The Conversion of St. Paul. St. Paul said in his letter to the Corinthians: "Ἢ οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι ἄδικοι βασιλείαν Θεοῦ οὐ κληρονομήσουσιν; μὴ πλανᾶσθε. οὔτε πόρνοι, οὔτε εἰδωλολάτραι, οὔτε μοιχοὶ, οὔτε μαλακοὶ οὔτε ἀρσενοκοῖται." Translations vary on this considerably, but it's generally: "Do you not know that the unjust will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor boy prostitutes nor sodomites.nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God. The problem is with the translation of the words, plural, used for sodomites, which seems to describe two different types of homosexual behaviors. Over the last twenty of so years Christianity in the West, but not really elsewhere, has been struggling with same sex attraction and where to draw the line, and in general, with the nature of same sex attraction itself. It shouldn't really be presumed that St. Paul would be hugely impressed with Fr. James Martin, S.J.
Fiducia Supplicans1, the papal "Declaration" (the term itself terms out to be very important) which gave Catholics the Agonizing Advent of 2023.2
This is a difficult post for me for a lot of reasons, which I'll get to. It's slow in coming, for me, for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which is that I was far from home, and hence the helm of my blogging, for a protracted period of time.
The time delay is probably a good thing.
By far the best treatment of
This treatment of it, and the one by The Pillar it references, are so good, I should simply post them and leave it, which I had thought of doing.
That's hard to do, however.
Catholics have a duty of loyalty to Church and Papacy. It’s theological in nature, but it also serves, as a practical matter, to prevent us from becoming Protestants, in which each individual dissenter can dissent right into a new religion. Indeed, while that did happen in the past, with the Protestant Rebellion, which propaganda has termed the Reformation, we’ve been remarkably adept at avoiding that.
We likely won’t be now.
Fiducia Supplicans, does not change any fundamental doctrine at all, in spite of the way Press headlines had it. Rather, what it does is to provide guidance for a topic which had been coming up in the immediate wake of Northern European churches, and in particularly the Church in Germany, which has been undergoing a crisis. Put simply, and therefore perhaps unfairly, the German Church, which is extraordinarily wealthy due to the Kirchensteuer, a tax which levied at the rate of 8% to 9% of annual German incomes, based upon confession, has been seeing its pews clear out. A large number, but not all, of the Germany bishops have seemingly concluded that the Churches holdings on marriage and sex are simply too hard and therefore believe that if only they were modified, the pews would fill back up.
They will not, and in fact the move to dump long held Christian doctrine will accelerate the problem.
The problem itself did not really arise with homosexuality, but rather with regular ol' sex, and more particularly divorce and marriage. Since the Second World War, Germany has seen the rise, as has the rest of European culture, of "mixed" religious marriages. This has been handled in different fashions in different countries, but in Germany it seems that a highly ecumenical approach was taken and its now genuinely the case that many average Germans in such unions really can't see the difference between a Lutheran member of a marriage and a Catholic one. Indeed, a German Catholic friend of mine was baffled by how the Church in the U.S. is not ecumenical to the same degree, although he's a good example of what's happened. Married to an American Protestant, he attends her church, seemingly without giving it much thought.
Marriage is, of course, the consensual permanent union between a man and a woman with a sexual component. That simplified it, of course, but that's basically what it is. It's a complimentary and unitive union, and therefore requires its members to be of opposite genders. Sex outside that union, of any type, is destructive. Homosexual sex more so than consensual heterosexual sex, as it departs further from our natures, which is ordered to this end.
We have a long post on it elsewhere, but the erosion of the marriage standard, brought about by the pornification of Western culture, the vast increase in its wealth, and pharmaceutical birth control, has been massively destructive. The Church is not complicit in any of these things, but it didn't react well to some of them, everywhere. Divorce was probably its single biggest failure, in hindsight.
Prior to World War Two, mixed marriages were fairly rare, and societally discouraged. With American Catholics becoming Americans first and Catholics with the rise of John F. Kennedy, this much increased in the Catholic World. At the same time, as another thread we are working on will explore, no-fault divorce came in, starting in California, in 1969 and then took the nation by storm. Catholics, who cannot divorce, participated in it nonetheless civilly, and by the 1970s there was a great deal of concern over the plight of "divorce and remarried" Catholics. Anullements became so common within the Church that cynics referred to it as Catholic divorce.
And it's here that I'll start my criticism. Catholics are basically taught to never question an annulment, and as a matter of Canon Law, if they obtain one, it's a valid annulment.
I frankly question them.
A typical view is this one of annulments, which are given to defend the process, is that all those involved in them are highly trained and faithful and loyal Catholics, all of whom have extensive experience with the difficult topics they raise. The high granting rate is due to many people, and indeed at one time Pope Francis even suggested most people, wrongly enter into marriage in the modern world and fail to appreciate its gravity.
Well, I'll be blisteringly frank. I don't really think that's true.
I think it's become accepted as true, however, by a large number of people and so now even amongst Catholics it's a process in which the result is basically presumed. If you petition for an annulment, you will get it, more likely than not. Interestingly, there is a small movement of nearly forgotten Catholics who are called Standers who absolutely refuse to recognize an annulment of their marriage, choosing instead to "stand" for their wedding vows.
They're heroic.3
Anyhow, once the marriage standards really eroded in the Catholic world, it makes it really difficult to hold the line anywhere else. If a person can vow to God to remain faithful to another period until death, but then not do it, and remarry, and the Church then practically bend over backwards to accommodate them, its pretty much impossible to argue that any other irregular union is really bad. We have been at the point at which we've been wringing our hands on the tragedy of "divorced and remarried Catholics" for a long time and there have been huge inroads in Europe into accommodating their situation, and the same is true, but to a much lesser degree, in the United States. Let's be frank, to a huge degree this is simply accommodating adulterous Catholics.
Having sought to accommodate them, why not accommodate any Catholic who is in an irregular sexual union?
There's really no reason not to do so.
Save for the originally one. In the view of the Church, they're gravely sinful.
For that reason we would have been much better off simply telling "divorce and remarried" Catholics "you aren't divorced, and you are living in an adulterous union, abandon No. 2 and go back to No. 1". And in the annulment process, in my view, once you are up over 20%, it's questionable at best.
And frankly, at that point, the question of why can't you bless gay unions and turn a blind eye inevitably gets down to "well, homosexual sex is weird', which may in fact be true, but which is an uncomfortable argument to be making, particularly in the wake of clergy scandals, now largely addressed, that involved homosexuality (even though pro homosexual Catholics don't like it to be characterized in that fashion.
Fiducia Supplicans, in large part, is Pope Francis’ effort to gently herd a heretical body of German Catholics back into line who have determined the "well it's just weird" argument doesn't work, and who are worried about their emptying pews. It’s not going to work. Having drank deeply of the wine of pop culture, well funded by German tax money, and having been in open defiance for years, the German Bishops wish, fairly clearly, to cut St. Paul out of the Bible on the Basis that a tiny minority of Western Europeans who prefer same gender sex are in relationships that are the equivalent of male/female sex, even though vast tracks of the world don’t recognize this social fantasy at all, and it is instead most likely a byproduct of Western culture. Yes, the attraction is real, no it is not genetic, and no, it’s not the same as real sex. They’d ignore that all in the hopes that if only the Church would retroactively change the Gospels in the name of modern science, even it is lacking, the Church's would fill back up.
