Throughout its history, conflicts have shaped various doctrines in the Roman Catholic Church. The contemporary Church struggles with controversies about racism, gender, reproductive rights, sexual abuse, power abuse, same-sex relationships, and intra/interreligious conflicts. In these situations, Church leaders can apply different strategies to address conflict, including negotiation, dialogue, or repression. Often, such strategies presume interpretative patterns of unity and stability or narrowly perceive conflict simply as “public opposition to the magisterium.”

What often happens may be likened to what Thania Paffenholz, of the Center on Conflict, Development, and Peacebuilding at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, refers to as conflict management: this approach by leaders is largely diplomatic and top-down, excludes the people at the grassroots, and does not go deep into the roots of the conflict.