VATICAN (CNS): In a press release issued on January 4, the c stressed that while bishops may take a cautious approach to the Vatican’s guidance on blessing same-sex or other unmarried couples, they should not deny their priests the possibility of discerning and imparting blessings on people who ask for them.
“Prudence and attention to the ecclesial context and to the local culture could allow for different methods of application, but not a total or definitive denial of this path that is proposed to priests,” the statement said.
The statement clarified that each bishop has a responsibility to discern the local application of the declaration Fiducia Supplicans [Supplicating Trust] on “the pastoral meaning of blessings,” signed by Pope Francis and published by the dicastery on 18 December 2023, but a bishop should not deny priests the ability to bless people who come to them, the press release said.
Signed by Víctor Manuel Cardinal Fernández, prefect of the dicastery, the statement said it hoped “to help clarify” the reception of Fiducia Supplicans among bishops’ conferences.
Besides causing both outrage and celebration on social media, the declaration was greeted by bishops’ conferences with reactions that ran the gamut from embracing its guidance to outright banning local priests from applying it.
Many episcopal conferences in Western countries, underscoring that the declaration did not change Catholic doctrine on marriage, reacted positively to the document. But others, particularly in Africa, were vocal in their opposition.
The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith said that the statements made by bishops’ conferences “cannot be interpreted as doctrinal opposition,” since Fiducia Supplicans clearly states the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage and sexuality.
“There is no room to distance ourselves doctrinally from this Declaration or to consider it heretical, contrary to the Tradition of the Church or blasphemous,” the dicastery’s statement said.
However, it acknowledged that while in some places “no difficulties arise” for the immediate application of the declaration, “in others it will be necessary not to introduce them” or to wait until more time is provided for study and for catechesis.
Some bishops have forbidden priests from imparting the pastoral blessings laid out in the Vatican document. In other local contexts some bishops have given priests encouragement to discern when such blessings may be appropriate, but the dicastery insisted a priest may perform the blessings “only in private.”
It said that the variety of reactions is not “problematic if it is expressed with due respect for a text signed and approved by the Supreme Pontiff himself, while attempting in some way to accommodate the reflection contained in it.”
The statement also discussed at length the situation in countries where homosexuals are threatened with prison, torture or death for being gay. In those places, “it goes without saying that a blessing would be imprudent,” it said. “It is clear the bishops do not with to expose homosexual persons to violence.”
The dicastery noted that beyond blessings for same-sex couples, the “real novelty” of Fiducia Supplicans, the dicastery said, is not the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations, rather “the invitation to distinguish between two different forms of blessings: ‘liturgical and ritualised’ and ‘spontaneous or pastoral.’”
The statement recognised that while some bishops will choose not to impart pastoral blessings to couples in irregular situations, “we all need to grow equally in the conviction that non-ritualised blessings are not a consecration of the person nor of the couple who receives them, they are not a justification of all their actions, and they are not an endorsement of the life that they lead.”
The dicastery said, “When the pope asked us to grow in a broader understanding of pastoral blessings, he proposed we think of a way of blessing that does not require the placing of so many conditions to carry out this simple gesture of pastoral closeness, which is a means of promoting openness to God in the midst of the most diverse circumstances.”
Concretely, the dicastery said such pastoral blessings last only “a few seconds” and must be performed “without an approved ritual and without a book of blessings.”
If two people approach a priest for a blessing, he “simply asks the Lord for peace, health and other good things for these two people who request it” and that “they may live the Gospel of Christ in full fidelity.”
A simple, brief and non-ritualised blessing “does not intend to justify anything that is not morally acceptable” and is “not an ‘approval’ or ratification of anything either,” the statement went on to say.
The press release also noted that catechesis will be necessary in some places to help people understand that such blessings are “not an endorsement of the life led by those who request them” or a form of absolution, but “simple expressions of pastoral closeness.”