Christianity has always held the opposite.
Seeking to address a developing schism, or so it seems to me, Pope Francis issued a long, long letter on non-liturgical blessings of people in “irregular unions”. Let’s be honest about this, the number of people in irregular unions globally is vast, and would include polygamous unions, non-married real sex couples, men with mistresses, women cheating on their husbands, incest, you name it. But that’s not really what the letter is about, and we all know that. It’s about homosexuals, who are almost all of European culture, who have received a lot of attention as they’re relatively well funded, and who live in a dying culture of declining relevance, which, like Rome in 450, doesn’t know that and still seems to be a really big deal. Fifty years from now, nobody is going to care what Western European culture, which includes us, thinks about anything whatsoever, but from the Dneipr to the Pacific, we don’t grasp that right now.
Africans do.
So do Asians.
And Eastern Europeans, who have always ridden between the East and West, more Western than Eastern, but not quite Western European, do.
The German Church held up well over the centuries, but like many areas of the world, the vast increase in wealth after World War Two weakened it. Pews began to clear out, and desperate Bishops concluded that it was because Christianity was just too hard. Noticing that people with a lot of money spend a lot of time thinking about sex, they’ve concluded that the Church’s rules about sex, which is to say Christian doctrine itself, must be keeping people out of the Churches. Just make it easy, the thought is, and people will come back.
Well, the easiest thing to do, for people who like things easy, is just not to come. Seemingly, Bishops fail to understand this in some circumstances. More interestingly, the difficulty of some things attracts people.
Men join the Marines because few women are in it, and it's hard, not because its easy, and not because its not exclusive.
So now what?
Well, this is thrown things into an extremely tricky situation for Catholics to navigate. Pope Francis not telling us anything that is new, or is he? To add to it, when he states things as Pope, in his magisterial capacity, even if he's not speaking infallibly, Catholics are bound to respect and comport to it, even if they mentally hold reservations. That is a matter of Canon law and would seem to apply here, I guess. Particularly given the high status of the declaration. That having been said, there's been a massive reaction to the document on the part of the conservative elements of the Church, which in fact may be most of the Church, including by its most senior leaders.
In fact, the reaction in some quarters has been so negative, that the Catholic World Report has a headline article that was captioned:
Fiducia supplicans appears to have failed spectacularly
In that article, it is noted:
Some dioceses—mainly though not exclusively in western Europe—made a show of enthusiastically embracing the business, even though a facial reading of Fiducia would require many of them to halt plans for para-ritual blessings of gay unions or even roll back policies already articulated, for the implementation of which blessing formulae have already received at least preliminary local approval.
From other jurisdictions—many of them geographically located in the global south—the reception ranged from frigid to actively hostile, with several national bishops’ conferences flatly refusing to implement the declaration at all.
The cardinal-president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conference of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), Fridolin Ambongo, issued a call mid-week for talks among African bishops with a view to preparing a unified “continental” response.
That is a politically fascinating development, since it came from a fellow who is a member of Pope Francis’s C9 “small council” of cardinal advisors. It raises the question whether Ambongo has deployed a temporizing measure in hope of allowing Francis to walk things back. Alternatively, he may have thrown in with his continental confreres in the episcopate, many of whom have already balked at Fiducia supplicans.
At least one Church sui iuris, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, basically said the declaration applies only for Latin-rite (Roman) Catholics and is null within Ukrainian Greek ritual jurisdiction. The UGCC statement, however, also strongly suggested reasons beyond the merely legal and jurisdictional for refusing to heed Fiducia supplicans.
“[T]he blessing of a priest always has an Evangelical and Catechetical dimension,” the statement from UGCC Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk reads, “and therefore can in no way contradict the teaching of the Catholic Church about the family as a faithful, indissoluble, and fruitful union of love between a man and a woman, which Our Lord Jesus Christ raised to the dignity of the Holy Sacrament of Matrimony.”
For example, German Cardinal Muller, a conservative German cardinal, came out with a blistering statement regarding it which was published in First Things and The Pillar. In it, he stated:
The difficulty of blessing a union or couple is especially evident in the case of homosexuality. For in the Bible, a blessing has to do with the order that God has created and that he has declared to be good. This order is based on the sexual difference of male and female, called to be one flesh. Blessing a reality that is contrary to creation is not only impossible, it is blasphemy. Once again, it is not a question of blessing persons who “live in a union that cannot be compared in any way to marriage” (FS, n. 30), but of blessing the very union that cannot be compared to marriage. It is precisely for this purpose that a new kind of blessing is created (FS 7, 12).
And he concluded with:
At a time when a false anthropology is undermining the divine institution of marriage between a man and a woman, with the family and its children, the Church should remember the words of her Lord and Head: ““Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many. How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few” (Mt 7:13-14).
The Church in Africa nearly uniformly reacted with veiled criticism, with at least one noting the cultural divide that it didn't expect homosexuals to present for blessings, but rather polygamous individuals, given this declaration. Archbishop Chaput, a highly respected U.S. retired archbishop, also authored an article in First Things calling things a "mess". It concluded with:
Over the past decade ambiguity on certain matters of Catholic doctrine and practice has become a pattern for the current pontificate. The pope’s criticism of American Catholics has too often been unjust and uninformed. Much of the German Church is effectively in schism, yet Rome first unwisely tolerated Germany’s “synodal path,” and then reacted too slowly to preclude the negative results. At a time when fatherhood and male Christian spiritual leadership are in crisis, the Holy Father has asked his International Theological Commission to work on “de-masculinizing” the Church. The most urgent challenge that Christians face in today’s world is anthropological: who and what a human being is; whether we have some higher purpose that warrants our special dignity as a species; whether we’re anything more than unusually smart animals who can invent and reinvent ourselves. And yet our focus for 2024 is a synod on synodality.
Saying these things, of course, will invite claims of “disloyalty.” But the real disloyalty is not speaking the truth with love. And that word “love” is not some free-floating balloon of goodwill. It’s an empty shell without the truth to fill it. In Brazil in 2013, the Holy Father encouraged young people to “make a mess.” That’s come to pass in ways surely unintended by the pope. But in the end, pastoral leaders are accountable for their words and their actions. Because, as St. Paul said so long ago, “God is not the author of confusion but of peace.”
Going essentially one step further, maybe, the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church noted that the document was issued by the Pope as the Bishop of Rome, and therefore only applied to the Latin Rite, and not to the Ukrainian Catholic Church at all.
Individual Priest have reacted, in the West, in confusing ways. Father James Martin, S.J., who has built a ministry out of supporting homosexuality, basically, was immediately photographed performing a blessing, with the photo appearing in the New York Times. Msgr Charles Pope, however, a major Catholic figure, noted the following:
Msgr Pope, and the latter comments by African Bishops, may have actually nailed things on the head. Blessings couples as couples is one thing, blessing individuals, even who present as a couple, is another. As some dutifully loyal Catholic have pointed out, a blessing may lead to reconciliation with the Church and its teachings, and perhaps even to existential reality.
Indeed, years ago I read an article by a homosexual Catholic who had grown angry with Priests who kept excusing his homosexual activity, and even confronted them on it. He'd lived the homosexual life but had reconciled to comporting with the teaching of the Church. More radically, Milo Yiannopoulos, a controversial figure, was interviewed by the then less radical Patrick Coffin and urged the orthodox view even while he was in a homosexual relationship. Apparently he has since abandoned homosexuality and now advocates for conversion therapy, something that progressives hate, but which at least showed his personal devotion to his convictions.
