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Vatican responds to widespread backlash on same-sex blessing directive

Silhouette of St Peter's Basilica and colonnade, Vatican City. (Image: Raimond Klavins/Unsplash.com)

Vatican City, Jan 4, 2024 / 10:10 am (CNA).

The Vatican’s doctrine office issued a response on Thursday to “clarify the reception of Fiducia Supplicans” amid widespread international backlash to the Vatican’s recent declaration on same-sex blessings.

Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), published a five-page press release on Jan. 4 that refers to Fiducia Supplicans as “perennial doctrine” and underlines that pastoral blessings of couples in irregular situations should not be “an endorsement of the life led by those who request them.”

Fernández said that the responses he has received from bishops’ conferences around the world to the declaration highlight “the need for a more extended period of pastoral reflection” and that what is expressed in these bishops’ statements “cannot be interpreted as doctrinal opposition because the document is clear and definitive about 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 cardinal said, pointing to a few paragraphs in the text of the original declaration that affirms the Church’s doctrine on marriage. You can read the full text of the press release at the bottom of this story.

The clarification was published two and a half weeks after the Dec. 18 publication of Fiducia Supplicans, which prompted strong backlash from bishops in several African and Eastern European countries as well as confusion and division from other parts of the world.

Some bishops have welcomed the declaration, some are approaching it with caution, and others are refusing to implement it.

In the press release, published in six languages, Fernández provides one “concrete example” of what the spontaneous “pastoral blessings” might look like in practice, explaining that they should only last “about 10 or 15 seconds.”

“Since some have raised the question of what these blessings might look like, let us look at a concrete example: Let us imagine that among a large number making a pilgrimage a couple of divorced people, now in a new union, say to the priest: ‘Please give us a blessing, we cannot find work, he is very ill, we do not have a home and life is becoming very difficult: May God help us!” he said.

“In this case, the priest can recite a simple prayer like this: ‘Lord, look at these children of yours, grant them health, work, peace, and mutual help. Free them from everything that contradicts your Gospel and allow them to live according to your will. Amen.’ Then it concludes with the sign of the cross on each of the two persons.”

Fernández said that priests giving these types of blessings should “not impose conditions” or “enquire about the intimate lives of these people.”

He added that “this non-ritualized form of blessing, with the simplicity and brevity of its form, does not intend to justify anything that is not morally acceptable.”

“It remains clear, therefore, that the blessing must not take place in a prominent place within a sacred building, or in front of an altar, as this also would create confusion,” Fernández added in the clarification.

The press release did not mention anything about cases in which priests have already violated the terms stipulated in the Fiducia Supplicans declaration, which requires that blessings be spontaneous and cannot be a “blessing similar to a liturgical rite that can create confusion.”

The cardinal emphasized that the “real novelty of this declaration” is “the invitation to distinguish between two different forms of blessings: ‘liturgical or ritualized’ and ‘spontaneous or pastoral.’”

“The central theme … is to have a broader understanding of blessings and of the proposal that these pastoral blessings, which do not require the same conditions as blessings in a liturgical or ritual context, flourish. Consequently, leaving polemics aside, the text requires an effort to reflect serenely, with the heart of shepherds, free from all ideology,” he said.

The DDF’s press release says that the same-sex blessing declaration may require more time for its application “depending on local contexts and the discernment of each diocesan bishop with his diocese.”

“In some places, no difficulties arise for their immediate application, while in others it will be necessary not to introduce them, while taking the time necessary for reading and interpretation,” Fernández said.

The cardinal added that it is fine that some bishops have, for example, established that priests perform these blessings only in private, so long as this 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 clarification also notes that in countries where there are “laws that condemn the mere act of declaring oneself as a homosexual with prison and in some cases with torture and even death, it goes without saying that a blessing would be imprudent.”

The press release was signed by Fernández and Monsignor Armando Matteo, the secretary for the doctrinal section of the dicastery.

“We will all have to become accustomed to accepting the fact that, if a priest gives this type of simple blessings, he is not a heretic, he is not ratifying anything nor is he denying Catholic doctrine,” it said.

“We can help God’s people to discover that these kinds of blessings are just simple pastoral channels that help people give expression to their faith, even if they are great sinners. For this reason, in giving a blessing to two people who come together to ask for it spontaneously, we are not consecrating them nor are we congratulating them nor indeed are we approving that type of union.”


