(Death, Heaven, Purgatory, Hell)
Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults
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Question 16: What was the sin of Sodom?
Answer: When the people of Sodom and Gomorrah had given themselves up to sins of impurity, the evil of their crime was so great that, as the Scripture says, it cried out to heaven for vengeance (Gen. 18:20; 19:13). As a result, God showed his anger, "Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground" (Gen. 19:24-25). Thus that country, which before was "like the garden of the Lord" (paradise) (Gen. 13:10), was turned into a lake of stinking water, as tradition has it, which remains to this day as an eternal reminder of the loathing God has for the sins of uncleanness.
So, the answer to the question is that sodomy was the sin for which Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by God. The term includes all sins of unnatural lust, particularly those committed between persons of the same sex, and all practices aiming at the prevention of conception. Various distinctions, of no consequence here, are made by moral theology. But it always remains repugnant, unnatural lust that cries to heaven for vengeance.
