Church Affirms Traditional Teaching on Sexual Morality and Marriage
If you simply read media headlines you would get the impression that the Church has fundamentally changed her teaching on sexual morality and marriage. For example, Reuters reported that the Vatican approves blessings for same-sex couples in landmark ruling. ABC News reported the Vatican approves blessings for same-sex couples in landmark ruling for LGBTQ Catholics. Unfortunately, the confusion does not end with the secular media. Radical leftwing priest, Father James Martin, is already turning the Fiducia Supplicans upside down, blessing sin and causing great scandal in the Church. The vast majority of the media is not equipped to have a well-reasoned opinion on this subject for they have either not read the Magisterial document, do not care what it actually says, or they are blatantly bearing false witness against the Vicar of Christ. Fiducia Supplicans is clear in its affirmation of traditional teaching and simply acts to clarify the nature of blessings and their applicability.
Fiducia Supplicans begins by referencing the response to the Dubia of two Cardinals, noting that the initial “response provided important clarifications for this reflection and represents a decisive element for the work of the Dicastery”. This initial response begins to develop a theology of blessings by first explaining how blessings belong to the category of sacramentals. Sacramentals call “us to praise God, encourages us to implore his protection, and exhorts us to seek his mercy by our holiness of life” and “have been established as a kind of imitation of the sacraments, blessings are signs above all of spiritual effects that are achieved through the Church’s intercession”. Furthermore, the Responsum of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith explains that in order to “conform with the nature of sacramentals” any particular human relationship, including, but not limited to same-sex unions, the participants must have “the right intention” and that what is blessed necessarily be “objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace, according to the designs of God inscribed in creation, and fully revealed by Christ the Lord.”1 The Magisterium is clear that homosexual acts of any kind are intrinsically disordered. This was declared definitely in Persona Humana:
…no pastoral method can be employed which would give moral justification to these [homosexual] acts on the grounds that they would be consonant with the condition of such people. For according to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality. In Sacred Scripture they are condemned as a serious depravity and even presented as the sad consequence of rejecting God.
It is clear that no pastoral method, including a sacramental blessing, can ever give moral justification to acts that inerrant Scripture condemn as a “serious depravity”. This has been well established from Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium, thus it is not required that the Magisterium repeat this in every single Dubia response. Nevertheless, the Responsum of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith continues:
…it is not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage (i.e., outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open in itself to the transmission of life), as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex. The presence in such relationships of positive elements, which are in themselves to be valued and appreciated, cannot justify these relationships and render them legitimate objects of an ecclesial blessing, since the positive elements exist within the context of a union not ordered to the Creator’s plan.
Furthermore, since blessings on persons are in relationship with the sacraments, the blessing of homosexual unions cannot be considered licit. This is because they would constitute a certain imitation or analogue of the nuptial blessing invoked on the man and woman united in the sacrament of Matrimony, while in fact “there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family”.
The response to the Dubia concludes that “the Church recalls that God Himself never ceases to bless each of His pilgrim children in this world, because for Him “we are more important to God than all of the sins that we can commit”. But he does not and cannot bless sin: he blesses sinful man, so that he may recognize that he is part of his plan of love and allow himself to be changed by him. He in fact “takes us as we are, but never leaves us as we are””. Fiducia Supplicans builds on this decisive response.
The main purpose of Fiducia Supplicans is to “offer a specific and innovative contribution to the pastoral meaning of blessings, permitting a broadening and enrichment of the classical understanding of blessings, which is closely linked to a liturgical perspective.” Therefore, the Declaration is not specifically about the nature of marriage or sexual morality — having already been established by natural law, Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium — but simply to develop a theology of blessings. Much of this development is concerned with drawing a clear distinction between pastoral and liturgical blessings. The Declaration notes that it “is precisely in this context that one can understand the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage.”
It is important to illustrate that this distinction of blessings is a response to the ritualistic, public, and quasisacrament kind of blessings prominent with the German bishops. By drawing a clear distinction between a prudential pastoral blessing and a ritualistic liturgical blessing, the Declaration calls attention to the invalid liturgical blessings throughout Germany, and specifically makes clear that,
rites and prayers that could create confusion between what constitutes marriage—which is the “exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to the generation of children”—and what contradicts it are inadmissible. This conviction is grounded in the perennial Catholic doctrine of marriage; it is only in this context that sexual relations find their natural, proper, and fully human meaning. The Church’s doctrine on this point remains firm.
Again, the Declaration reaffirms that Church doctrine on marriage remains unchanged, and “for this reason, when it comes to blessings, the Church has the right and the duty to avoid any rite that might contradict this conviction or lead to confusion” and “the Church does not have the power to impart blessings on unions of persons of the same sex.” Thus, any kind of liturgical blessing that resembles the blessing in the Sacrament of Marriage is invalid for persons of the same sex. More generally from a “strictly liturgical point of view, a blessing requires that what is blessed be conformed to God’s will, as expressed in the teachings of the Church.” Thus, any liturgical blessing (e.g. Sacrament of Marriage) must be properly ordered and in conformity with the will of God. Same-sex unions are neither. Thus,
when a blessing is invoked on certain human relationships by a special liturgical rite, it is necessary that what is blessed corresponds with God’s designs written in creation and fully revealed by Christ the Lord. For this reason, since the Church has always considered only those sexual relations that are lived out within marriage to be morally licit, the Church does not have the power to confer its liturgical blessing when that would somehow offer a form of moral legitimacy to a union that presumes to be a marriage or to an extra-marital sexual practice.
