Category: Who Is The Church

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Fiducia Supplicans news flashback

— 5-star case of the medium being the message

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Here is a fact from life on the religion beat. Several times a year, a religion-beat reporter is going to be approached by an editor who wants him or her to make a photo-assignment for a religious holiday or a story with some kind of religion hook.

They don’t want Southern Baptists in gray suits (or even megachurch tropical shirts). They don’t want Pentecostal believers in church clothes with their hands in the air. (Well, if there were snake-handlers in urban zip codes near elite newsrooms, they’d be big hits with newsroom photo-desks.)

Reporters know what editors want — pictures of Catholic rites. Catholics photograph well. That’s why there are 100 movies about Catholics for every one movie about run-of-the-mill Protestants. (Episcopalians will do, every now and then, especially since they always are several decades ahead of Rome on the historic “reforms,” such as female bishops, etc.)

This brings me, belatedly (I’ve had other things on my mind), to Fiducia Supplicans and what makes that complex and, I would argue, intentionally confusing document so newsworthy and historic.

This was a papal chess move that, in the fine print, stressed that its creators did NOT want to produce photo ops that looked like same-sex marriages. But the big news is that it did precisely that in the media that matter the most — newspapers and television networks in New York City and other deep-blue media environments.

It’s all about the staged visuals. If you look at Fiducia Supplicans from a photo-op perspective, the key New York Times story was perfect. The headline: “Making History on a Tuesday Morning, With the Church’s Blessing.”

These blessing rites had been taking place in Europe for several years now (and privately, we can assume, in North America). The elite press ignored those events, even though — from a church history perspective — they were just as important as blessing rites In. New. York. City.

But anything in New York City, with America’s most important (and Pope Francis favored) priest in a starring role is obviously more important than something in Germany. Right? Now it’s time to celebrate.

The Rev. James Martin gives a blessing to Jason Steidl Jack, left, and his husband, Damian Steidl Jack, center, in Manhattan.

Let’s read through several crucial passages in that Times epistle to the people of America. Note the anti-photo-op Vatican language in the overture which sets up, of course, the Vatican approved, oh so symbolic, photo op.

As a Jesuit priest for more than two decades, the Rev. James Martin has bestowed thousands of blessings — on rosary beads, on babies, on homes, boats, and meals, on statues of saints, on the sick, on brides and on grooms.

Never before, though, was he permitted to bless a same-sex couple — not until … the pope said he would allow such blessings, an announcement that reverberated through the church.

… Damian Steidl Jack, 44, and his husband, Jason Steidl Jack, 38, stood before Father Martin in a living room on Manhattan’s West Side. The couple, running a bit late because of subway delays, dressed casually. Damian, a floral designer, complimented Father Martin on the pine smell of the Christmas tree.

In keeping with the Vatican’s admonition that such a blessing should not be performed with “any clothing, gestures, or words that are proper to a wedding,” Father Martin wore no robes, and read from no text. There is no blessing for same-sex couples in the thick book of blessings published by the U.S. Conference of Bishops. Instead he selected a favorite of his own from the Old Testament.

“May the Lord bless and keep you,” Father Martin began, touching the two men’s shoulders. They bowed their heads slightly, and held hands.

“May the Lord make his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you. May the Lord turn his countenance to you and give you joy and peace.

“And may almighty God bless you,” he said, making the sign of the cross, “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

The big word is “gestures.”

Thus, the photo is the story. That’s the whole point. The photo, for about 99% of readers who see it, says what Catholic progressives want it to say.

Catholic clergy will not be punished for performing these blessings. Catholic clergy who refuse to perform them can expect to get calls from reporters. The leaders of Catholic schools and ministries that choose to dismiss Catholics living in same-sex relationships can expect to be asked by judges whether these employees have been blessed by a priest, acting with the blessing of the pope.

The photo is the story. Protecting the priests in the photos appears — until Vatican actions prove otherwise — to have been the point of Fiducia Supplicans.

The New York TImes report does a great job of contrasting the anti-photo-op language in the Vatican document with the photo-op realities in real life. Again: The photo is the story. Note, again, the word “gesture.”

The pope’s decision was greeted as a landmark victory by advocates for gay Catholics, who describe it as a significant gesture of openness and pastoral care, and a reminder that an institution whose age is measured in millenniums can change.

The decision does not overturn the church’s doctrine that marriage is between a man and a woman. It does not allow priests to perform same-sex marriages. It takes pains to differentiate between the sacrament of marriage — which must take place in a church — and a blessing, which is a more informal, even spontaneous, gesture. And, a priest’s blessing of a same-sex couple should not take place in connection with a civil marriage ceremony, it says.

News of the pope’s decision spread quickly among gay Catholics, many of whom began preparations for blessings of their own after the busy Christmas season.

Ah, Catholics “began preparations” for “spontaneous” gestures.

Keep reading as the Times team moves into Act II:

On the morning of the pope’s announcement, Michael McCabe’s husband, Eric Sherman, ran into his home office in their apartment in Forest Hills, Queens, bursting with news: Their 46-year partnership could at last be blessed.

“You wait so long for the church to come around, you kind of give up hope,” said Mr. McCabe, 73, who attends Mass every Sunday at the Church of St. Francis Xavier in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.