Reaction has been in fact so stout that the actual author of the document, Cardinal Víctor Manuel “Tucho” Fernández, has had to clarify what it means, twice, the second time coming after he stated that there would be no more clarifications. That this happened so rapidly is noteworthy in that the document itself was a response to a dubia that had lingered so long it was assumed that there would be no response. In an interview in The Pillar, he stated, in part:
These kinds of blessings are simply simple pastoral channels that help to express people's faith, even if those people are great sinners.
Therefore, by giving this blessing to two people who spontaneously come forward to request it, one can legitimately ask God to grant them health, peace, prosperity—the things that we all ask for and that a sinner can also ask for.
At the same time, since one can think that in the daily lives of these two persons, not everything is sin, one can therefore pray for them [to receive] a spirit of dialogue, patience, mutual help.
But the declaration also mentions a request for help from the Holy Spirit so that this relationship, which is often unknown to the priest, may be purified of everything that does not respond to the Gospel and the will of God, and may mature along the lines of God's plan.
Well, now what?
Fr. Dwight Longnecker, a convert to Catholicism from Anglicanism, and a noted blogger, has stated the following will likely occur, although he did this back on December 20, when things were just really starting to play out:
But what will the continued fallout be? Here is a list of things that will happen:
- Conservative Catholics will look for another church home–the SSPX the Eastern Orthodox or one of any number of traditionalist sects
- Ordinary Catholics who simply see this as crazy Vatican political correctness will just leave.
- Faithful Catholics will vote with their wallet. Prepare to see “Peter’s Pence” become Peter’s penniless.
- This financial hit will not only affect the Vatican, but will hurt parishes, dioceses and Catholic apostolates
- Ecumenical relations with conservative non-Catholic denominations will be destroyed
- Ecumenical relations with the Eastern Orthodox will be undermined.
- Evangelization efforts among individual non-Catholic Christians will be undermined.
- Despite “synodality” being the catchphrase of the moment. The document was prepared by Fernandez and the Pope without widespread consultation.
- Co-operation from bishops, clergy and people will dwindle. Already several bishop’s conferences have said they will not implement the advice in Fiducia Supplicans. Others will be more passive and just ignore it.
- Faithful Catholics will not dissent and rebel. At best they’ll simply ignore anything that comes from the Vatican. At worst they will launch resistance movements. These movements will be smart, hard working and well funded…and they will cause more division in the church.
- Division in the church will increase and may culminate in schism. The schism may come from progressive Catholics for whom Fiducia Supplicans did not go far enough or from conservative Catholics who are fed up.
- Already overworked parish priests will be put in a hot spot when people in “irregular relationships” call to arrange for “blessing services”. How will they navigate the pastoral minefield?
- When priests decline to conduct blessings for same sex couples will their diocese be sued? Has anybody thought of that?
- Worst of all the authority and respect for the papacy itself will be permanently damaged.
What can be done? I don’t know what can be done on the international level. Popes come and popes go. This pope has shown that a previous pope’s decrees can be reversed. Maybe the next pope will not be so fond of “making a mess”.
I do know what ordinary Catholics and Catholic clergy can do. We can be faithful to the gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ in our own lives, our own homes, parishes and schools. As I have said on this blog time and time again, “Don’t worry so much about what is happening in Rome. Worry about what is happening at home. Be faithful at the local level. Local is real. Do what you can with what you have where you are. The answer to confusion is clarity. Be clear in your faith, in your devotion and your Christian witness. Pray, work, witness joyfully and do not be afraid.
I don't think his views can be discounted, although because of the reaction so far, I don't think they'll be as dire as he predicted at the time. The double clarification that occured has already reduced the impression, amongst Catholics, that this is a frightening doctrinal change. Those who want to believe that hit heralds one, like Fr. James Martin, will continue to act the way they have been.
The real test, however, comes with the Northern European Bishops, who have said that the document won't be adhered to, as they're already giving liturgical blessing and intend to continue to do so. About this, Fr. Joseph Krupp has noted the following:
Fr. Joseph Krupp@Joeinblack
This is where the rubber hits the road. This is where we find out the motives of the Vatican in releasing this document.
If they bring the hammer down on these bishops, we will know that document was a gift to the church.
If they don’t, then it’s justifiable to consider it the long con.
Fr Matthew P. Schneider, LC@FrMatthewLC
Dec 21
"🔸German Church to proceed ‘as planned’ with same-sex blessing texts🇩🇪"
This is explicitly & repeatedly forbidden by Fiducia Supplicans (& the prior document said so too). This would seem to be an act of schism. Please pray this does not happen & pray for unity in the Church. twitter.com/LukeCoppen/sta…
Wow, using those words, by a Parish Priest, is truly remarkable.
Rome now really does have to react to the German Bishops. With the fallout from Supplicans being quite rapid, a real rarity, it has shown it can react quickly. But it rarely does. Here, the Vatican really doesn't have the luxury, in my view, of a slow and deliberate response. Indeed, doing the slow and deliberate response over a period of years has led to this crisis. In the current age, speed, often, works as well as deliberation.
Beyond that, there's a real "now what?" aspect to this, in no small part as it appears that the Vatican was in no way prepared for this reaction, a reaction in which the German church is keeping on going its own way, and an African rebellion threatens to do the very same, in another direction. Again, Catholic World Report noted:
Fernández also spoke of meetings upcoming between German bishops engaged in their own “synodal way” and various dicastery heads in Rome. Fernández also mentioned his own plans to visit Germany for “conversations” he believes will be “important.”
More broadly, “[W]e are currently discussing these issues with presidents of bishops’ conferences and with groups of bishops visiting the dicastery,” Fernández said. That sounds like the phones are busy both at DDF and in the Domus Sanctae Marthae where Pope Francis lives. It also sounds like Fiducia supplicans is on the agenda for bishops coming on their periodic ad limina visits. It also sounds like a prefect blindsided and flummoxed, temporizing and at some pains—not to say “desperate”—to make it look like he has a handle on things. It looks like a fellow trying to put lighting in a bottle, or at least closing a barn door after the horse has fled.
Lots of folks are asking why the consultation is only happening now? Frankly, it’s a good question. That the strongest resistance is coming largely from the global south and the developing world only reinforces the already powerful impression that Pope Francis’s solicitude for “the peripheries” is only so much talk.
Fernández, for his part, has staked a long and rocky row to hoe, insisting in the interview that bishops may not prohibit what the pope has permitted with Fiducia supplicans, especially since at least one national conference—Malawi—has already issued an explicit prohibition, in addition to the dioceses and conferences that have said they won’t be implementing it.
Pope Francis has put himself in an impossible situation. Popes do that, from time to time. It usually isn’t that big a deal. In the age of instant communications and 24-hour news cycles, however, a big enough crisis could put the implosion of a pontificate on display for the entire world, in real time. It may be too early to say whether that really is what we are seeing at present, but it is impossible to be sure we aren’t seeing it, and that is … bad enough.
If Fiducia Supplicans were issued by a private business, or by a government body, the reaction would have been obvious. It would have been withdrawn by now. But as it was issued by a Pope, it and delves into doctrinal matters at some level, it really cannot be. The surprising thing here were the double clarifications by its author, which at some level moves towards the right and orthodoxy regaining supremacy here. The next thing that must occur is a severe disciplining of the German Bishops. At this point, even if that results in an outright schism, it needs to occur.
