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Dutch bishops offer cautious response to Vatican blessing guidance, bucking regional trend   

Jonathan Liedl By Jonathan Liedl for CNA

Bishop Hans van den Hende walks in Keukenhof park in Lisse, Netherlands, on April 12, 2022. (Credit: Ramon Mangold/Diocese of Rotterdam)

Rome Newsroom, Jan 19, 2024 / 16:30 pm (CNA).

The Catholic bishops of the Netherlands have issued a cautious, qualified response to the Vatican’s controversial guidance on blessings, striking a markedly different tone than their most immediate neighbors in Western Europe.

In their Jan. 16 statement, the Dutch bishops wrote that while “it is possible to say a prayer over individual believers living in an irregular relationship,” care must be taken to avoid appearing to condone sinful sexual activity or to cause confusion about the nature of marriage.

“What one asks for in prayer and the manner in which one prays are important here,” stressed the country’s 11 Catholic bishops in their response to Fiducia Supplicans, the Vatican’s Dec. 18, 2023, declaration that affirmed the possibility of offering nonliturgical, spontaneous blessings to same-sex couples and those in irregular situations.

The most senior of the Dutch bishops is Cardinal Wim Eijk, the archbishop of Utrecht.

Persons, not couples

Notably, nowhere in the Dutch bishops’ 300-word statement do they refer to “same-sex couples” as the object of a blessing, as is done throughout Fiducia Supplicans.

Referring to “couples” as the object of the blessings in question has caused controversy, with some saying that it implies that the sexual activity that makes two people a couple is also being condoned.

Instead, the Dutch bishops speak of “persons living in a homosexual relationship” and emphasize that the blessings connected with Fiducia Supplicans should be offered to individual persons, “so that he/she may understand God’s will with his/her life and continue to grow.”

“This makes it clear in the wording chosen that this is not a blessing or a confirmation of an irregular relationship and also avoids confusion with marriage, which, according to the Catholic Church, can only be between a man and a woman,” wrote the Dutch bishops, who minister to about 4 million Catholics in the Netherlands, or roughly 22% of the small European country’s population.

The bishops also emphasized that blessings in connection with Fiducia Supplicans may take the form of “a simple prayer” said by an ordained minister “outside the context of a wedding celebration or prayer service.”

“In this way, prayer can give the strength to draw near to God and live in accordance with his intentions for the creation of man and woman and marriage,” they said.

Regional outlier

The Dutch bishops’ cautious and qualified reception of Fiducia Supplicans has been shared by several episcopal conferences and individual bishops throughout the world but is strikingly different from how Catholic leaders in neighboring Germany and Belgium have received the guidance.

German Church leaders have largely welcomed the Vatican directive as an affirmation of the controversial path they’ve already taken to offer formalized blessings of same-sex couples and changes to the Church’s teaching on sexuality — even though Fiducia Supplicans claims to prohibit those possibilities.

For instance, Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck of Essen, an important figure in the German Bishops’ Conference, said on Jan. 17 that his diocese would offer “blessing celebrations” to same-sex and divorced and remarried couples who request them.

And on Dec. 20, Birgit Mock, vice president of the Central Committee of German Catholics, said that the Catholic Church in Germany would proceed with plans to draft and disperse a formalized text of blessings, a resolution that had been approved in March 2023 by the controversial German Synodal Way.

Meanwhile, in Belgium, the website of the Catholic Church in the Flemish-speaking part of the country published a Dec. 20 editorial describing Fiducia Supplicans as a “landslide” and a “huge step toward the recognition of faithful and lasting homosexual relationships.” The Flemish-speaking bishops had already published a text for same-sex blessings in September 2022.

The bishops of the Netherlands have clearly received Fiducia Supplicans differently than their neighbors to the east and south but see their response as part of their commitment to providing pastoral accompaniment “for persons living in a homosexual relationship and for divorced persons remarried.”

“The Dutch bishops do not wish to deny anyone the support and strength of God,” they said in their statement.


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10 Comments

  1. Archbishop Willem Eijk [who should be a cardinal like Aquila, Neumann, and Cordileone and denied because of their loyalty to Christ] is a strong, influential leader among his peers. A true blessing for the Dutch.

    • Eijk is a Cardinal and is very much a papabile. Let’s pray this happens Fr. Peter.
      For what it is worth, he was made a Cardinal by Pope BXVI. Otherwise, I’m sure you would have been right that Pope Francis would have denied him. This pontificate is such a disaster.

  2. Like we have said, both about the synod and about this new pronouncement….schism. The synod was really only an excuse to bring about women priests and gay marriage anyway. All one in the same. You will certainly have the traditionalists refusing to do it and the liberal churchmen thrilled to push it. Its been long obvious that too many churchmen see catholicism as equal to communism / socialism in practice. They want whites toppled, rich destroyed, and everyone with one bowl of gruel, so all are equal of course. Dream on. Schism may be around the corner unless the far left, including the Pope, wake up and smell the coffee and reverse the destruction they have set in motion.

  3. A cautious response?
    Clear, articulate, nuanced and charitable, unlike the rot coming from the Vatican these days.
    FS is turning out to be a blessing in disguise!

  4. We keep talking about “irregular relationship” and
    “irregular situations.” Adultery, fornication, sodomy
    are all sins. It is the secular world, pagans, who deny
    the existence of sin and resort to social science jargon.
    Another example of the Vatican following the ways of the world.
    Jesus called a sin a sin!

  5. Further thoughts – There’s nothing cautious about the Dutch bishops’ response to FS. It’s clear, articulate and measured.
    See John Allen in Catholic Herald, Jan. 21.
    Cardinal Eijk is, indeed, well-placed as papabile. Surviving the battle for faith in the secular Netherlands is no small feat. As well, the cardinal has been for some time an articulate voice on the life issues, particularly euthanasia.

  6. I especially enjoyed the comment by the Bishop who said he would bless divorced and remarried couples if requested. How charming of him. We have a procedure for those that have a broken marriage and it is called annulment.I hear it is not an easy procedure, nor should it be. While divorce is sadly common now, consuming 50% of all marriages, I wonder if it is not because it is so easy now to do? Maybe it should not be so easy a process. This is not to make anyone suffer, but it should be a warning flag to make everyone TRY to keep their commitment and to look at marriage as the serious thing it is, BEFORE you take the leap to marry. Adults are not the only victims in a divorce. Any psychiatrist will tell you the main victims are the children. REAL adults should take responsibility for that. I am put in mind of the fact that I have family in California, a quite nutty place to live. In California by my observation, not only are people divorced and remarried, but it is quite common to see them divorce two or even three times. I am sorry, but is there a point in blessing such relationships, which people change like underwear?? I think this gives the entirely wrong signal to everyone.

  7. Third and final (?) comment – For further insight, see ” The ‘Pastoral Council’ and the collapse of the Catholic faith in the Netherlands”, Solene Tadie, The Catholic Register, Feb. 1, 2023.

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