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51 Comments

  1. Scenario 1 “…a couple of divorced people, now in a new union, say to the priest: ‘Please give us a blessing, we cannot find work, he is very ill, we do not have a home and life is becoming very difficult: May God help us!”

    Scenario 2: “Father, my boyfriend and I are actively and intentionally involved in a gay relationship that clearly violates God’s commandments regarding sexuality. Please bless us.”

    Which of these two does not belong? It’s not rocket science folks.

    • What gay couple goes up to a Priest and recites their biography? Indeed, what Straight couple does unless they are legitimately married? So it is a trick question..

    • Athanasius: When I read the examples offered by this Vatican regarding application of FS pastorally, I immediately saw the flaw in their thinking.

      With regard to example #1, the problem is assuming the untenable. To refer to a divorced Catholic who has entered into a relationship with another without the benefit of an annulment as a “union”, is absurd. There is not and cannot be a union there to bless. If Bergoglio and Tucko think so, they don’t understand marriage as Catholics understand it.

      With regard to #2, no relationship that simulates marriage (even if you refer to it as a “couple”), can be blessed because it is based on a lie that defies natural law. If you do offer a blessing you might as well offer it for every variation of sin that man has managed come up with. For example: “Father, my friend here and I will be gang raping a young woman tonight and would like your blessing. We don’twant you to bless our act but just bless us as a “couple.” Now that certainly would qualify for a blessing because its an “irregular relationship.”

    • So well said and illustrated!! In their Gnostic Homosexuality, where they pretend to have special, hidden knowledge from the Holy Spirit about a homosexual right to Church blessings (like the Legal Gnosticism that found a non-existent right to abortion), they brag about standing for Traditional Marriage while at the same time NOT standing for the sinful truth about homosexuality.

      On top of that, the ultra-arrogance of the timing of the document: dropping a bomb right on top of the Christmas manger, de facto and obviously claiming absolute superiority over God’s most sacred Incarnation in Jesus.

  2. The Good

    Well, the clarification is a welcome improvement and on paper & it repudiates Fr. Martin’s nonsense and the suggested prayer if taken at face value comes off as the Priest “Praying the gay away”(which is lovely).

    Quote” Free them from everything that contradicts your Gospel and allow them to live according to your will.”END

    The Bad and the Ugly.

    If they didn’t make this mess in the first place and merely enforced the 2021 direction then none of this nonsense would have happened. I saw idiots threatening to leave the Church or announcing they would leave. That didn’t need to happen.
    The original document was the Mother of gravely imprudent Papal decrees not since Pope Innocent III made poor Jews wear badges & or burn the Talmud….

    Anyway is it nice to know if the Pope and Fernandez are not doing their Jobs in the End the Holy Spirit is doing His Job..

    BenYachov-Jim Scott out! Peace!

    Ave Maria.

  3. All these paternalisms, they are not works of mercy, neither of the corporal ones nor of the spiritual.

    But the formulation itself, in FS, is badly -wrongly- done so that it offends faith and morals and reason.

    The paternalisms and the FS formulation(s) can not and do not bind anyone clergy or laity; and should be avoided.

  4. Well, with Sfiducia Supplicans, at least there has been one clear development of doctrine:
    We now know that papal infallibility does not protect against the promulgation of pastoral heresies.

  5. Approaching The Feast of Denha , to hear the Voice of The Father speaking through The Holy Spirit – ‘You are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased ‘ – words that our First Father Adam would have heard , to respond in kind – till The Fall ..words that The Lord would have ‘heard ‘ in the Holy Family often enough ..and ought to be heard in families often , yet the opposite is what many have ‘heard ‘ / taken in, even if in unspoken words , angry , belittling occasions and rejections ..
    The document in question that invites / blesses with the trust in the Father’s Love even for sinners, the little nudge to bring the needed trust to come closer to The Father – and in beautiful words, applicable to all – ‘The great blessing of God is Jesus Christ .. for all humanity ..blessings lead us to grasp God’s presence ..’ Blessing persons who need more trust in God’s mercy, to be set free from debts and sin – seems not much difft. from priests who get called to bedsides of seriously ill who might have lived in sin – and deserving of the help of The Church …hope such an understanding would be what gets clarified , that the blessing is meant to help for a life of holiness, not for condoning blindness / hardness of hearts !
    God bless !