The couple married in 2010 in Connecticut, before same-sex marriages became legal in their home state of New York. They had long been resigned to the church’s stance, even if they had not fully made peace with it, Mr. McCabe said.

“I know that myself and my relationship with my husband are good things,” said Mr. McCabe, who taught catechism to first graders at the church.

In other words, McCabe is said to be a clergy-recognized leader in his parish, even with the strange past-tense reference in the this key language — “who taught catechism to first graders at the church.”

Maybe quote the senior priest in this parish to verify that crucial fact?

One more passage will note the obvious thesis in this story:

In New York City, where a handful of progressive Catholic churches have been on the forefront of welcoming L.G.B.T.Q. parishioners, but have stopped short of marrying them and sanctifying their unions, the news from the Vatican was just as exciting for some priests as it was for their parishioners.

“I say it is about darn time,” said the Rev. Joseph Juracek, pastor of the Church of St. Francis of Assisi in Midtown, who believes the church is finally aligning with Jesus’ teachings: “This is what he is all about: That God is for all people.”

Now they can schedule church blessings and take those crucial photos. That’s the story.

That’s the rite.

At the Outreach website, Father Martin made the same arguments that he made with the Times team (note the reference to his role in the Synod on Synodality):

… [Y]ou may hear from some quarters that “nothing has changed.” It reminds me of my church history professor, John W. O’Malley, S.J., who said that when church teaching changes, the most common introduction is “As the church has always taught… “

Here, Father O’Malley’s insight is made manifest in a slightly different way. Some Catholics oppose any steps toward greater inclusion for LGBTQ people in the life of the church. We saw some of this during the Synod on Synodality, where I was a voting member, with significant pushback from certain quarters on even using the term “LGBTQ.” So, for some, this declaration (even though it specifies that the blessings must not in any way seem like a marriage rite) will be threatening, and the temptation will therefore be to say, “Nothing has changed.”

But a great deal has in fact changed. Before this document was issued, there was no permission for bishops, priests and deacons to bless couples in same-sex unions in any setting. This document establishes, with some limitations, that they can.

Of course, some may say that there are many restrictions (as noted above), while others will note that in some places (most notable in the German church) these blessings were already widespread. (One German bishop told me during the Synod that he himself blessed such unions outside his cathedral.) The change here is that these blessings are now officially sanctioned by the Vatican. Today, with some limitations, I can perform a public blessing of a same-sex couple. Yesterday, I could not.

That spontaneous blessing took place, of course, after working on the photo-desk paperwork at The New York Times.

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Is queer theology compatible with Catholicism?

— U.S. Catholic readers weigh in on how queer theology informs their faith.

By Caleb Murray

Growing up in a conservative evangelical church, the closest I came to understanding queer theology was in narrow, binary terms. Queer theology was theology that debated whether or not the Bible approved or disapproved of queer people. The boundary lines of queer theology mirrored other hot button issues (Abortion—good or bad? Homosexuality—good or bad?). The parameters of what counted as “queer” theology were so narrow (and laser-focused on sexual ethics) that the theological inquiry was effectively drained of all nuance; queer theology was reduced to a moral either/or.

As a straight, heterosexual teenager, I didn’t see myself in these debates, but I did have the nagging sense that—like the abortion debate—the militant my-side-is-right-ism was shortchanging a fascinating and complicated field. This leads me to an intentionally cheeky and provocative claim: There should be no “queer theology,” because all theology is queer. This statement may appear oxymoronic, self-defeating, or something else entirely. I say this not to erase a subfield of theological inquiry, but to reframe an entire field.

All theology is queer. So long as queerness stands for difference, inclusion, and creative upheaval, I will stand by my strange proclamation that all theology is, was, and will continue to be queer.

Scripture and millennia of interpretive tradition have revealed a queer God—a strange God, a mysterious God, a God of radical difference. In the incarnation, God obliterates metaphysics, mixing immanence and transcendence, spirit and matter. In the Eucharist, Catholics affirm a queer belief that accident, substance, and essence are transubstantiated. In mystical prayer, theologians have long queered and (mis)gendered the soul.

But what really is “queer?” Much like the concepts, identities, and orientations that it circumscribes, queerness is broadly and diversely defined by activists and academics alike. Difference (and difference of opinion) is all but baked into what it means to be queer and to define queer. To put it bluntly, for theorists and theologians, activists and self-identifying queer folks, queerness does not come with a one-size-fits-all definition.

Many thinkers and activists have shown how queerness might function as a creative or alternative mode of seeing and experiencing the world. Many philosophers, theologians, and gender theorists define queerness in opposition to the “norm”: For example, if heterosexuality is normative (the default social “norm”), then queerness is understood in the inverse (non-normative, countercultural, or transgressive). Such thinkers have argued quite convincingly that there’s a “problem with normal”: Try defining “normal” heterosexuality in a manner that would include every “straight” person, and you quickly realize that there is no stable category we might confidently label “normal.” Is a celibate, cisgender, heterosexual priest “normal?” Is it “unnatural” for a dad to raise his children while his wife works?

