Does "represents a sop" mean "presents a little bit of solace"?

1)Does "represents a sop" mean "presents a little bit of solace"?
2) Does " for grounding moral discussion" mean "for providing ground/foundation for moral discussion"?

Context:

Religion is too important to too many people for any dismissal or denigration of the comfort still sought by many folks from theology. I may, for example, privately suspect that papal insistence on divine infusion of the soul represents a sop to our fears, a device for maintaining a belief in human superiority within an evolutionary world offering no privileged position to any creature. But I also know that souls represent a subject outside the magisterium of science. My world cannot prove or disprove such a notion, and the concept of souls cannot threaten or impact my domain. Moreover, while I cannot personally accept the Catholic view of souls, I surely honor the metaphorical value of such a concept both for grounding moral discussion and for expressing what we most value about human potentiality: our decency, care, and all the ethical and intellectual struggles that the evolution of consciousness imposed upon us.

MOre:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteria#National_Academy_of_Sciences