It won't, however, as at that point the German government will step in and declare that it's time for the Church Tax to end. And indeed, that day is long overdue. It should end. Indeed, at this point, if it's possible to do, the Vatican ought to simply levy a tax on the German church itself, which has wealth, inf not bodies in the pews, and redistribute those funds to the African church, which as the opposite situation.
Long term, from an orthodox point of view, Supplicans will prove to be a blessing to the Church, but that degree is up to younger Catholics to implement, and it will not be for the reason the Fr. James Martin's of the Church believe it to be. It'll be the last line down this path, with it going no further. With this sparking a real rise in the African Church, we see the future of the Church.
Footnotes:
*Fiducia Supplicans was released late in advent which has sparked noted criticism for taking the second most joyous period of the year on the Catholic calendar, second only to Easter, and making it one of extreme divisiveness and debate. The release date is curious, coming in late advent.
The title here purposely recalls The Long Lent of 2002 in which major news stories of clerical sexual scandals taking place in prior decades broke.
1. See the Appendix below for the entire document.
2. Joe In Black's excellent podcast examining this topic explains that a Declaration is a Papal Document which is the highest order, and issued very rarely. This Declaration is actually a response, technically, to a dubia which was a followup on a prior dubia by several highly orthodox and conservative cardinals.
3. I frankly really wonder about this topic and while it's hugely controversial in Catholic circles to suggest it, I feel that probably a majority of annulments are granted on insufficient grounds, and some involve outright misrepresentations, or misrepresentative shadings of the truth. I don't know the implication of that, however.
Defenders of the system are so ardent in their defense of it that their response is close to "shut up". Indeed, I recently saw this happen on Twitter on the feed of a Catholic Priest who is a podcaster and whose material I very much admire. Some vloggers whom I don't know, suggested that a lot of annulments were fraudulent and therefore ineffective. Catholic Priests who responded, as well as apologists, reacted with outrage.
Well, while I respect their opinion, and while I'm not a theologian or a trained apologist, I'm not without my doubts here.
Taking the defense side first, which is the overwhelming Catholic majority opinion, and which has highly valid points, there are several defenses, apparently. Having researched it a bit following that Twitter storm, one good point is that an annulment is a decree of the Church that a marriage is invalid and if not appealed, or if appealed and held up, that's the official result. The parties were therefore never married by Church law, and that's that.
And that is a pretty good argument.
The second argument has to do with marriage in general, which is that modern society is so messed up a very high percentage of people get "married" but don't grasp what they're doing.
Hmmm. . . .
Anyhow, that's a typical Catholic defense of the high percentage of annulments that are granted to petitioners.
The third one is that the process is supposedly so arduous that it weeds out those who would not be granted an annulment. And apparently it is arduous, with lengthy forms to fill out and the requirement for witnesses. That adds an element of embarrassment, supposedly.
A fourth argument, and this is a good one, is that a lot of marriages lack proper canonical form and are therefore, under Canon Law, void de jure. Marriages that weren't performed by a Priest or without dispensation are an example. Another one, which is similar, is where one party failed to disclose a lack of a Baptism and perhaps the Priests were sloppy in catching it. I know of at least two examples of these things occurring, although neither resulted in annulments, as people didn't petition for them.
So there you have it.
Well, color me skeptical on all of this. I'm not convinced. Having been a civil litigator for decades, I well know that 1) people lie in every legal proceeding; and 2) people convince themselves of positions that suit their goals and convince themselves that they are true, even if frankly they are far from it. And in order to obtain what they want, they're often willing to undergo an arduous, and even embarrassing process, although the embarrassment frankly would be reduced by the presence of dedicated people associated with it.
Everything is supposed to be caught, of course, but those due and diligent participants in the process.
That, as noted, doesn't mean much to me either.
I've watched legal proceedings in the domestic arena proceed with a lack of care and procedure for years. Divorces in Wyoming are assumed, for instance, to be automatically granted and only recently did a defendant take one on and keep it from occurring. For fifty years, nonetheless, people have assumed that Wyoming has absolute "no fault" divorce, when in fact it never, ever has.
A church body is different, however, but having been on a different type of church body myself before, I'm also not left with much confidence there. I suspect that people associated with it are good and sincere Catholics, but the fact that the culture now has a feeling of intense sympathy with people going through the process frankly leads me to suspect that the dedication in that quarter alone, with people seeking to "help" a person through the process, means that the process is going to normally produce a predictable result.
A Catholic who receives an annulment is free to remarry, which is usually why they are granted, and of course even a person contesting an annulment, when it is granted, and it probably will be, is free to as well. Society says they should move on and do just that. Frankly, the Standers have the better argument in my view and while I have on theological basis to question it, I do question how many who received annulments and went on to remarry will find that they were adulterers in the next world.
I guess I'm a sympathizer with the Standers.
I'd note that in my brief effort to research this, it seems that there is at least a possibility that annulments are sometimes defectively given. Note this item on Catholic Answers:
Question:
My ex-wife and I are reconciling. Can our marriage annulment be reversed?
Answer:
No, an annulment cannot be reversed unless the grounds that were the basis for the decree of nullity are demonstrably shown to be false.
In order to issue a decree of nullity, the tribunal judges must reach moral certainty that an essential element to the consent of marriage was missing. Moral certainty is more than a judgment of probability, personal weighing of facts, and is more than even beyond a reasonable doubt. Moral certainty means that enough evidence was provided that the tribunal judges have no other conclusion that can be reached.
Dean of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota, Moral certainty and the search for the objective truth:
The moral certainty in question in this process should be understood to mean the judge’s state of mind, his conviction, and his firm adherence to the truth, made known and proven in the trial, concerning the existence of factors that already invalidated the marriage at the moment of its celebration.
It is not, therefore, a matter of an absolute certainty, in which every possible doubt about the truth of the facts to be judged is totally excluded, nor is it a purely subjective certainty based on personal opinion, sentiment or an impression of the cause; rather, it is a matter of an objective moral certitude, objectively founded on those things [ex actis] which have been carried out and proven in the process (cf. art. 247 3).
If you reconcile with your ex and wish to marry, you will be asked to exchange vows.
I'll note again the short answer: "No, an annulment cannot be reversed unless the grounds that were the basis for the decree of nullity are demonstrably shown to be false."
Assuming that this is correct, the normal answer of "nope, once given it's decided for all eternity" might be wrong. If you can show, if this is correct, that the basis for the decree of nullity was false, demonstratively, the annulment "can be reversed". The bigger question would be if it existed at all.
Of course, what this probably means is that something represented, such as that the couple wasn't married by a Catholic Priest and was required to be, was false. But what happens if a person who asks for an annulment goes back in and says "yes, I was 19, and yes, I said I was confused, but that was a pack of lies. . . I knew exactly what I was doing".
Indeed, what if that person does that, and presents the appropriate evidence, and the other party, the unwilling victim of the annulment, has remarried? Poof, they're an adulter.
Having said that, information of this type is really hard to come by. The whole annulment process itself is mysterious and a bit unfair, from at least a civil litigator's prospective. It doesn't require the participation of both parties, for one thing. And how a decree of nullity is proven to be false is unclear.
A noteworthy example is that of U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II's first marriage, which was actually reversed a decade later after his former wife, Sheila Rauch, addressed the matter in a book. The couple had been married for twelve years, and the Vatican reverse the decree of nullity ten years after it was issued. Kennedy had remarried by that time.