With questions such as these, one quickly realizes that there is no unitary “normal” out there. The observable reality of difference and diversity in the world pops the “normal” bubble. Queerness turns “normal” on its head and teaches us that none of us are very “normal,” and that is a good thing.

If queerness is about more than just same-sex attraction, what is queer theology? For many religious scholars, queer theology is—to put it simply and broadly—theology about queer people. As the theologian Linn Tonstad summarizes, “Queer theology [often] indicates theologies in which 1) sexuality and gender are discussed 2) in ways that affirm, represent, or apologize for queer persons.” Theologians, especially those who write and think along the lines of queer theology, ought to reaffirm the breadth of what queerness is and can be.

Queer theology isn’t just about gay and lesbian people; queer theology isn’t just about non-heterosexual sexual ethics; queer theology isn’t just about contemporary gender politics. Queer theology—if approached capaciously and with humility—is disruptive, creative, and new. Queer theology challenges us to look differently. Queer ways of thinking, inquiring, and arguing might undercut the very logic that attempts to demarcate, bracket, and contain Christian discourse. In useful, productive, or surprising ways, queer modes of knowing might destabilize rigid categories and stultifying traditions. Shouldn’t all theology do this? Doesn’t God exceed every feeble category we create? To pigeonhole queer modes of knowing to the self-contained box labeled “queer theology” is to shortchange Christian theology writ large.

To push this argument a step further, I do not think that theologians ought to merely “queer” theology by finding apologetic examples of homosocial belonging or same-sex love in church history and doctrine; they must acknowledge with humility and embrace with earnestness the possibility that Christian theology is always already queer.

Within scripture and the Christian tradition, readers may find apologetic resources, passages that affirm queer existence, and arguments of acceptance. For example, Romans 8:38 reminds us that nothing can separate us from God’s love. In Psalm 139 the poetic speaker declares that God knows everything about God’s creation, that God created humanity with love and intention, and that God will never abandon anyone. In no uncertain terms, 2 Corinthians 5:19 presents a theology of absolute forgiveness and generous reconciliation—ours is not a scorekeeping God, and in Christ God “no longer count[s] people’s sins against them.” But I am after something other than arguments of rebuttal.

To be clear, these are good resources, and I believe Bible verses that unequivocally affirm a God of infinite love and forgiveness eclipse the various passages pulled by bigots about pre-Judaic marriage law or the direction of fabric warp and weft. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. In my estimation, arguments of rebuttal represent a fraction of what queerness can do for Christian thought and practice. So, with this definition of queer in mind, is it really possible that all Christian theology is queer?

It is difficult to approach scripture and the Christian tradition from outside of “normal.” Indeed, the church has an entire category for the maintenance of normality and tradition: orthodoxy. Orthodoxy draws a line between things that are normal and things that are not—things that are inside the fold and things that are beyond the pale. However, if we try to read the Bible and experience the Christian tradition with new eyes and open hearts—our vision and attachment not yet bound by orthodoxy—we are reminded that Christianity and its sacred texts are often rather strange, abnormal, countercultural, and transgressive.

Reread the Beatitudes and they start to sound a little queer. Reconsider the Trinity and you start to see something homosocial or even homoerotic in its structure of mutuality and God’s self-desire for God’s self. Contemplate the sacred mystery, which revolves around transubstantiation, and you might catch a glimpse of an ineffable God who makes a habit of shattering our categories and expectations.

For hundreds of years Christians have gendered the soul. From medieval mystics to Protestant reformers, the male soul has often been theologized as feminine so that the soul might pursue a heterosexual union with Christ the bridegroom. If one’s sex, gender identity, and gender expression are thoroughly embodied, then it takes some mental gymnastics to “gender” the soul. Again, something queer is going on here. In order to avoid a gay spiritual union with Christ, there is a long tradition of cisgender men affirming the transgender status of their souls. Just as souls might transmigrate from earthly to heavenly bodies, the selective gendering of the embodied soul throws a queer wrench into the way things work. What is the line between material things and ideal objects? Where does spirit end and matter begin? Does the human man’s “female” soul retain its feminine identity, even after the man’s earthly, bodily death?

Queerness haunts the New Testament. Some might argue that Jesus and his male disciples share homosocial bonds—instances of camaraderie and same-sex intimacy, kisses, and declarations of love and fealty. But much of this is anachronistic, a ham-fisted projection of contemporary gender and sexuality categories onto misunderstood history.

But this cuts both ways. Categories are not static. Words and meanings shift over time. Take the creation myths for example. Genesis gives us two conflicting accounts of creation. In one telling, God creates a singular, androgynous human. In another, God creates Man and Woman. This certainly says something about the theological rigor of the “it’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” polemicists who pick a few passages from Genesis while ignoring neighboring paragraphs. Queer theology should not fall for the same reductionism. Instead, queer theology should champion complicated, conflicting, and category-busting inquiry.

Queer theology isn’t about cherry-picking passages that support one’s agenda while ignoring verses that don’t. Indeed, there are passages of scripture that do not square with contemporary LGBTQ politics. I am not after a simple apologetics that “prove” the moral acceptability of certain gender identities and sexual preferences once and for all. Queer theology, as a broader project, should encourage creative, surprising, and even upsetting ways of looking at scripture and tradition.

