The “Culture War” Raging Over Catholic Anthropology

In a recent exchange on my comment thread, I asked a self-described Catholic progressive (Todd Flowerday) a straightforward question:

Does the Church have unique, authoritative knowledge about what a human person is?

He didn’t hesitate. “No,” he wrote. That single word snapped everything into focus. I finally saw what I’ve been circling around in so many of these debates. Our conversations drown in emotion, lean on appeals to “lived experience,” and end with the tired claim that conservatives are “obsessed with the culture wars.”

But that charge is a sleight of hand. The so-called “culture war” isn’t about politics, partisanship, or an unhealthy conservative fixation. It’s about Catholic anthropology—about whether the Church claims the authority to define human nature.

The fights over sexuality, gender, family, and identity aren’t the disease. They’re the symptoms of a deeper internal revolt—a rebellion against the Church’s understanding of the human person.

What Is Catholic Anthropology?

Simply put, Catholic anthropology teaches that God revealed the nature and purpose of the human person through divine revelation and human reason. This understanding rests on five key pillars:

The Imago Dei: man created in the image and likeness of God (Gen:1; CCC 355–356).
Body–soul unity: the human person as an inseparable union of body and soul (CCC 365; Council of Vienne, 1312).
Male and female He created them: sexual difference as a divine gift (Gen: 2; CCC 2331–2336; Male and Female He Created Them, 2019).
The teleology of the body: the body possesses a purpose revealed in its design (St. John Paul II, Theology of the Body; Gaudium et Spes 22; Veritatis Splendor 35).
Communion and beatitude: man finds fulfillment in communion with God and others (CCC 357, 1716–1717).

God created humanity male and female in His image. Each person possesses inherent dignity as a body–soul unity, made for communion with others and with God Himself (CCC 1).

The Progressive Rejection of Catholic Anthropology

Many progressive Catholics reject Catholic anthropology for one simple reason: they see it as exclusionary and narrow. Others dismiss it as unimaginative, unwilling to “engage in dialogue,” and insensitive to individual “lived experiences.”

Instead, progressives appeal to internal identity, self-creation, and experience as ultimate authorities—often unquestionable and absolute. In doing so, they echo secular anthropology, which denies any inherent meaning of the body and claims that “the self” invents identity. They also invoke secular institutions such as the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to justify dissent under the banner of “scientific consensus.”

One commentator even equated “trusting the Vatican’s gender science” (Catholic anthropology) with “trusting a diabetes diagnosis from a parish priest.” This mindset replaces revelation with ideology. By accepting secular anthropology and rejecting the Church’s vision of the human person, progressive Catholics ultimately reject both the Church and Christ Himself. No reconciliation exists between these two worldviews.

The “Culture War” Decoy Against Catholic Anthropology

Anyone familiar with progressive Catholic writing knows that attacks on Catholic anthropology often appear disguised as attacks on the “culture wars.”

In a recent National Catholic Reporter article, Katherine Kelaidis commented on the appointment of Brian Burch of Catholic Vote as ambassador to the Holy See:

The choice of Burch also signals that the Trump White House is willing to wade into the struggle in American Catholicism between Catholics focused on the church’s teachings related to economic and social justice and Catholics centered on its doctrine regarding gender and sexual morality. In picking Burch, in other words, the administration is ensuring that that culture war remains alive in Catholicism.

David Palmieri, writing for Outreach, calls the raging “culture wars” a “modern-day Galileo affair.” He links to another article titled “Vatican Admits Galileo Was Right.” Palmieri claims that issues involving sexual identity represent “complex realities” and that “demanding simple answers”—that is, answers rooted in Catholic anthropology—“violates freedom. It controls a person’s story, or suggests that only certain stories can be told.”

Palmieri’s call for pastoral sensitivity toward “complex realities” masks an attempt to smuggle in a secular anthropology that glorifies personal autonomy and “lived experience.” The “culture war” label serves as a rhetorical decoy, deflecting attention away from the real conflict: the Church’s authority to define what man is.

Why Every Moral Battle Is Lost Without a Proper Anthropology

Without a proper understanding of Catholic anthropology, the Church loses every moral battle before it begins. If the Church cannot define human nature, she cannot define how humans should live. Evangelization collapses without an answer to the question: “What is the human person for?”

When Catholics separate morality from anthropology, moral teaching devolves into sentiment and opinion rather than truth. Once the Church abandons her authority to define man, she forfeits the very foundation of her moral voice.

Final Thoughts: Recovering Catholic Anthropology

The “culture war” rages because many Catholics deny the nature of man that God created. Every fight over morality, justice, and sexuality begins with that denial. When Catholics lose sight of the Church’s vision of the human person, they silence her moral voice; when they recover it, they strengthen her witness in a world that desperately needs clarity.

To recover Catholic anthropology means returning to reality. God created us male and female, a unity of body and soul, for communion with one another and with Himself. This recovery calls the Church to proclaim again that freedom does not invent the self—it enables each person to become what God created him or her to be: a gift of love in the image of divine Love.

The real “culture war” pits two rival visions of the human person against each other. One flows from God and leads to communion; the other rises from human pride and ends in confusion. Catholics now face a choice: either the Church reclaims her authority to define human nature, or the world will seize that authority and reshape both man and Church in its own image.