Having said all of that, none other than Dr. Edward Peters, the notable conservative and very orthodox Canon Lawyer dissed Kennedy's book on his blog, noting:
I wanted to like this book. I had seen Sheila Rauch Kennedy on numerous TV talk shows and, while prepared to disagree with her on certain points, I was favorably impressed with her as a person. I was ready to forgive the inaccuracies that typically appear in any work purporting to deal with a technical field but authored by an amateur. Finally, not having the slightest professional connection with this annulment case, I could indulge my iconoclastic streak and say that anybody arguing with a Kennedy can't be all wrong.
But, try as I might, I simply could not warm up to Kennedy's book on the Catholic Church's annulment process, and the further I read in it, the more I concluded that Shattered Faith will never amount to more than a diary-like account of one woman's intensely felt, but ultimately skewed, perception about a controversial process which she does not understand. In order to find the good in Kennedy's book, a fair-minded reader has to overlook a lot of things, beginning with Kennedy's almost exclusive use of feminist categories to frame her experiences and comments.
She feels it highly significant, for example, during her fight against an annulment, she was contacted by and spoke with lots of other women. I ask, what's so special about that? Women tend to talk to other women about similar experiences. My wife can come out of the checkout line at a grocery store with some other woman's life story, just because both of them happen to have squirming babies in front packs. I certainly don't see female communication as evidence of a "conspiracy of silence that had kept us all quiet and powerless," but rather wholesome human nature asserting itself once again.
I grew tired with, and eventually irritated at, Kennedy's frequent assertions that the men who use the Church's annulment process must be doing so to dump on ex-wives. Right now, as a matrimonial judge, I’ve got 10 open annulment cases in trial, and three more cases on appeal. Six of my petitioners in first instance are women, and two of them in second instance are women. Those ratios are not unusual. The annulment process attracts roughly equal numbers of male and female petitioners, and Kennedy cannot, and does not, offer any substantiation for the implication that most men must be abusing the system, and their ex-wives, by filing for annulments.
Of course, all of the inevitable digs about celibate old men running canon law institutions are repeated in this work. Well, I'm neither old nor celibate, and I had to be careful that my "oh-no-not-that-one-again" groans did not wake the two-year-old who slept on my lap as I read this book.
The second thing that interested readers will have to ignore is the prevalence of straw-men arguments throughout the work. Let's take just one, namely, that the annulment process requires people to lie to God.
That's just total baloney. Canon law (cf. canon1391) takes a pretty dim view of lying to tribunals, to say nothing of lying to God. But since we're all against lying to God, disagreeing with Kennedy's assessment that annulments require it somehow gives the impression that one is soft on lying in general, just as long as one avoids lying to God. That's precisely what makes straw-men arguments so much fun for authors, and so maddening for readers.
But, granting that there are frequent straw-men arguments, inadequate feminist analysis, the inevitable technical inaccuracies I feared, a monolithic view of the Church, and very few new facts about the case itself, what good can be gleaned from Shattered Faith? There is some.
First, Kennedy's book shows very clearly the need for a return to genuine, independent canonical advocacy. The present system of canon lawyering is inadequate to modern needs. There are too few trained canon lawyers to begin with (perhaps 2,500 in all of America, compared with the 50,000-plus civil lawyers who graduate from civil law school every year) and nearly all canon lawyers work directly for dioceses.
The perception that such canonists cannot offer consistent, vigorous, independent service is reasonably grounded. The relatively few who do try to offer such assistance face numerous practical and professional hurdles for their efforts. And yet their presence can make all the difference in the world, not simply for the delivery of justice which, thanks be to God, is usually accomplished anyway) but also for the sake of the public's recognition of the delivery of justice. Right now this vital need for healthy Church life is very often missing.
Second, Kennedy's book shows that tribunal officials, and the spokesmen the secular media usually put forward to discuss Catholic issues, are generally ill-prepared to present publicly and faithfully the complexities of a controversial process like annulments.
I tread lightly here, having done but little of that work myself, and I am aware that complex issues such as annulments do not fare well in the electronic world of one-minute attention spans. However, I am convinced that the Church's canonical system for assessing marriages is theologically sound, juridically coherent, and pastorally effective. It deserves better than it received in Kennedy's book. But--and this point is crucial--Kennedy herself deserved better than what she got from the process.
Without denying the anti-Catholicism which undergirds many of the secular attacks on the annulment process--and Kennedy, I think, has nothing to do with such attacks--I can't help but think that at least some of the unfair publicity generated by works like Shattered Faith is our own fault.
Well, I very much respect Dr. Peters, but as a long civil litigator, I'm pretty convinced that a large number of people can convince themselves of anything to justify a position in a contested matter. I'm hugely skeptical of the annulment process.
One final thing. I've termed the Standers "heroic". I think they are, but a real group of people, including some sincere members of the church, regard them as nearly pathologically obstinate. They're certainly rocking the boat by not "accepting and moving on". Well, if they know that the annulment was based on lies, they're heroic.
Appendix:
Declaration
Fiducia Supplicans
On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings
Presentation
This Declaration considers several questions that have come to this Dicastery in recent years. In preparing the document, the Dicastery, as is its practice, consulted experts, undertook a careful drafting process, and discussed the text in the Congresso of the Doctrinal Section of the Dicastery. During that time, the document was discussed with the Holy Father. Finally, the text of the Declaration was submitted to the Holy Father for his review, and he approved it with his signature.
While the subject matter of this document was being studied, the Holy Father’s response to the Dubia of some Cardinals was made known. That response provided important clarifications for this reflection and represents a decisive element for the work of the Dicastery. Since “the Roman Curia is primarily an instrument at the service of the successor of Peter” (Ap. Const. Praedicate Evangelium, II, 1), our work must foster, along with an understanding of the Church’s perennial doctrine, the reception of the Holy Father’s teaching.
As with the Holy Father’s above-mentioned response to the Dubia of two Cardinals, 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. The value of this document, however, is that it offers 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. Such theological reflection, based on the pastoral vision of Pope Francis, implies a real development from what has been said about blessings in the Magisterium and the official texts of the Church. This explains why this text has taken on the typology of a “Declaration.”
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.
This Declaration is also intended as a tribute to the faithful People of God, who worship the Lord with so many gestures of deep trust in his mercy and who, with this confidence, constantly come to seek a blessing from Mother Church.
Víctor Manuel Card. Fernández
Prefect
Introduction
1. The supplicating trust of the faithful People of God receives the gift of blessing that flows from the Heart of Christ through his Church. Pope Francis offers this timely reminder: “The great blessing of God is Jesus Christ. He is the great gift of God, his own Son. He is a blessing for all humanity, a blessing that has saved us all. He is the Eternal Word, with whom the Father blessed us ‘while we were still sinners’ (Rom. 5:8), as St. Paul says. He is the Word made flesh, offered for us on the cross.”[1]
2. Encouraged by such a great and consoling truth, this Dicastery has considered several questions of both a formal and an informal nature about the possibility of blessing same-sex couples and—in light of Pope Francis’ fatherly and pastoral approach—of offering new clarifications on the Responsum ad dubium[2] that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published on 22 February 2021.