    • This perspective is deeply sinful. Two actively gay men living in violation of God’s commandments seeking a priest’s blessing on their sinful behavior is not even remotely similar to I’ll people seeking restoration. Not even close.

  6. Oh, puh-lease!

    Bergoglio knows that the Catholics in the pews are not theologians or canon lawyers.

    When they see a gay couple standing up at the altar being blessed by a priest, they will inevitably conclude that the Catholic Church is blessing gay marriages.

    And they will not be wrong.

    The duplicity of Tucho and Bergoglio is far clearer than anything either of them actually says.

    • 55 years later and what percentage of Catholic have even read Humanae Vitae? Most Catholics believe what they believe about it from what late night comedians told them to believe about it. One of the stupidest things Francis has ever done was propose having a “committee” restudy Humanae Vitae to possibly see if it meant the exact opposite of what every sane person knew it meant for half a century. You’re right. It doesn’t take much effort at all to create a Catholic myth.

  7. A theologian might be able to split hairs on this stuff but the average person will take a broader view and see blessings on gay relationships. Period. This paper was a mistake. You can split as many hairs as you want and try to nuance the reality away, but it is what it is. This will be viewed in many quarters in much the same way that annulments are disparaged as a “back-door” catholic divorce. Usually with an accompanying sneer about the church being willing to do it for the money. A slippery slope to start down. I am also mystified by this pope’s constant drumbeat about mercy and forgiveness without a similarly strong emphasis about the need for repentance. When any churchman wonders why so many line up for communion and so few for confession, they need not look further than their own lack of willingness to speak the truth, from the pope on down. The controversy about this paper on “blessings” for those in a state of sexual sin will likely get worse before it gets better.

  8. Cardinal Fernandez explains that the doctrinal goal posts are still in place, we’re just not using them! Five points here—too many words, I know, and yet a lot shorter than the cardinal’s original volley of 5,000 words.

    FIRST, the myopic problem evades the larger context. The contextual ideology that “time is greater than space,” the backstory of Cardinal Grech does want to “stretch the gray area,” Cardinal Hollerich’s revelation that the “sociological and cultural foundations” of morality are out of date, and the favored presence of one rainbow Fr. Martin at the Synod while excluding anyone from “Courage.” Even talk of an office of “listening and accompaniment.” Accommodation?

    Yes, fine hair-splitting by Fernandez citing difficult cases. A prayerful presence, but still “couples” rather than persons as such (?!)…finely and finally a distinction without a difference.

    SECOND, in 1994 Dr. Nicolosi (RIP) explained at one of the first annual meetings of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists a central reason why he was having success in helping homosexuals find their way out of their affliction. Quoting the enthused and successful clients: “It’s as if you’re playing poker, and then you find that you have two cards stuck together, and have been betting on the wrong card.” The lights go on, and the long but restorative path to willful recovery begins.

    THIRD, recovery from what? Well, homosexuality is not passed on biologically, obviously (!), and yet is suddenly spreading rapidly. Additionally, genome research finds that there’s no gene involved, only a few non-determinative “markers” (https://news.yahoo.com/no-gay-gene-study-finds-180220669.html). So, then the cultural factors totally missed by guru-sociologist Hollerich: childhood sexual abuse, absentee of abusive father figures, early sexual experimentation in a pornographic culture (etc.). A 1989-90 interview of 1,001 homosexual and bisexual men found that 37% were lured into sex before the age of nineteen, 94% of these with men, the median age of the victims 10 years old, the median age difference 11 years, of the total 51% involved force, and overall some 93% were classified as “sexual abuse.”

    FOURTH, about those groomed and then locked-in, the conflicted and bisexual novelist Andre Gide is researched by one biographer who offers this:

    “[Gide]emphatically protests that he has not a word to say against marriage and reproduction [but then] suggests that it would be of benefit to an adolescent, before his desires are fixed [as in locked-in], to have a love affair with an older man, instead of with a woman. . . the general principle admitted by Gide, elsewhere in his treatise, that sexual practice tends to stabilize in the direction where it has first found satisfaction; to inoculate a youth with homosexual tastes seems an odd way to prepare him for matrimony” (Harold March, “Gide and the Hound of Heaven,” 1952).
    But why not simply redefine matrimony or “marriage” (!) first in the secular domain. And then in the ecclesial domain, piggy back onto the Zeitgeist by offering a redefined “blessing.” Not from God Almighty, but “pastorally.” Why not enable continued victimization under cover of prayerful accompaniment? Why not avoid confronting the anti-scientific culture? Why not seat Fr. Martin at a Synod, itself selected and groomed into ratifying a seemingly plausible evasive sidestep maneuver?
    FIFTH, and then there’s the likely chemistry of the human brain—rather than genetics—that attends all flavors of addiction. A recent study completed at University College London and using MRI technology (magnetic resonance imagery) strongly implies that a habit of lying tends to suppress the part of the brain (the amygdala) that responds emotionally to a “slippery slope” pattern of small and then larger lies (Neil Garrett, Dan Ariely and Stephanie Laxxaro, Nature Neuroscience Journal, October 24, 2016; reported by Erica Goode, New York Times, October 25, 2016).

