Queer Theology Can Bring About A Synodal Church

The publication in May of the Synod on Synodality’s Study Group 9 report, which in part looked at the experience of queer Catholics, created not so only a conversation about exclusion and prejudice in the church, but rather, a conversation about authority in the church.

Max Kuzma, a transgender columnist for the National Catholic Reporter, says that though these arguments “appear to concern sexuality,” beneath the surface there is a “far more fundamental theological question: Who has the authority to contribute to the church’s discernment of truth?”

The problem, he states, starts with conceiving LGBTQ Catholics, and other marginalized people as a whole, as a problem to be solved rather than partners in faith who can meaningfully contribute to their own pastoral care. Pope Francis’s had a different approach to synodality:

“His vision of synodality was never merely about making ecclesial governance more participatory. It reflected a theological conviction that the Holy Spirit speaks through the lived experience of the entire People of God, especially those whose voices have long been overlooked. Francis repeatedly urged the church to move from abstraction to encounter, insisting that genuine discernment begins not with ideological certainty but with listening.”

Kuzma says that Catholic theology is not focused on understanding God with academic certainty, but begins with a “conviction that God always exceeds the limits of human understanding.” Therefore, if God consistently outpaces our imagination, and every angle from which we examine Him shows us a new facet of His being, so too must it be with human beings. The “categories through which we organize human life are neither arbitrary nor meaningless, but neither are they exhaustive” the author observes. 

Theological categories should be “open to refinement as the church recognizes historically ignored or marginalized human experiences and continues its discernment under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”

Queer people and queer theology, he points out, is not  “the rejection of norms for the sake of perpetual transgression.” Catholic social doctrine asks us to “interpret reality from the perspective of those most readily discarded by society, trusting that the margins reveal truths the center cannot always perceive.” Kuzma goes on:

“Liberation theology, disability theology, Black theology and feminist theology all emerged from this same conviction. They do not replace Catholic theology. They invite it to become more fully itself by allowing those historically excluded to participate in the church’s pursuit of truth.

“Queer theology insists that LGBTQ Catholics are not merely recipients of pastoral care but participants in theological discernment. Our lives are not obstacles to the Gospel but places where the church may discover dimensions of the Gospel it has not yet fully seen.”

 The Synod Study Group 9 report’s inclusion of testimonies from two gay Catholic men was an important acknowledgement that testimony is part of theology. Kuzma commented that testimony is the way the church has always proceeded:

“Again and again, doctrinal development has been preceded by encounters that pushed against the boundaries of long-held assumptions. The experiences of workers informed modern Catholic social teaching. Conversations with people of other faiths impacted Catholic approaches to religious liberty. The witness of the poor reshaped the Church’s understanding of justice. The church has not remained unchanged in 2,000 years.”

Queer theology is not about rebellion for rebellion’s sake. It is about reminding “the church that those most easily dismissed…are not simply problems to be solved. They are indispensable conversation partners in the church’s search for truth.”

—Lynnzee Dick, New Ways Ministry, August 15, 2026