3. The above-mentioned Responsum elicited numerous and varied reactions: some welcomed the clarity of the document and its consistency with the Church’s perennial teaching; others did not share the negative response it gave to the question or did not consider the formulation of its answer and the reasons provided in the attached Explanatory Note to be sufficiently clear. To meet the latter reaction with fraternal charity, it seems opportune to take up the theme again and offer a vision that draws together the doctrinal aspects with the pastoral ones in a coherent manner because “all religious teaching ultimately has to be reflected in the teacher’s way of life, which awakens the assent of the heart by its nearness, love, and witness.”[3]
I. The Blessing in the Sacrament of Marriage
4. Pope Francis’ recent response to the second of the five questions posed by two Cardinals[4] offers an opportunity to explore this issue further, especially in its pastoral implications. It is a matter of avoiding that “something that is not marriage is being recognized as marriage.”[5] Therefore, 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”[6]—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.
5. This is also the understanding of marriage that is offered by the Gospel. 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. Such is also the meaning of the Responsum of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which states that the Church does not have the power to impart blessings on unions of persons of the same sex.
6. It should be emphasized that in the Rite of the Sacrament of Marriage, this concerns not just any blessing but a gesture reserved to the ordained minister. In this case, the blessing given by the ordained minister is tied directly to the specific union of a man and a woman, who establish an exclusive and indissoluble covenant by their consent. This fact allows us to highlight the risk of confusing a blessing given to any other union with the Rite that is proper to the Sacrament of Marriage.
II. The Meaning of the Various Blessings
7. The Holy Father’s above-mentioned response invites us to broaden and enrich the meaning of blessings.
8. Blessings are among the most widespread and evolving sacramentals. Indeed, they lead us to grasp God’s presence in all the events of life and remind us that, even in the use of created things, human beings are invited to seek God, to love him, and to serve him faithfully.[7] For this reason, blessings have as their recipients: people; objects of worship and devotion; sacred images; places of life, of work, and suffering; the fruits of the earth and human toil; and all created realities that refer back to the Creator, praising and blessing him by their beauty.
The Liturgical Meaning of the Rites of Blessing
9. 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.
10. Indeed, blessings are celebrated by virtue of faith and are ordered to the praise of God and the spiritual benefit of his people. As the Book of Blessings explains, “so that this intent might become more apparent, by an ancient tradition, the formulas of blessing are primarily aimed at giving glory to God for his gifts, asking for his favors, and restraining the power of evil in the world.”[8] Therefore, those who invoke God’s blessing through the Church are invited to “strengthen their dispositions through faith, for which all things are possible” and to trust in “the love that urges the observance of God’s commandments.”[9] This is why, while “there is always and everywhere an opportunity to praise God through Christ, in the Holy Spirit,” there is also a care to do so with “things, places, or circumstances that do not contradict the law or the spirit of the Gospel.”[10] This is a liturgical understanding of blessings insofar as they are rites officially proposed by the Church.
11. Basing itself on these considerations, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Explanatory Note to its 2021 Responsum recalls that 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 Holy Father reiterated the substance of this Declaration in his Respuestas to the Dubia of two Cardinals.
12. One must also avoid the risk of reducing the meaning of blessings to this point of view alone, for it would lead us to expect the same moral conditions for a simple blessing that are called for in the reception of the sacraments. Such a risk requires that we broaden this perspective further. Indeed, there is the danger that a pastoral gesture that is so beloved and widespread will be subjected to too many moral prerequisites, which, under the claim of control, could overshadow the unconditional power of God’s love that forms the basis for the gesture of blessing.
13. Precisely in this regard, Pope Francis urged us not to “lose pastoral charity, which should permeate all our decisions and attitudes” and to avoid being “judges who only deny, reject, and exclude.”[11] Let us then respond to the Holy Father’s proposal by developing a broader understanding of blessings.
Blessings in Sacred Scripture
14. To reflect on blessings by gathering different points of view, we first need to be enlightened by the voice of Scripture.
15. “May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace” (Num. 6:24-26). This “priestly blessing” we find in the Old Testament, specifically in the Book of Numbers, has a “descending” character since it represents the invocation of a blessing that descends from God upon man: it is one of the oldest texts of divine blessing. Then, there is a second type of blessing we find in the biblical pages: that which “ascends” from earth to heaven, toward God. Blessing in this sense amounts to praising, celebrating, and thanking God for his mercy and his faithfulness, for the wonders he has created, and for all that has come about by his will: “Bless the Lord, my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!” (Ps. 103:1).
16. To God who blesses, we also respond by blessing. Melchizedek, King of Salem, blesses Abram (cf. Gen. 14:19); Rebekah is blessed by family members just before she becomes the bride of Isaac (cf. Gen. 24:60), who, in turn, blesses his son, Jacob (cf. Gen. 27:27). Jacob blesses Pharaoh (cf. Gen. 47:10), his own grandsons, Ephraim and Manasseh (cf. Gen. 48:20), and his twelve sons (cf. Gen. 49:28). Moses and Aaron bless the community (cf. Ex. 39:43; Lev. 9:22). The heads of households bless their children at weddings, before embarking on a journey, and in the imminence of death. These blessings, accordingly, appear to be a superabundant and unconditional gift.
17. The blessing found in the New Testament retains essentially the same meaning it had in the Old Testament. We find the divine gift that “descends,” the human thanksgiving that “ascends,” and the blessing imparted by man that “extends” toward others. Zechariah, having regained the use of speech, blesses the Lord for his wondrous works (cf. Lk. 1:64). Simeon, while holding the newborn Jesus in his arms, blesses God for granting him the grace to contemplate the saving Messiah, and then blesses the child’s parents, Mary and Joseph (cf. Lk. 2:34). Jesus blesses the Father in the famous hymn of praise and exultation he addressed to him: “I praise you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth” (Mt. 11:25).
18. In continuity with the Old Testament, in Jesus as well the blessing is not only ascending, referring to the Father, but is also descending, being poured out on others as a gesture of grace, protection, and goodness. Jesus himself implemented and promoted this practice. For example, he blessed children: “And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands upon them” (Mk. 10:16). And Jesus’ earthly journey will end precisely with a final blessing reserved for the Eleven, shortly before he ascends to the Father: “And lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven” (Lk. 24:50-51). The last image of Jesus on earth is that of his hands being raised in the act of blessing.
19. In his mystery of love, through Christ, God communicates to his Church the power to bless. Granted by God to human beings and bestowed by them on their neighbors, the blessing is transformed into inclusion, solidarity, and peacemaking. It is a positive message of comfort, care, and encouragement. The blessing expresses God’s merciful embrace and the Church’s motherhood, which invites the faithful to have the same feelings as God toward their brothers and sisters.
A Theological-Pastoral Understanding of Blessings
20. One who asks for a blessing show himself to be in need of God’s saving presence in his life and one who asks for a blessing from the Church recognizes the latter as a sacrament of the salvation that God offers. 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.
21. In order to help us understand the value of a more pastoral approach to blessings, Pope Francis urges us to contemplate, with an attitude of faith and fatherly mercy, the fact 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.”[12] This request should, in every way, be valued, accompanied, and received with gratitude. 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.
22. As St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus teaches us, this confidence “is the sole path that leads us to the Love that grants everything. With confidence, the wellspring of grace overflows into our lives [...]. It is most fitting, then, that we should place heartfelt trust not in ourselves but in the infinite mercy of a God who loves us unconditionally [...]. The sin of the world is great but not infinite, whereas the merciful love of the Redeemer is indeed infinite.”[13]
23. When considered outside of a liturgical framework, these expressions of faith are found in a realm of greater spontaneity and freedom. Nevertheless, “the optional nature of pious exercises should in no way be taken to imply an under-estimation or even disrespect for such practices. The way forward in this area requires a correct and wise appreciation of the many riches of popular piety, [and] of the potentiality of these same riches.”[14] In this way, blessings become a pastoral resource to be valued rather than a risk or a problem.