    Yours truly regurgitates the above not as any kind of authority, but as one who likes to remember and think about “concrete” stuff. Surely an addictive habit! In his carefully sifted concrete examples, Fernandez has all the right words, and yet the world is going to hell in a hand basket—and is dragging the current generation down with it.

    Maybe from the Catholic Church something more than only a newly redefined “blessing,” yes? Knock, knock! Hello! Is anybody home?

  9. The problem is the huge percentage of priests and bishops who are gay. It appears those in the highest positions of the Church are gay as well. It is the reason for the sex abuse in the Church. 80% of the victims were boys and young men. Hopefully, it won’t get any worse and the next generations of clergy will be mostly celibate heterosexual men.

    • Bill, for example the bishop who sat in my office and told me about his sexual contacts with more than one of the priests in his diocese under his jurisdiction.

    • Bill, agree completely.
      The root cause of the problem here—and the root cause of the sex abuse scandal and all the resulting diocesan bankruptcies—is the past (hopefully past!) practice of the admittance to the seminary, later ordination and even elevation to the hierarchy of men who live a habitual gay lifestyle. Think Uncle Ted.
      St Peter Damien, pray for us.

    • The key word is “anyone” as in one, or person.
      Not much in Scripture about Christ blessing “irregular” couples as such, and such as prostitutes and their one or more partners, for example, while holding hands.

    • Jesus The Christ did not turn anyone away from His Call to Repentance, for if it were true that it is Loving and Merciful that we, or our beloved, remain in our sin, and not desire to overcome our disordered inclinations toward sin, repent , and become transformed through our acceptance of Salvational Love, God’s Gift Of Grace And Mercy, we would not need Our only Savior, Jesus The Christ.

      At the heart of Liberty Is Christ, “4For it is impossible for those who were once illuminated, have tasted also the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 5Have moreover tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come…”, to not believe that Christ’s Sacrifice On The Cross will lead us to Salvation, but we must desire forgiveness for our sins, and accept Salvational Love, God’s Gift Of Grace And Mercy; believe in The Power And The Glory Of Salvation Love, and rejoice in the fact that No Greater Love Is There Than This, To Desire Salvation For One’s Beloved.
      “Hail The Cross, Our Only Hope.”
      “Blessed are they who are Called to The Marriage Supper Of The Lamb.”
      “For where your treasure is there will your heart be also.”

    • No, he encouraged those who needed it to repent and seek forgiveness. That is what love looks like. So much so that Christ was willing to give up his life to make that possible.

      • Dear ‘brian’, you meant: “UNREGENERATES”; i.e. those who look like Catholics but have never actually died to this world and been born (regenerated) as creatures, through Christ’s Resurrection.

        Obviously, Catholics who are genuinely regenerate are well aware of the change in their own person, as are all those who know them well.

        As Jesus taught so clearly: those who are not regenerate cannot help but persecute those who are regenerate! Sound familiar . . ?

  10. The Catholic Church has played a big role in my life.

    I never imagined I would live to see the Catholic Church going into what, in my view, is an undeniable sheer and utter disintegration from which it will probably never recover.

    Now, gay persons don’t come to the Church to repent and be reconciled, and to make a firm purpose of amendment, but to have their gay couplehood and their gay sex lives with another gay person blessed by the priests of the Church. That’s not the Catholic Church. And yet it is. It’s so mind boggling that most Catholics can’t believe or see what is happening. They repeat the transparently ridiculous cover stories put out by the Vatican.

    Remember when priests and lay people fled the Anglican and Episcopal churches, and joined the Catholic Church, to get away from the normalization of gay unions in those churches? That day is done. We Catholic have joined the club of the heretics.

