Vatican Releases 5-Page Document Clarifying Recent Gay-Blessing Allowance, Rebukes Critics
(AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, File)
The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) released a five-page document clarifying its recent decision to allow priests to bless gay couples, forever memorialized in Fiducia Supplicans, insisting that their scheme “does change the doctrine on marriage” while also rebuking those who consider it heretical.
In light of many Roman Catholic groups being openly critical of the document, the new missive insists that they need to read it better and more closely, because of they did they would see that it cannot be against church teaching.
The understandable statements of some Episcopal Conferences regarding the document Fiducia supplicans have the value of highlighting the need for a more extended period of pastoral reflection. What is expressed by these Episcopal Conferences cannot be interpreted as doctrinal opposition, because the document is clear and definitive about marriage and sexuality…..This Declaration remains firm on the traditional doctrine of the Church about marriage, not allowing any type of liturgical rite or blessing similar to a liturgical rite that can create confusion.
Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, the prefect of the DDF, said that blessing gay couples shouldn’t be “an endorsement of the life led by those who request them” and should really only happen irregularly and spontaneously. CNA explains further:
Fernández provides one “concrete example” of what the spontaneous “pastoral blessings” might look like in practice, explaining that they should only last “about 10 or 15 seconds.”
“Since some have raised the question of what these blessings might look like, let us look at a concrete example: Let us imagine that among a large number making a pilgrimage a couple of divorced people, now in a new union, say to the priest: ‘Please give us a blessing, we cannot find work, he is very ill, we do not have a home and life is becoming very difficult: May God help us!” he said.
“In this case, the priest can recite a simple prayer like this: ‘Lord, look at these children of yours, grant them health, work, peace, and mutual help. Free them from everything that contradicts your Gospel and allow them to live according to your will. Amen.’ Then it concludes with the sign of the cross on each of the two persons.”
Fernández said that priests giving these types of blessings should “not impose conditions” or “enquire about the intimate lives of these people.”
He added that “this non-ritualized form of blessing, with the simplicity and brevity of its form, does not intend to justify anything that is not morally acceptable.”
The cardinal suggested that the only thing that’s really novel about this new document is the “invitation to distinguish between two different forms of blessings: ‘liturgical or ritualized’ and ‘spontaneous or pastoral” – with blessing a real marriage being the former, and blessing a same-sex couple being the latter.
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Calling them God’s children while simultaneously ignoring their open and unapologetic sinful identity, while giving the impression by the priest’s words that they are in a position to ask for blessings from God?
Not so sure this clarification is going to reduce criticism. Jesus himself said of those who misled as being of their father, Satan. Not all are children of God, even though Pope John Paul II popularized that idea within Roman Catholicism.
So Alphabet People can be blessed, but just briefly? Got it.