rejected. The fact that these guidelines have not been implemented uniformly across dioceses only deepens that uncertainty. Inclusion, when it depends on geography, remains fragile.

On the Vatican level, Teuber’s outlook is even more sobering. Although #OutInChurch has been acknowledged in Rome, a letter sent to Pope Francis outlining concrete reform demands received no response. That silence, he suggests, spoke volumes. Hopes that things might change under Pope Leo XIV have so far been disappointed, as well, as the new pope has indicated that doctrinal change is unlikely in the near future.

One statement from Leo XIV, in particular, deeply unsettled Teuber: the suggestion that queer people had made “choices” that now needed to be accepted. For Teuber, this framing ignores decades of research in the human sciences and reinforces harmful misconceptions. To continue presenting homosexuality as a choice, he argues, is not just inaccurate; it perpetuates stigma.

Four years on, #OutInChurch stands as proof that change is possible, but also as a reminder of how reluctant some parts of the institutional Catholic Church remain. Legal reforms have happened. Visibility has increased. Yet without a fundamental cultural and theological shift, Teuber warns, progress will remain precarious—always vulnerable to reversal, always dependent on those brave enough to speak out.

—Sarah Flores, January 26, 2025