    I imagine what I and some others are feeling now is akin to what sincere, committed Communists in the Soviet Union felt when the Soviet Union (a nation with quite a history of triumph and tragedy, and historic crimes, and, among some of its citizens, great hopes, high ideals, and many sacrifices for the cause of Socialism) disintegrated right before their eyes in the early 1990s.

    Or maybe a better parallel is how some commmitted Communist believers in China felt heartbroken when, in the 1980s, the leaders of the Communist Party in China changed the economy from a socialist planned economy to a private property based free market capitalist economy. In that case, the Communist Party retained its monopoly power over politics, but it no longer actually promoted the Socialism of Marx, Mao, or Lenin (a philosophy for which so many Chinese made so many voluntary sacrifices, imaging that they were saving humankind from great sorrows).

    I know that an entity called the Catholic Church will go on, and it will still have branches all over the world. And I know that many will still find solace and community there.

    But not me.

    • Frank, it is a confusing time. We are being put to the test. That is never a reason to leave the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. She is the Mystical Body of a Christ. Why leave Him, especially when He is on the Cross? His Saints stood there there at His feet, or repented and returned.

      • Frank, agree with God’s Fool.
        The Church is the Mystical Body of Christ. Without question, there have been times in history when that Body did not include certain morally corrupt popes and Vatican prelates. Faithful members of the Mystical Body of Christ endured those scandalous times. We now need to do the same by and through the Father and Son’s gift of the Holy Spirit.

    • We see your distress flare, and sincerely hope, as a valued member of the perennial Mystical Body of Christ, that you will not abandon ship. Historical perspective can help…

      Many of the committed Communists took flight even long before 1991, when they finally saw what Stalinism was all about. Idealists, they had thought that Communism was the only remaining way to safe a disintegrating West. Whittaker Chambers (“Witness,” 1952), Bella Dodd (convert and informant on Communist infiltration into the priesthood), and many others.

      Further back, Napoleon Bonaparte once taunted a Catholic cardinal by threatening: “Your Eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?” To which the cardinal quipped: “Your Majesty, we Catholic clergy have done our best to destroy the Church for the last eighteen hundred years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you.”

      And then, despite the most recent lacerations, the sacramental Real Presence still beckons and cannot be found elsewhere.

    • A religion is not an ideology. True faith is the rejection of ideology because it recognizes that truth comes from God alone. We are stupid. But God is not stupid. Do not be distracted by our stupidity. Find consolation in the means that God gave us. The Sacraments have the presence of God within them. And the rosary will bring you close to our Holy Mother. You owe it to yourself and God.

      • Yes, “Do not be distracted by our stupidity.” A prayer:

        Almighty Father,
        the love you offer
        always exceeds the furthest
        expression of our human longing,
        for you are greater
        than the human heart.
        Direct each thought, each effort
        of our life,
        so that the limits
        of our faults and weaknesses
        may not obscure the vision
        of your glory
        or keep us from the peace
        you have promised.
        We ask this through
        Christ our Lord. Amen

    • Frank,

      God always saves His Church—even if it is not in the timeframe I would prefer. And it is often the worst times of Church history that have given us some of our greatest saints. For example, almost a year ago I read “Catherine of Siena” by Sigrid Undset. This book took place during the Avignon papacy and the following struggles with multiple people claiming to be the pope.

      First, this book emphasized to me that the Church has been in dire straights before and has come through them even when it took decades or more. This is comforting to remember.

      Second, the book talks about Catherine’s Dialogue (which was recorded from what Catherine indicated God said to her and she to Him during an ecstasy toward the end of her life), “But it almost broke Catherine’s heart to see so many abominations in the Church, and the great misery caused by them. God looks down with indescribable tenderness and consoles her: “Daughter, your refuge is to do honour to My name and offer ceaseless prayers, like incense, for the wretches who have deserved to be condemned for their crimes. Your refuge is in My only Son, Christ Crucified. . . . In His pierced heart you will find love for Me and your neighbour. . . . Fill yourself at the table of the cross, and bear with your neighbour with true patience, and bear patiently too all the pain, fear and toil, from whatever side they may attack you. In this way you shall win grace and escape the leprosy of the time.””

      You and I might not be called to be great saints, but we are still called to be saints. And prayer is always powerful even when the effects aren’t immediately apparent. So, in this time, too, I think we are all called to pray for our leaders, and our Church, and ourselves. Please don’t give up. Please pray for me, and I will pray for you.