Queerness—its categorization and its conventions, its advocates and its malcontents—has much to offer Christian thought and practice. The apologists and the bigots will continue to lob their scripture verses at each other, but it is my hope that sincere followers of Christ will listen to queerness’s countervailing promise. It is the promise of approaching things differently, seeing old ideas in a new light, reencountering ancient practices with an openness to renewed life and a future marked by greater justice, lasting peace, and unbridled love. Christ’s ministry witnesses to the queer workings of the divine. His message is and was disruptive, contrarian, and mystifying. Christ’s message to his contemporaries speaks to us today: What you take to be normal might just be average. Don’t settle, you deserve abundant life.

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Joy and alarm in bishops’ responses to Fiducia Supplicans

— Many bishops issued clarifications following local reaction to the document, but these varied considerably in their explanation of the text.

The Palazzo del Sant’Uffizio, seat of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

By Patrick Hudson , Munyaradzi Makoni

Bishops across the world have issued responses to last week’s publication of a Vatican document on blessings for couples in “irregular” relationships, Fiducia Supplicans.

Numerous bishops, particularly in Europe and the US, welcomed the document’s “new idea” of blessings, though many emphasised that it did not provide approval for any “irregular” situation, including same-sex couples.

The document’s chief author Cardinal Víctor Fernández, the prefect of the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), said that Fiducia Supplicans recognised “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”.

Many bishops issued clarifications following local reaction to the document, but these varied considerably in their explanation of the text.

The Archbishop of Salzburg Franz Lackner, who heads the Austrian bishops’ conference, told the public broadcaster Österreichischer Rundfunk that it meant that priests “can no longer say no” when asked for a blessing by any couple.

He expressed “joy” at the recognition that “love, loyalty, and even hardship are shared with one another” in irregular couples.

Lackner’s German counterpart, Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg, similarly emphasised that the document “points to the pastoral importance of a blessing that cannot be refused upon personal request”, while in France the Archbishop of Sens and Auxerre Hervé Giraud said that it promotes “another idea of blessing, a blessing of growth and not a blessing of pure recognition”.

“I myself could give a blessing to a same-sex couple, because I believe it’s based on a beautiful idea of blessing, according to the Gospel and the style of Christ,” Archbishop Giraud told La Croix.

“Pope Francis is trying to move away from the simple ‘permit-prohibit’ to place people under God’s gaze in order to lead them back to safer paths. Blessing opens these safer paths.”

In the Philippines, the president of the bishops’ conference Bishop Pablo Virgilio David of Kalookan issued a statement welcoming Fiducia Supplicans on 20 December, saying it was “clear in its content and intent” and “does not require much explanation”.

This followed a notice of “episcopal guidance” issued by Archbishop Socrates B. Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan on 19 December, detailing “categories of blessings” to which the DDF document had now added “blessings of mercy”.

He said that “asking for mercy is a request for pity and for remedy” and that “when a Catholic priest prays a blessing of mercy on a couple in an irregular situation…he is asking God to have pity on both of them and to give them the grace of conversion so that they can regularise their relationships”.

In a letter to all African and Madagascan bishops dated 20 December, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), requesting their assistance in composing “a single synodal declaration, valid for the whole African Church” on Fiducia Supplicans.

“The ambiguity of [Fiducia Supplicans], which is open to many interpretations and manipulations, causes much confusion among the faithful and I believe that, as pastors of the Church in Africa, we must express clarity on this question in order to give a clear direction to our Christians,” he said.

Cardinal Ambongo’s letter came after African bishops had made a variety of responses to the document.

Malawi’s bishops published a four-point clarification, “having noted certain erroneous interpretations of this declaration that have generated interest, fears and worries amongst Catholics and people who look up to the Catholic Church for moral, spiritual and doctrinal guidance”.

It emphasised that Fiducia Supplicans upholds existing teaching on marriage and does not allow blessings on same-sex unions as such, concluding that “to avoid creating confusion among the faithful, we direct that for pastoral reasons, blessings of any kind and for same-sex unions of any kind, are not permitted in Malawi”.

Bishops in neighbouring Zambia issued a similar directive, saying that the document should be “taken as for further reflection and not for implementation in Zambia”.

In Cameroon, a statement signed by the bishops’ conference president Archbishop Fuanya Nkea of Bamenda condemned “semantic abuses designed to distort the value of realities and the true meaning of the notions of family, couple, spouse, sexuality and marriage”.

Declaring total opposition to homosexuality, it said that “differentiating between liturgical and non-liturgical contexts in order to apply the blessing to same-sex ‘couples’ is hypocritical” and forbid all such blessings.

Few other bishops on the continent issued such explicit prohibitions, though most emphasised that “you are blessing the people and not the union”, in the words of Bishop Matthew Kwasi Gyamfi of Sunyani, president of the Ghanaian bishops’ conference.

“In blessing persons, we do not bless the immoral actions they may perform but hope that the blessing and prayers offered over them as human persons will provoke them to conversion and to return to the ways of the Lord,” the Kenyan bishops’ conference said in its response.

