In Villanueva del Río y Minas, a small town in the province of Seville, a Catholic priest has become, in just a few days, the target of protests and a public denunciation campaign. His crime? Having explained to a parishioner that he could no longer receive communion due to his living situation, the latter being civilly "married" to another man. According to the testimony of José Antonio Hurtado, the priest would have taken him aside after the May 30 Mass to inform him that he would no longer give him the Eucharist in the future.
But behind this local controversy lies a much deeper question.
In reality, it is not this Andalusian priest who is on trial today. Behind his person, it is the Church’s two-thousand-year-old teaching on sexual morality that is being targeted. His true fault is not having made insulting remarks, but having refused to pretend that the Church now teaches the opposite of what it has always taught. For several years, part of public opinion seems to consider that Catholic doctrine is only acceptable on the condition that it no longer be applied. As long as it remains confined to books, it is tolerated. But if a priest dares to draw concrete consequences in pastoral life, controversy immediately erupts. The Catechism of the Catholic Church nevertheless reminds us that persons with a same-sex attraction « must be welcomed with respect, compassion, and delicacy » and that « any unjust discrimination against them will be avoided » (CEC 2358). At the same time, the same Catechism teaches without ambiguity: « Based on Sacred Scripture, which presents them as grave depravities, Tradition has always declared that acts of homosexuality are intrinsically disordered. They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a true affective and sexual complementarity. They can in no case receive approval » (CEC 2357).
It is precisely this reality that many refuse to hear today. For at bottom, what scandalizes some is not that a priest has applied Catholic doctrine. What scandalizes them is that this doctrine still exists.
Yet communion is not a simple gesture of welcome or conviviality. For Catholics, it is the Body of Christ truly present in the Eucharist. Receiving it presupposes a communion not only sacramental but also moral with the faith of the Church. From the very beginnings of Christianity, the Church has always taught that a person living publicly in a situation objectively contrary to its morality could not claim that this situation be validated by the reception of communion.
What is striking in this affair is the speed with which the debate has shifted. Almost no one discusses the substance of Catholic teaching. All attention is focused on the priest who dared to remind people of it. As if the problem were no longer conformity to doctrine, but the very existence of this doctrine. The affair of Villanueva del Río y Minas therefore goes far beyond the confines of an Andalusian parish. It reveals a growing tension within Western Catholicism. On the one hand, those who believe the Church must adapt its teaching to societal changes. On the other, those who remind it that it has not been given the mission to follow the spirit of the times but to proclaim the Gospel, even when it disturbs. For if merely recalling the Catechism is now enough to trigger demonstrations, public denunciations, and accusations of discrimination, then the question is no longer just one of communion. It is the very freedom of the Church to teach its faith that, once again, finds itself in the dock.