24. From the point of view of pastoral care, blessings should be evaluated as acts of devotion that “are external to the celebration of the Holy Eucharist and of the other sacraments.” Indeed, the “language, rhythm, course, and theological emphasis” of popular piety differ “from those of the corresponding liturgical action.” For this reason, “pious practices must conserve their proper style, simplicity, and language, [and] attempts to impose forms of ‘liturgical celebration’ on them are always to be avoided.”[15]
25. The Church, moreover, must shy away from resting its pastoral praxis on the fixed nature of certain doctrinal or disciplinary schemes, especially when they lead to “a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying.”[16] Thus, when people ask for a blessing, an exhaustive moral analysis should not be placed as a precondition for conferring it. For, those seeking a blessing should not be required to have prior moral perfection.
26. In this perspective, the Holy Father’s Respuestas aid in expanding the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2021 pronouncement from a pastoral point of view. For, the Respuestas invite discernment concerning the possibility of “forms of blessing, requested by one or more persons, that do not convey an erroneous conception of marriage”[17] and, in situations that are morally unacceptable from an objective point of view, account for the fact that “pastoral charity requires us not to treat simply as ‘sinners’ those whose guilt or responsibility may be attenuated by various factors affecting subjective imputability.”[18]
27. In the catechesis cited at the beginning of this Declaration, Pope Francis proposed a description of this kind of blessing that is offered to all without requiring anything. It is worth reading these words with an open heart, for they help us grasp the pastoral meaning of blessings offered without preconditions: “It is God who blesses. In the first pages of the Bible, there is a continual repetition of blessings. God blesses, but humans also give blessings, and soon it turns out that the blessing possesses a special power, which accompanies those who receive it throughout their lives, and disposes man’s heart to be changed by God. [...] So we are more important to God than all the sins we can commit because he is father, he is mother, he is pure love, he has blessed us forever. And he will never stop blessing us. It is a powerful experience to read these biblical texts of blessing in a prison or in a rehabilitation group. To make those people feel that they are still blessed, notwithstanding their serious mistakes, that their heavenly Father continues to will their good and to hope that they will ultimately open themselves to the good. Even if their closest relatives have abandoned them, because they now judge them to be irredeemable, God always sees them as his children.”[19]
28. There are several occasions when people spontaneously ask for a blessing, whether on pilgrimages, at shrines, or even on the street when they meet a priest. By way of example, we can refer to the Book of Blessings, which provides several rites for blessing people, including the elderly, the sick, participants in a catechetical or prayer meeting, pilgrims, those embarking on a journey, volunteer groups and associations, and more. Such blessings are meant for everyone; no one is to be excluded from them. In the introduction to the Order for the Blessing of Elderly People, for example, it is stated that the purpose of this blessing is “so that the elderly themselves may receive from their brethren a testimony of respect and gratitude, while together with them, we give thanks to the Lord for the favors they received from him and for the good they did with his help.”[20] In this case, the subject of the blessing is the elderly person, for whom and with whom thanks is being given to God for the good he has done and for the benefits received. No one can be prevented from this act of giving thanks, and each person—even if he or she lives in situations that are not ordered to the Creator’s plan—possesses positive elements for which we can praise the Lord.
29. From the perspective of the ascending dimension, when one becomes aware of the Lord’s gifts and his unconditional love, even in sinful situations—particularly when a prayer finds a hearing—the believer’s heart lifts its praise to God and blesses him. No one is precluded from this type of blessing. Everyone, individually or together with others, can lift their praise and gratitude to God.
30. The popular understanding of blessings, however, also values the importance of descending blessings. While “it is not appropriate for a Diocese, a Bishops’ Conference, or any other ecclesial structure to constantly and officially establish procedures or rituals for all kinds of matters,”[21] pastoral prudence and wisdom—avoiding all serious forms of scandal and confusion among the faithful—may suggest that the ordained minister join in the prayer of those persons who, although in a union that cannot be compared in any way to a marriage, desire to entrust themselves to the Lord and his mercy, to invoke his help, and to be guided to a greater understanding of his plan of love and of truth.
III. Blessings of Couples in Irregular Situations and of Couples of the Same Sex
31. Within the horizon outlined here appears 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.
32. Indeed, the grace of God works in the lives of those who do not claim to be righteous but who acknowledge themselves humbly as sinners, like everyone else. This grace can orient everything according to the mysterious and unpredictable designs of God. Therefore, with its untiring wisdom and motherly care, the Church welcomes all who approach God with humble hearts, accompanying them with those spiritual aids that enable everyone to understand and realize God’s will fully in their existence.[22]
33. This is a blessing that, although not included in any liturgical rite,[23] unites intercessory prayer with the invocation of God’s help by those who humbly turn to him. God never turns away anyone who approaches him! Ultimately, a blessing offers people a means to increase their trust in God. The request for a blessing, thus, expresses and nurtures openness to the transcendence, mercy, and closeness to God in a thousand concrete circumstances of life, which is no small thing in the world in which we live. It is a seed of the Holy Spirit that must be nurtured, not hindered.
34. The Church’s liturgy itself invites us to adopt this trusting attitude, even in the midst of our sins, lack of merits, weaknesses, and confusions, as witnessed by this beautiful Collect from the Roman Missal: “Almighty ever-living God, who in the abundance of your kindness surpass the merits and the desires of those who entreat you, pour out your mercy upon us to pardon what conscience dreads and to give what prayer does not dare to ask” (Collect for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time). How often, through a pastor’s simple blessing, which does not claim to sanction or legitimize anything, can people experience the nearness of the Father, beyond all “merits” and “desires”?
35. Therefore, the pastoral sensibility of ordained ministers should also be formed to perform blessings spontaneously that are not found in the Book of Blessings.
36. In this sense, it is essential to grasp the Holy Father’s concern that these 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. Indeed, such a ritualization would constitute a serious impoverishment because it would subject a gesture of great value in popular piety to excessive control, depriving ministers of freedom and spontaneity in their pastoral accompaniment of people’s lives.
37. In this regard, there come to mind the following words of the Holy Father, already quoted in part: “Decisions that may be part of pastoral prudence in certain circumstances should not necessarily become a norm. That is to say, it is not appropriate for a Diocese, a Bishops’ Conference, or any other ecclesial structure to constantly and officially establish procedures or rituals for all kinds of matters […]. Canon Law should not and cannot cover everything, nor should the Episcopal Conferences claim to do so with their various documents and protocols, since the life of the Church flows through many channels besides the normative ones.”[24] Thus Pope Francis recalled that “what is part of a practical discernment in particular circumstances cannot be elevated to the level of a rule” because this “would lead to an intolerable casuistry.”[25]
38. For this reason, 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.
39. In any case, precisely to avoid any form of confusion or scandal, when the prayer of blessing is requested by a couple in an irregular situation, even though it is expressed outside the rites prescribed by the liturgical books, this blessing should never be imparted in concurrence with the ceremonies of a civil union, and not even in connection with them. Nor can it be performed with any clothing, gestures, or words that are proper to a wedding.The same applies when the blessing is requested by a same-sex couple.