A statement signed by the president of the Southern African Catholic Bishops Bishop Sithembele Sipuka of Umtata said: “The document makes it clear that it is not putting forward a change of doctrine about marriage to include people of the same sex.”

The statement said that Fiducia Supplicans “may be taken as a guide with prudence” and said the conference “will guide further on how such a blessing may be requested and granted to avoid the confusion the document warns against”.

Bishops in Burkina Faso made a similar commitment to further clarification in future.

In the US, many episcopal responses to Fiducia Supplicans were concerned with what Archbishop Samuel Aquila of Denver said was the failure of “the secular media to accurately report what was written in the document”.

He was typical in emphasising that such blessings “can never be seen as legitimising sin” and “should be done with discretion, preferably privately to avoid scandal and confusion”.

A response from the United States’ Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) focused on the “distinction between liturgical (sacramental) blessings, and pastoral blessings, which may be given to persons who desire God’s loving grace in their lives”, as articulated in the document.

“The Church’s teaching on marriage has not changed, and this declaration affirms that, while also making an effort to accompany people through the imparting of pastoral blessings because each of us needs God’s healing love and mercy in our lives,” it said.

In a statement to his Archdiocese of Boston, Cardinal Seán O’Malley emphasised that the Pope “has not endorsed gay marriage” but provided “clarity to how to impart [God’s] blessings”.

“Priests imparting these blessings need to be careful that it should not become a liturgical or semi-liturgical act, similar to a sacrament,” he said.

Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago said that the approach espoused in Fiducia Supplicans “will help many more in our community feel the closeness and compassion of God”.

Bishop David Walkowiak of Grand Rapids, Michigan, said that the document “reaffirms an appropriate pastoral response to people who express a request for these prayers”.

“These spontaneous, private prayers and blessings are given routinely. They are nothing new,” he said.

Bishop Robert Barron of Winnona-Rochester, in his capacity as chairman of the USCCB Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth, issued a statement affirming that “the declaration does not constitute a ‘step’ toward ratification of same-sex marriage nor a compromising of the Church’s teaching regarding those in irregular relationships”.

It was, he said, “very much congruent with Pope Francis’s long-held conviction that those who do not live up to the full demand of the Church’s moral teaching are nevertheless loved and cherished by God and invited to accept the Lord’s offer of forgiveness”.

In a letter to the priests of the Dioceses of Trondheim and Tromsø in Norway, Bishop Erik Varden OCSO said that their “ability to combine responsible theological intelligence with Chrisian charity and pastoral tact” was key to the request in Fiducia Supplicans for “pastoral sensibility”.

He noted the “sincerity, humility, and strength” of Catholics who ask for a blessing at Mass when they cannot receive communion as an instance of blessing individuals in irregular circumstances.

Bishop Varden said that the document provided criteria for the application of “pastoral blessings”, emphasising that they should be private without any “legitimising” intention.

Considering its reference to Scripture, he argued that “a Biblical blessing is rarely an affirmation of a status quo” but instead “confers a call to set out, to be converted”, outlining instances of Christ’s “manifested sternness” which “must count as paradigms of pastoral blessing”.

A response from the Polish bishops’ conference, while not criticising the DDF, expressed serious reservations about the blessings, saying that “avoiding confusion and scandal is virtually impossible” when blessing same-sex couples.

The statement made extensive reference to the Vatican’s 2021 responsum which excluded any possibility of blessing same-sex unions, concluding that “individual people living in complete abstinence” could be blessed “in a private way, outside the liturgy and without any analogy to sacramental rites”.

The Roman Catholic bishops of Ukraine issued a statement on 19 December in response to “a storm of reactions and misunderstandings regarding questions of morality and doctrine” in Fiducia Supplicans.

They criticised its “ambiguous wording”, finding that “merciful acceptance of [a sinner] and express disapproval of his sin is not very clearly visible in the text”.  They also argued that same-sex relationships and irregular heterosexual relationships should not be considered in the same way.

“What we missed in the document is that the Gospel calls sinners to conversion, and without a call to abandon the sinful life of homosexual couples, the blessing can look like approval,” the statement said.

The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church said that Fiducia Supplicans had “no legal force” on Ukrainian Catholics, as it “interprets the pastoral meaning of blessings in the Latin Church, not the Eastern Catholic Churches”.

In a communiqué on 22 December, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk said that his Church had a distinct understanding of blessings, drawn from “its own liturgical, theological, canonical, and spiritual heritage”.

Within this tradition, “the blessing of a priest or bishop is a liturgical gesture that cannot be separated from the rest of the content of the liturgical rites” and “has an evangelising and catechetical dimension [so] can in no way contradict the teaching of the Catholic Church about the family as a faithful, indissoluble, and fertile union of love between a man and a woman”.

“Pastoral discernment urges us to avoid ambiguous gestures, statements, and concepts that would distort or misrepresent God’s word and the teachings of the Church,” the communiqué concluded.

A statement from the Archdiocese of Astana in Kazakhstan was exceptional in its explicit criticism of Pope Francis, claiming that he had departed from the “truth of the Gospel” and asking him “to revoke the permission to bless couples in an irregular situation and same-sex couples”.