  11. Where I live the Chief Justice declared in a public event that the public service should now get set and “do things differently”; meanwhile things are going haywire precisely because of that happening already. This occurred in the last 3 months or so, the same time period when this word “different” was being bandied about even by our Archbishop adapting from Pope Francis.

    Fr. de Souza’s article at NC REGISTER, elicits a context on “different”.

    https://www.ncregister.com/commentaries/fiducia-supplicans-2-0

  12. I think it would be more helpful to preach love of God, and the sacraments, as blessings to all who come to church and pray. Why single out anyone, any condition? We are one in the Spirit, the obedience of the priest does require the universal call to conversion, for everyone. If you want to set someone free, preach Jesus and Him crucified.

  13. Its completely telling that Fernandez will not come out and say “homosexual acts are disordered” – nor does Fiducia Supplicans cite the sin of homosexual acts from Catechism or the Scriptures. Instead they say all this flowery ambiguous language.

  14. Undeniably we’re in dark times. Our faith I’m convinced is being tested for our misdeeds. Many are despondent, generally the faithful, some on the verge of despair. What will save us, Lord. ‘I will save those who love me and will protect those who acknowledge me as Lord’ (Psalm 91:14-16).
    Christ seeks one thing. Whether the Church collapses and the world turns upsidedown as it appears, Our love for him will save us. Whether or not we’re a step away from end times or whether we revive as a Church our love for Christ will strengthen us, will literally be our strength and enrich us with his love. We have the blessed opportunity because of the trial to be sanctified in Him.

    • Stop! Gather yourself, please. It’s this simple: we have a less than adequate pope, far less than adequate for sure. (If I say “bad pope” CWR probably won’t post the comment.) It happens every century or so. Now it’s our turn for a reality check and to leave behind personality cults, the bane of modernity. Popes aren’t infallible; some very specific articulations of dogma are. Let’s just pray to get beyond the current insanity – with our Catholic faith and Church in reasonable shape to go on. Yes, it will take generations to undo the mess this one has made, and we will not likely see it repaired in our lifetimes. But it’s got to be for some, right now, unfathomable purpose. God willing …

  15. The whole true purpose and real intentions of Fiducia Appplicans is in its totally sacrilegious timing: it is a Satanic homosexual ultra-arrogance bomb dropped right on the top of the Christmas manger. For its authors, unrepentant homosexual lust and its insatiable hunger for power takes precedence over Jesus-God’s most sacred Incarnation.

    Regardless of the Satanic explaining word storm, the answer must be the same: Jesus is God, homosexuals are not, never ever, and darn the excommunication and any other threats. Crown the Absolute King, not the top dehumanizers!

  16. Tucho’s clarification is about clear as mud; he must think priests are sixth graders who need to be told the length for a blessing; the pope must appoint prefects who are stupid, so he can pull the puppet strings more easily; Tucho and Francesco both need to resign; watched a video on 2013 conclave; the Holy Spirit must think this is a permissable joke.

    • I suspect his goal is to get Catholics to stop objecting to FS, by providing a “clarification” that has no canonical authority to change or restrict how FS is applied, but which sounds more reasonable than ‘priests can bless gay couples however they please as long as there’s no record and bishops don’t make a ritual for doing so’.

      He’s also attempting to use the bishops’ general inclination to live and let live by saying that they can restrict how it is implemented in their dioceses without this refusal being taken as heresy or schism. As if a bishop has no responsibilities to the Church outside his diocese.

      He says nothing regarding how a practice that appears to the average Catholic to be approving illicit relationships, is by word or gesture clearly shown not to be so. (Think it’s impossible to approve a sin in 15 seconds or less?) All he has is repeating the assertion that it isn’t. I thought we were supposed to be avoiding rote memorization in favor of understanding…

      He’s placating, not clarifying.

  17. Reviewing my theology graduate notes- and Raymond Brown stands out as one of the culprits among others such at Bultmann who rejected the sensus plenior, or unlimited inerrancy of God’s Word within the sacred author’s words in Scripture. Once God’s Word is interpreted through only the literal sense and not the spiritual sense, we have a huge problem. Cardinal Ratzinger pointed this out in the Erasmus lectures, and pray that we encourage faithful theologians to follow his lead to combine good historical research with solid ecclesiology of Tradition of the Church.

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