Sexuality: the conversation we’re not having

By Voices for the Voiceless

There are conversations happening in whispers that should be happening in community. This is probably going to make some people uncomfortable, and perhaps that is part of the point.

We often avoid difficult conversations because they challenge our assumptions, our perspectives, or the way we have always understood things. Yet real growth, both human and spiritual, often begins with a willingness to sit with discomfort rather than run from it.

For all the ways the Church speaks about accompanying young people, there is an uncomfortable reality we need to confront: many young people do not feel safe speaking honestly within the very communities that claim to welcome them.

That should alarm us. Not because young people have stopped asking difficult questions. They have not. The questions are still being asked. They are simply being asked elsewhere: in private conversations, anonymous online forums, trusted friendships, and late-night discussions behind closed doors. That is not a sign that the questions have disappeared. It is a sign that trust has.

There are young people in every parish carrying questions they do not feel comfortable voicing: about sexuality, mental health, doubt, identity, relationships, loneliness, and belonging.

The reality is simple. These young people are not somewhere ‘out there’. They are already among us. They sit beside us in the pews. They serve in ministries. They sing in choirs. They proclaim the Word. They volunteer their time and talents. They pray. They worship. They seek God. Yet many remain silent.

And silence is not harmless. Silence is not evidence that everything is fine. It is evidence that people have learned what happens when they speak. They have learned which questions are welcomed and which are not. When honesty is rewarded, and when it carries consequences. When vulnerability is received with care, and when it is met with assumption. Once people learn that lesson, they stop speaking.

We often describe the Church as a home for everyone. But a home is not defined by what we say about it…it is defined by how people experience it.

It is easy to call ourselves welcoming. It is harder to ask whether people feel welcomed.

One conversation that exposes this tension is sexuality. Too often, conversations about sexuality become debates before they become encounters. People become issues to be discussed rather than individuals to be understood. Opinions form before stories are heard. Conclusions are reached before relationships are built. Then we wonder why people remain silent. If a young person feels safer discussing sexuality anonymously than speaking honestly within their faith community, that should not merely give us pause—it should force us to confront the culture we have created.

Before asking why young people are leaving the Church, we should ask how many stopped speaking long before they left. Departure rarely begins at the door. It begins when people decide that honesty is no longer safe.

For years, we have searched for explanations for why so many young people feel disconnected from the Church. We point to culture, technology, social media, and changing values. Rarely do we consider a harder possibility: some people have grown tired of speaking into rooms that are not listening.

This is not a call to abandon conviction or pretend difficult questions have easy answers. Nor is it a demand for agreement. It is a challenge to examine whether we have confused dialogue with debate, accompaniment with instruction, and listening with waiting for our turn to speak.

The Church has always been at its best when it has accompanied people through life rather than avoided its complexity. Yet accompaniment requires more than welcoming language. It requires humility, curiosity, and the willingness to encounter another person’s reality before deciding what to do with it.

Young people are not asking for perfection. They are asking for honesty in spaces where difficult conversations can happen without fear of ridicule, assumptions, or immediate judgement.

Perhaps the question is not whether these conversations exist. They already do. The question is whether we are willing to hear them. Because if people cannot bring their questions, struggles, and realities into the life of the Church without fear, then we should stop congratulating ourselves for being welcoming and start examining what we have built.

The challenge is not simply to have difficult conversations. The challenge is to confront the culture of silence that made them difficult in the first place. And until we do, we should not be surprised when more young people stop speaking, stop participating, and eventually stop showing up.

But the story does not have to end there. Maybe there is another horizon somewhere out there.

What would we hear if we substituted trust for silence?

What if we met difficult conversations not with fear but with real encounter?

What if young people felt their questions could be incorporated into the life of the Church without fear of exclusion?

Perhaps there is no agreement on every matter beyond the horizon. Maybe it’s something more important: a community where people don’t feel they have to choose between being honest and being part of the group.