The statement, signed by Archbishop Tomash Peta and his auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider, warned of “the great deception and the evil that resides in the very permission to bless [such] couples”, calling such a blessing “a most serious abuse of the Holy Name of God”.

“Therefore, none, not even the most beautiful, of the statements contained in this declaration of the Holy See can minimise the far-reaching and destructive consequences resulting from the effort to legitimise such blessings.”

Archbishop Peta and Bishop Schneider said that these would make the Church “a propagandist of the globalist and ungodly ‘gender ideology’” and prohibited any such blessings in the archdiocese.

Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (now the DDF), published a lengthy criticism of Fiducia Supplicans, denying the validity of “pastoral blessings” bestowed by priests as distinct from Church teaching – and calling it “a sacrilegious and blasphemous act” for a priest to attempt such.

“Given the unity of deeds and words in the Christian faith, one can only accept that it is good to bless [irregular] unions, even in a pastoral way, if one believes that such unions are not objectively contrary to the law of God,” he said.

“It follows that as long as Pope Francis continues to affirm that homosexual unions are always contrary to God’s law, he is implicitly affirming that such blessings cannot be given.”

Amid such reactions, comment from the Vatican focused on the document’s basis in tradition.  Prof Rocco Buttiglione of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences wrote on Vatican News that Fiducia Supplicans was “almost a revolution” but “every authentic revolution is also simultaneously a return to the origins, the missionary presence of Christ in human history”.

He said that the blessings had a “paternal” character which provided “a response to a specific pastoral urgency of our time”, recognising the “rebellious belonging” of many who are bonded to the Church.

Cardinal Fernández maintained that his document wholly affirmed the Church’s teaching on marriage, but said that “does not prevent us from making a gesture of paternity and closeness, otherwise we can become judges who condemn from a pedestal”.

He told US-based news site The Pillar that the “pastoral blessing” outlined in the text was like that offered to any sinner, emphasising the need “to grow in the conviction that non-ritualised blessings are not a consecration of the person, they are not a justification of all his actions, they are not a ratification of the life he leads”.

“I do not know at what point we have so exalted this simple pastoral gesture that we have equated it with the reception of the Eucharist,” he said. “That is why we want to set so many conditions for blessing.”

Fiducia Supplicans prohibits liturgies for the “spontaneous” blessings of couples, and Cardinal Fernández explained that “ritualised forms of blessing irregular couples” were “inadmissible”, specifying Germany as an instance where bishops needed “clarifications” from the DDF.

Regarding the ambivalent or hostile reception of the document in Africa and elsewhere, he said that “prudence and attention to local culture could admit different ways of application, but not a total denial of this step being asked of priests”.

He said he recognised the concerns of bishops in Africa and Asia, particularly in countries where homosexuality is illegal, and emphasised that each was responsible for the document’s interpretation within his diocese.

“What is important is that these bishops’ conferences are not holding a doctrine different from that of the declaration signed by the Pope, because it is the same doctrine as always, but rather they state the need for study and discernment, in order to act with pastoral prudence in this context,” the cardinal said.

Pope Francis reportedly said that the document insisted that “people must be welcomed” in the Church but it did not affect the doctrine of marriage.

“It does not involve the sacrament of marriage. It doesn’t change the sacrament,” he told priests at a meeting in Rome on 21 December, according to Fr Antonio Vettorato FdCC.

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Pope has blessed.

— What about Church?

For the LGBTQ+ community, the Pope’s inclusive tone may come as a Christmas blessing, but with caveats and mixed reactions, its impact on everyday life remains uncertain, given the restrictions on gay rights in many countries.

By Stanley Carvalho

The recent approval by Pope Francis allowing priests to bless unmarried and same-sex couples appears to mark a significant change of stance for the Catholic Church. It aligns with his longstanding viewpoint since his election as Pope. The latest declaration is likely to be interpreted in different ways, with some reading much into it.

For the LGBTQ+ community, the Pope’s inclusive tone may come as a Christmas blessing, but with caveats and mixed reactions, its impact on everyday life remains uncertain, given the restrictions on gay rights in many countries.

The Vatican document made public on December 18 allows Roman Catholic priests to administer blessings to same-sex couples, provided they are not part of regular Church rituals or liturgies nor given in contexts related to civil unions or weddings.

The document referred to “the possibility of blessings for 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 noted that priests should decide on a case-to-case basis and 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. This effectively means authorising priests to offer non-sacramental blessings to same-sex couples, and the blessings should in no way resemble a wedding, which the Church teaches can only happen between a man and a woman.

It must be pointed out that the Vatican holds that marriage is an indissoluble union between man and woman and has long opposed same-sex marriage. The Pope’s ruling is seen widely as a landmark one, a historic shift in the Church’s thinking, but it is not quite the case; it is more like old wine in a new bottle!

Since his election as head of the Catholic Church in 2013, Pope Francis has adopted a conciliatory tone towards the LGBTQ+ community, much to the dismay of conservatives, both the clergy and the laity.

In his early days as Pope, when asked about gay priests, his response was, “Who am I to judge?”.

In the 2020 documentary film Francesco, the Pope called for civil union laws for same-sex couples. It was perhaps his clearest and most emphatic statement on the issue. But in 2021, the Pope, shockingly, approved a Vatican document that ruled against blessing same-sex unions. That negative ruling is now overturned.