The Declaration begins to draw a clear distinction between liturgical blessings (e.g. sacraments) and pastoral blessings. It reads, “one must also avoid the risk of reducing the meaning of blessings to this [liturgical] point of view alone, for it would lead us to expect the same moral conditions for a simple [pastoral] blessing that are called for in the reception of the sacraments.” Pastoral blessings are not to be confused with the sacraments. For example, the moral conditions for receiving the Eucharist require an individual to be in a state of grace, which require the Sacrament of Reconciliation for any mortal sin. These conditions are not applicable for a spontaneous pastoral blessing. A pastoral blessing is not to be confused with a formal, ritualistic, liturgical rite. Pastoral blessings are given in informal, private, and spontaneous situations. The document explains that “non-ritualized blessings never cease being simple gestures that provide an effective means of increasing trust in God on the part of the people who ask for them, careful that they should not become a liturgical or semi-liturgical act, similar to a sacrament.” For example, when an individual has a random encounter with his priest and asks for a blessing (other examples given in Fiducia Supplicans are “a visit to a shrine, a meeting with a priest, a prayer recited in a group, or during a pilgrimage”). The document explains that to “seek a blessing in the Church is to acknowledge that the life of the Church springs from the womb of God’s mercy and helps us to move forward, to live better, and to respond to the Lord’s will.” This reiterates what Pope Francis said in his Responsum of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He explained that “when one asks for a blessing, one is expressing a petition for God’s assistance, a plea to live better, and confidence in a Father who can help us live better.” Fiducia Supplicans explains further that “people who come spontaneously to ask for a blessing show by this request their sincere openness to transcendence, the confidence of their hearts that they do not trust in their own strength alone, their need for God, and their desire to break out of the narrow confines of this world, enclosed in its limitations.” It would be up to the prudential judgement of the priest to give the blessing.
Now that a clear distinction between liturgical and pastoral blessings has been made and the purpose and essence of pastoral blessings has been explained (i.e. to allow the grace of God to help sinners live according to the Gospel and the will of God and guide individuals away from sin), it is possible to explain in what sense it is possible to bless “couples in irregular situations and of couples of the same sex”. It should be clear at this point that “couple” is distinct from “union”, although this has been a point of confusion. However, I think this can easily be clarified. Fiducia Supplicans already made clear that “the Church does not have the power to impart blessings on unions of persons of the same sex”. It would be absurd to believe that Fiducia Supplicans teaches the Church has no authority to impart blessings on unions of persons of the same sex and the Church has the authority to impart blessings on unions of persons of the same sex. This would be a blatant contradiction. A charitable reading does not allow for such a ridiculous and absurd contradiction. The language is simply expressing the fact that persons are often in irregular and sinful relationships (i.e. couples). This could be the disordered relationship of the “divorced” and remarried or a disordered same-sex relationship. What is clear is that the object of the pastoral blessing is not the disordered relationship, but persons in need of God’s grace and guidance. This was explained authoritatively in Responsum of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which states that pastoral blessings do not “preclude the blessings given to individual persons with homosexual inclinations, who manifest the will to live in fidelity to the revealed plans of God as proposed by Church teaching.” Furthermore, it explicitly rules out any legitimizing, approval, or blessing of disordered same-sex relationships, noting that “any form of blessing that tends to acknowledge their unions as such” are illicit. In addition, it explains that such an illicit blessing “would manifest not the intention to entrust such individual persons to the protection and help of God…but to approve and encourage a choice and way of life that cannot be recognized as objectively ordered to the revealed plans of God”. In short, the Church never encourages persons to sin. Fiducia Supplicans expands in the initial Dubia response, teaching that,
…one should neither provide for nor promote a ritual for the blessings of couples in an irregular situation. At the same time, one should not prevent or prohibit the Church’s closeness to people in every situation in which they might seek God’s help through a simple blessing. In a brief prayer preceding this spontaneous blessing, the ordained minister could ask that the individuals have peace, health, a spirit of patience, dialogue, and mutual assistance—but also God’s light and strength to be able to fulfill his will completely.
Taking into account the informal, private, and spontaneous nature of pastoral blessings and its clear distinction from liturgical blessings, Fiducia Supplicans concludes,
the possibility of blessings for couples in irregular situations and for couples of the same sex, the form of which should not be fixed ritually by ecclesial authorities to avoid producing confusion with the blessing proper to the Sacrament of Marriage. In such cases, a blessing may be imparted that not only has an ascending value but also involves the invocation of a blessing that descends from God upon those who—recognizing themselves to be destitute and in need of his help—do not claim a legitimation of their own status, but who beg that all that is true, good, and humanly valid in their lives and their relationships be enriched, healed, and elevated by the presence of the Holy Spirit. These forms of blessing express a supplication that God may grant those aids that come from the impulses of his Spirit—what classical theology calls “actual grace”—so that human relationships may mature and grow in fidelity to the Gospel, that they may be freed from their imperfections and frailties, and that they may express themselves in the ever-increasing dimension of the divine love.
The specific way God’s actual grace works on individuals in irregular situations will vary depending on the kind of disordered relationship in question. What is clear is that the “couple” in question are asking for a pastoral blessing for the purpose of healing, in no way claiming legitimacy of their disordered union (e.g. same-sex union) and "recognize themselves as destitute and in need of [God's] help". A pastoral blessing will help direct this “couple” away from an intrinsically disordered romantic love and towards a proper form of love consistent with the particular kind of relationship it is (e.g. friendship). This is emphasized when the document states this hypothetical couple "beg that all that is true, good, and humanly valid in their lives and their relationships be enriched, healed, and elevated by the presence of the Holy Spirit." For example, if the irregular situation is a fornicating couple, the pastoral blessing would guide this couple towards the Sacrament of Marriage. For a same-sex couple this could mean a chaste and loving friendship. Again, how God’s actual grace works will vary, but we can be certain that accepting God’s grace will never lead us into sin.
Responsum of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to a dubium regarding the blessing of the unions of persons of the same sex (vatican.va)