‘Like a fading photograph’. A qualitative study into how the Irish Roman Catholic community understands, accepts, and receives their Church's teachings about homosexuality.

Abstract In 2015, Ireland became the first nation on earth to vote by popular referendum, rather than through its elected legislature, in favour of legal same-sex marriage, and by a convincing majority. With both political jurisdictions on the island of Ireland claiming Roman Catholicism as their majority religious faith, this project takes an in-depth look at a representative cross-section of the active Irish Roman Catholic community in order to discover how their Church’s authoritative doctrines on homosexuality have been understood, accepted and received. Despite there being no shortage of theological and ecclesial literature on the issue of homosexuality, there have been few studies into how the particular Roman Catholic magisterial teachings about homosexuality have been understood or accepted by Roman Catholics. This research aims to provide such a study from within the context of a nation that has witnessed rapid changes in social attitudes and from within a faith community deeply affected by recent Church abuse scandals. This piece of contextual theological qualitative research is framed within an interpretivist ontological paradigm adopting a contextualist epistemology. The research uses a method of thematic analysis known as Template Analysis to interpret data gathered from a series of 45 in-depth interviews with participants from different strata of the Irish Catholic community. The research discovered that many of the key aspects of Catholic Church doctrine on homosexuality, its reasoning, application, language, and tone, were largely rejected by a majority of the participants. As the Catholic Church attempts to adopt a more sensitive and pastoral attitude to its LGBTQ+ members, the conclusions suggest that many aspects of Roman Catholic official doctrine on homosexuality were problematic for these members of the Irish Catholic community and were perceived as being unjust and harmful to LGBTQ+ men and women of faith.