Moreover, the latest ruling is, in some ways, a recognition of what has been going on in some European parishes for years, where same-sex couples receive blessings in open worship services, as testified by some priests.

However, Pope Francis’s ruling to document his approval marks a step forward that sends out a message of tolerance and inclusivity to places where LGBTQ+ people are discriminated against or even criminalised for entering into relationships.

In fact, Catholic bishops in certain countries support laws that discriminate against LGBTQ+ people and criminalise same-sex relationships, something the Pope himself acknowledged earlier this year, saying that such bishops need a process of conversion.
Commenting on the ruling on X (formerly Twitter), Fr. James Martin, an American Jesuit priest who administers to
the LGBTQ+ community, termed the document “a major step forward.”

The document, he said, “recognises the deep desire in many Catholic same-sex couples for God’s presence in their loving relationships. Along with many priests, I will now be delighted to bless my friends in same-sex unions.”

While there will be challenges in several countries that oppose same-sex relationships, the bigger challenge could be within the Catholic church and community itself. The conservatives are likely to see the Pope’s ruling as conflicting with the traditional church doctrine that is opposed to “sinful relationships.”

Ulrich Lehner, Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, denounced the Vatican declaration as the most unfortunate public announcement in decades.

“Its imprecise language invites misunderstanding and will sow confusion. Moreover, some bishops will use it as a pretext to do what the document explicitly forbids, especially since the Vatican has not stopped them before. It is—and I hate to say it—an invitation to schism,” he said in a statement widely publicised.

It would be naïve to think that the Pope’s declaration will not be interpreted in different ways in the coming days. There is bound to be some misunderstanding and confusion, as Professor Lehner noted. The subject is likely to generate much discussion across the world.

However, regardless of the reactions and interpretations, what rings out loud is Pope Francis’s consistent stance on extending a larger welcome to LGBTQ+ and same-sex people. Only this time the emphasis is on blessing, the distinction between a simple pastoral blessing and a liturgical blessing, and the many contexts in which they occur.

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Pope’s Shift on Gay Couples Followed Quiet Talks and Loud Resistance

— Pope Francis spoke with L.G.B.T.Q. Catholics and their supporters for years before letting priests bless same-sex couples. But the move’s timing also owed something to its conservative opponents.

By Jason Horowitz

In March 2021, as stunned L.G.B.T.Q. Catholics grappled with a Vatican document approved by Pope Francis that ruled against blessing same-sex unions, one of his confidants, who is gay, says they spoke on the phone.

Juan Carlos Cruz, a sexual abuse survivor who had befriended the pope over years of conversations, says that Francis, who had just returned from Iraq, gave him the sense that the Vatican “machine” had gotten ahead of him in the ruling; it stated that God “cannot bless sin.”

But he says Francis “acknowledged that the buck stops with him. I got the impression that he wanted to fix it.”

For Mr. Cruz, who visited Francis for his 87th birthday over the weekend, and for many L.G.B.T.Q. Catholics, Francis did just that this week. He signed off on a major declaration by the same Vatican office on church doctrine that had issued the negative ruling two years before.

The new rule allows priests to bless same-sex couples as long as the blessing is not connected to the ceremony of a same-sex union, to avoid confusion with the sacrament of marriage. While the declaration does not change church teaching that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered,” it is a concrete sign of acceptance for a portion of the faithful that the church has long castigated.

Juan Carlos Cruz, clean-shaven and with short dark hair, in a gray V-neck sweater and checked shirt.
Juan Carlos Cruz, a sexual abuse survivor from Chile who befriended the pope.

Now, as liberals celebrate and same-sex couples begin receiving public blessings, some are wondering why the pope delivered the groundbreaking rule now, more than a decade after he started his pontificate with a resoundingly inclusive message on gay issues. “Who am I to judge?” he famously said in 2013, when asked about a priest rumored to be gay.

People who have talked to him over the years and Vatican analysts say Francis’ thinking evolved through frequent private conversations with L.G.B.T.Q. Catholics and the priests and nuns who minister to them.

It was a long process, filled with fits and starts, but also the result of a gradual reorganization of the church by Francis, including the recent appointment to top jobs of like-minded churchmen who were amenable to the changes. The death last year of his conservative predecessor freed the pope’s hand, experts say, but they also believe that the overreach of Vatican antagonists — who sought to box Francis in — played a part, backfiring spectacularly.

“Like anyone, he learns from listening,” said Rev. James Martin, a prominent advocate for L.G.B.T.Q. Catholics, who has met frequently with Francis, a fellow Jesuit, and talked to him about the need to better recognize these members of the church.

Speaking this week, Father Martin would not divulge the content of those meetings over recent years, though he noted they had become “longer and longer.” During the most recent conversation in October, around the time of a major church assembly, he said that Francis “encouraged me, as he always does, to focus on the individual, to focus on the person, to focus on the pastoral needs.” The new document, he said, “is very much in line with that, that approach.”

Father James Martin, with a hand upraised, blessing two men in an apartment.
Rev. James Martin, a prominent advocate for L.G.B.T.Q. Catholics, gave a blessing this week after the church ruling.

