The Vatican this week prompted widespread debate among bishops and other Church leaders, after Monday’s publication of Fiducia supplicans, which offers a framework for clerical blessings of same-sex couples.
...Cardinal Gerhard Müller, who led the Vatican’s doctrinal office from 2012 until 2017, said in an essay Thursday the text is “self-contradictory” and “requires further clarification.”
With the Declaration Fiducia supplicans (FS) on the Pastoral Significance of Blessings, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) has made an affirmation that has no precedent in the teaching of the Catholic Church. In fact, this document affirms that it is possible for a priest to bless (not liturgically, but privately) couples who live in a sexual relationship outside of marriage, including same-sex couples. The many questions raised by bishops, priests, and laity in response to these statements deserve a clear and unequivocal response.
Does this statement not clearly contradict Catholic teaching? Are the faithful obliged to accept this new teaching? May the priest perform such new practices that have just been invented? And can the diocesan bishop forbid them if they were to take place in his diocese? To answer these questions, let us see what exactly the document teaches and what arguments it relies on.
The document, which was neither discussed nor approved by the General Assembly of Cardinals and Bishops of this Dicastery, acknowledges that the hypothesis (or teaching?) it proposes is new and that it is based primarily on the pastoral magisterium of Pope Francis.
According to the Catholic faith, the pope and the bishops can set certain pastoral accents and creatively relate the truth of Revelation to the new challenges of each age, as for example in the field of social doctrine or of bioethics, while respecting the fundamental principles of Christian anthropology. But these innovations cannot go beyond what was revealed to them once and for all by the apostles as the word of God (Dei verbum 8).
In fact, there are no biblical texts or texts of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church or previous documents of the magisterium to support the conclusions of FS.
...one can speak of a doctrinal development only if the new explanation is contained, at least implicitly, in Revelation and, above all, does not contradict the dogmatic definitions.
And a doctrinal development that reaches a deeper meaning of the doctrine must have occurred gradually, through a long period of maturation. In point of fact, the last magisterial pronouncement on this matter was issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in a responsum published in March 2021, less than three years ago, and it categorically rejected the possibility of blessing these unions. This applies both to public blessings and to private blessings for people living in sinful conditions.
How does FS justify proposing a new doctrine without contradicting the previous 2021 document?
quite simply francis thinks he can contradict anything.....even himself....
First of all, FS recognizes that both the CDF Responsum of 2021 and the traditional, valid, and binding teaching on blessings do not permit blessings in situations that are contrary to God's law, as in the case of sexual unions outside of marriage.
This is clear for the sacraments, but also for other blessings which FS calls “liturgical.” These “liturgical” blessings belong to what the Church has called “sacramentals,” as witnessed by the Rituale Romanum. In these two types of blessings, there must be an agreement between the blessing and the Church's teaching (FS 9-11).
Now, in reality, this extension beyond the sacraments already takes place through the other blessings approved in the Rituale Romanum. The Church does not require the same moral conditions for a blessing as for receiving a sacrament. This happens, for example, in the case of a penitent who does not want to abandon a sinful situation, but who can humbly ask for a personal blessing so that the Lord may give him light and strength to understand and follow the teachings of the Gospel. This case does not require a new kind of “pastoral” blessing.
Why, then, is it necessary to broaden the meaning of “blessing,” if the blessing as understood in the Roman Ritual already goes beyond the blessing given in a sacrament? The reason is that blessings contemplated by the Roman Ritual are only possible over “things, places, or circumstances that do not contradict the law or the spirit of the Gospel” (FS 10, quoting the Roman Ritual). And this is the point that the DDF wants to overcome, since it wants to bless couples in circumstances, such as same-sex relationships, that contradict the law and the spirit of the Gospel.
It is true that the Church can add “new sacramentals” to existing ones (Vatican II: Sacrosanctum Concilium 79), but she cannot change their meaning in such a way as to trivialize sin, especially in an ideologically charged cultural situation that also misleads the faithful. And this change of meaning is precisely what happens in FS, which invents a new category of blessings beyond those associated with either a sacrament or a blessing as the Church has understood them.
These “c” type blessings, or “pastoral” blessings are a novelty. Not being liturgical but rather of “popular piety,” they would supposedly not compromise evangelical doctrine and would not have to be consistent with either moral norms or Catholic doctrine. What can be said about this new category of blessing?
...it is hazardous to invent new terms that go against the traditional usage of language. Such procedure can give rise to arbitrary exercises of power. In the case at hand, the fact is that a blessing has an objective reality of its own and thus cannot be redefined at will to fit a subjective intention that is contrary to the nature of a blessing. Here Humpty Dumpty's famous line from Alice in Wonderland comes to mind: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.” Alice replies, “The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things.” And Humpty Dumpty says: “The question is which is to be master; that's all.”
...Notice that not only sinful persons are blessed here, but that by blessing the couple, it is the sinful relationship itself that is blessed. Now, God cannot send his grace upon a relationship that is directly opposed to him and cannot be ordered toward him.
... Therefore, if this blessing were given, its only effect would be to confuse the people who receive it or who attend it. They would think that God has blessed what He cannot bless.
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.
Several arguments appear in the text that attempt to justify these blessings.
Card Mueller goes on to repudiate these attempts
his arguments can be read at the link provided below
...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. The teaching of FS is therefore self-contradictory and thus requires further clarification. The Church cannot celebrate one thing and teach another because, as St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote, Christ was the Teacher “who spoke and it was done” (Ephesians 15:1), and one cannot separate his flesh from his word.
... But this would mean that he would not be acting as a priest. In fact, he would have to give these blessings not as a priest of Christ, but as one who has rejected Christ. In fact, by his actions, the priest who blesses these unions presents them as a path to the Creator. Therefore, he commits a sacrilegious and blasphemous act against the Creator's plan and against Christ's death for us, which meant to fulfill the Creator's plan. The diocesan bishop is concerned as well. As pastor of his local church, he is obliged to prevent these sacrilegious acts, otherwise he would become an accomplice to them and would deny the mandate given to him by Christ to confirm his brethren in the faith.
Priests should proclaim God's love and goodness to all people and also help sinners and those who are weak and have difficulty in conversion with counsel and prayer. This is very different from pointing out to them with self-invented but misleading signs and words that God is not so demanding about sin, thus hiding the fact that sin in thought, word and deed distances us from God. There is no blessing, not only in public but also in private, for sinful living conditions that objectively contradict God's holy will.
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).
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