40. Such a blessing may instead find its place in other contexts, such as a visit to a shrine, a meeting with a priest, a prayer recited in a group, or during a pilgrimage. Indeed, through these blessings that are given not through the ritual forms proper to the liturgy but as an expression of the Church’s maternal heart—similar to those that emanate from the core of popular piety—there is no intention to legitimize anything, but rather to open one’s life to God, to ask for his help to live better, and also to invoke the Holy Spirit so that the values of the Gospel may be lived with greater faithfulness.
41. What has been said in this Declaration regarding the blessings of same-sex couples is sufficient to guide the prudent and fatherly discernment of ordained ministers in this regard. Thus, beyond the guidance provided above, no further responses should be expected about possible ways to regulate details or practicalities regarding blessings of this type.[26]
IV. The Church is the Sacrament of God’s Infinite Love
42. The Church continues to lift up those prayers and supplications that Christ himself—with loud cries and tears—offered in his earthly life (cf. Heb. 5:7), and which enjoy a special efficacy for this reason. In this way, “not only by charity, example, and works of penance, but also by prayer does the ecclesial community exercise a true maternal function in bringing souls to Christ.”[27]
43. The Church is thus the sacrament of God’s infinite love. Therefore, even when a person’s relationship with God is clouded by sin, he can always ask for a blessing, stretching out his hand to God, as Peter did in the storm when he cried out to Jesus, “Lord, save me!” (Mt. 14:30). Indeed, desiring and receiving a blessing can be the possible good in some situations. Pope Francis reminds us that “a small step, in the midst of great human limitations, can be more pleasing to God than a life which appears outwardly in order but moves through the day without confronting great difficulties.”[28] In this way, “what shines forth is the beauty of the saving love of God made manifest in Jesus Christ, who died and rose from the dead.”[29]
44. Any blessing will be an opportunity for a renewed proclamation of the kerygma, an invitation to draw ever closer to the love of Christ. As Pope Benedict XVI taught, “Like Mary, the Church is the mediator of God’s blessing for the world: she receives it in receiving Jesus and she transmits it in bearing Jesus. He is the mercy and the peace that the world, of itself, cannot give, and which it needs always, at least as much as bread.”[30]
45. Taking the above points into account and following the authoritative teaching of Pope Francis, this Dicastery finally wishes to recall that “the root of Christian meekness” is “the ability to feel blessed and the ability to bless [...]. This world needs blessings, and we can give blessings and receive blessings. The Father loves us, and the only thing that remains for us is the joy of blessing him, and the joy of thanking him, and of learning from him […] to bless.”[31] In this way, every brother and every sister will be able to feel that, in the Church, they are always pilgrims, always beggars, always loved, and, despite everything, always blessed.
Víctor Manuel Card. Fernández
Prefect
Mons. Armando MATTEO
Secretary for the Doctrinal Section
Ex Audientia Die 18 December 2023
Francis
[1] Francis, Catechesis on Prayer: The Blessing (2 December 2020).
[2] Cf. Congregatio pro Doctrina Fidei, «Responsum» ad «dubium» de benedictione unionem personarum eiusdem sexus et Nota esplicativa (15 March 2021): AAS 113 (2021), 431-434.
[3] Francis, Ap. Exhort. Evangelii Gaudium (24 November 2013), no. 42: AAS 105 (2013), 1037-1038.
[4] Cf. Francis, Respuestas a los Dubia propuestos por dos Cardenales (11 July 2023).
[5] Ibid., ad dubium 2, c.
[6] Ibid., ad dubium 2, a.
[7] Cfr. Rituale Romanum ex decreto Sacrosancti Oecumenici Concilii Vaticani II instauratum auctoritate Ioannis Pauli PP. II promulgatum, De Benedictionibus, Praenotanda, Editio typica, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Città del Vaticano 2013, no. 12.
[8] Ibid., no. 11: “Quo autem clarius hoc pateat, antiqua ex traditione, formulae benedictionum eo spectant ut imprimis Deum pro eius donis glorificent eiusque impetrent beneficia atque maligni potestatem in mundo compescant.”
[9] Ibid., no. 15: “Quare illi qui benedictionem Dei per Ecclesiam expostulant, dispositiones suas ea fide confirment, cui omnia sunt possibilia; spe innitantur, quae non confundit; caritate praesertim vivificentur, quae mandata Dei servanda urget.”
[10] Ibid., no. 13: “Semper ergo et ubique occasio praebetur Deum per Christum in Spiritu Sancto laudandi, invocandi eique gratias reddendi, dummodo agatur de rebus, locis, vel adiunctis quae normae vel spiritui Evangelii non contradicant.”
[11] Francis, Respuestas a los Dubia propuestos por dos Cardenales, ad dubium 2, d.
[12] Ibid., ad dubium 2, e.
[13] Francis, Ap. Exhort. C’est la Confiance (15 October 2023), nos. 2, 20, 29.
[14] Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy. Principles and Guidelines (9 April 2002), no. 12.
[15] Ibid., no. 13.
[16] Francis, Exhort. Ap. Evangelii Gaudium (24 November 2013), no. 94: AAS 105 (2013), 1060.
[17] Francis, Respuestas a los Dubia propuestos por dos Cardenales, ad dubium 2, e.
[18] Ibid., ad dubium 2, f.
[19] Francis, Catechesis on Prayer: The Blessing (2 December 2020).
[20] De Benedictionibus, no. 258: “Haec benedictio ad hoc tendit ut ipsi senes a fratribus testimonium accipiant reverentiae grataeque mentis, dum simul cum ipsis Domino gratias reddimus pro beneficiis ab eo acceptis et pro bonis operibus eo adiuvante peractis.”
[21] Francis, Respuestas a los Dubia propuestos por dos Cardenales, ad dubium 2, g.
[22] Cf. Francis, Post-Synodal Ap. Exhort. Amoris Laetitia (19 March 2016), no. 250: AAS 108 (2016), 412-413.
[23] Cf. Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (9 April 2002), no. 13: “The objective difference between pious exercises and devotional practices should always be clear in expressions of worship. [...] Acts of devotion and piety are external to the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, and of the other sacraments.”
[24] Francis, Respuestas a los Dubia propuestos por dos Cardenales, ad dubium 2, g.
[25] Francis, Post-Synodal Ap. Exhort. Amoris Laetitia (19 March 2016), no. 304: AAS 108 (2016), 436.
[26] Cf. ibid.
[27]Officium Divinum ex decreto Sacrosancti Oecumenici Concilii Vaticani II instauratum auctoritate Pauli PP. VI promulgatum, Liturgia Horarum iuxta Ritum Romanum, Institutio Generalis de Liturgia Horarum, Editio typica altera, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Città del Vaticano 1985, no. 17: “Itaque non tantum caritate, exemplo et paenitentiae operibus, sed etiam oratione ecclesialis communitas verum erga animas ad Christum adducendas maternum munus exercet.”
[28] Francis, Ap. Exhort. Evangelii Gaudium (24 November 2013), no. 44: AAS 105 (2013), 1038-1039.
[29] Ibid., no. 36: AAS 105 (2013), 1035.
[30] Benedict XVI, Homily on the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. 45th World Day of Peace, Vatican Basilica (1 January 2012): Insegnamenti VIII, 1 (2012), 3.
[31] Francis, Catechesis on Prayer: The Blessing (2 December 2020).
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