Francis DeBernardo, the executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based advocacy group for gay Catholics, said he also met with the pope in October and sensed a similar opening to a change. Among the others at the meeting, he said, was Sister Jeannine Gramick, an American nun who has ministered to L.G.B.T.Q. Catholics for a half century and was censured by Francis’ predecessors. Mr. DeBernardo said they met with Francis for 50 minutes and talked about blessings.

“Out of the blue, he said, ‘You know, what gets me most upset are priests who chastise people in the confessional, who reprimand them,’” Mr. DeBernardo recalled. It is that instinct, to emphasize pastoral welcoming over “giving litmus tests for orthodoxy,” that he sees as key to the new document.

The Vatican and the office responsible for the declaration did not reply to requests for comment about specific meetings or the decision-making process behind the document.

In his decade as pope, Francis has filled L.G.B.T.Q. Catholics with hope. He made a point to congratulate Sister Gramick and encourage her work. He met with and ministered to transgender Catholics himself and counseled gay couples on the upbringing of their children. He said homosexuality should not be criminalized and supported civil unions. And he recently made it clear that transgender people can be baptized, serve as godparents and be witnesses at church weddings.

But he also frequently confounded L.G.B.T.Q. Catholics with mixed messages, making it difficult to tell where Francis, for all his inclusive language, actually stood.

After the 2021 ruling against blessings, many of Francis’s liberal supporters note that he immediately sought to distance himself from it. They argue that it was rammed through without the pope’s understanding its full import or that he allowed it to go forward only under pressure from the doctrinal office, an explanation that top conservative cardinals mocked and that members of the office at the time said was simply not true.

Throughout, Francis kept talking to gay Catholics and their advocates, even as he had to weigh tensions on the left and the right that could affect the future of the church.

In Germany, where the church is liberal, priests have been blessing gay unions against Vatican orders, and bishops in Belgium have even published guidelines for blessings at same-sex ceremonies, something the new declaration prohibits. But in conservative African nations, where the church sees its future, opposition to gay rights and unions is fervent.

Already there have been some signs of revolt, with the conservative publication The Catholic Herald reporting that Archbishop Tomash Peta of Saint Mary in Astana, Kazakhstan, had sent a letter prohibiting his priests from performing blessings for same-sex couples, calling the declaration a “great deception.”

Two men standing on front of a priest outside a Gothic cathedral.
Same-sex couples participating in a public blessing ceremony in front of Cologne Cathedral in September. In Germany, where the church is liberal, priests have been blessing gay unions against Vatican orders.

But as Francis has aged, and ailed, he seems to be in more of a hurry to finish remaking his church.

In January last year, he fired the doctrine office’s No. 2 official, Archbishop Giacomo Morandi, who was widely considered responsible for the 2021 document, sending him to a small Italian town. (Archbishop Morandi did not return a request for comment.) In July, the pope then reorganized the office, appointing a close adviser and fellow Argentine, Víctor Manuel Fernández, as its chief.

“Finally after 10 years of pontificate, Francis was able to appoint a cardinal that responds to his vision of the church,” said Mr. Politi.

Sandro Magister, another longtime Vatican expert who thinks that Francis’ unilateral decisions are undercutting his professed belief in a church governed by consensus, agreed that Cardinal Fernández was key, as was the death of the pope’s predecessor, Benedict XVI.

“After Benedict died, Francis has started to dare,” he said. Had Benedict remained alive, he added, Francis would never have made Cardinal Fernández watchdog of the church’s doctrine, a position Benedict held for more than 20 years.

Early in his tenure, Cardinal Fernández, loathed by conservatives, indicated that the question of gay blessings was likely to be examined again. It didn’t take long for conservatives to test him, and Francis.

Víctor Manuel Fernández leading Mass as an archbishop.
Francis appointed a close adviser and fellow Argentine, Víctor Manuel Fernández, to lead the church’s doctrine office.

Over the summer, Cardinal Raymond Burke — an American and the de facto leader of the opposition to the pope — and other conservatives sent a letter to Francis asking for a definitive answer on the blessings. The 2021 document seemed to give them a precedent, and an advantage.

Then they made their demand for clarification public just before a major October assembly of bishops and laypeople that was expected to tackle such sensitive topics. It seemed like a clear warning shot to Francis and his doctrine office.

Cardinal Fernández responded by publishing Francis’ private response. While the pope clearly upheld the church position that marriage could exist only between a man and a woman, he said that priests should exercise “pastoral charity” when it came to requests for blessings, a seeming reversal of the “cannot bless sin” ruling.

Francis seemed to have opened the door a crack. Then, this week, Cardinal Fernández burst through it.

In his introduction to the new rule, he cited the pope’s response to Cardinal Burke as a critical factor in the ruling. It provided, he wrote, “important clarifications for this reflection and represents a decisive element.”

In other words, the conservatives kept pushing for an answer, and they got one.

“Let us remain vigilant,” Pope Francis said Thursday in his traditional Christmas greetings to members of the Curia, the bureaucracy that runs the Vatican, “against rigid ideological positions that often, under the guise of good intentions, separate us from reality and prevent us from moving forward.”

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