German cardinal instructs priests to facilitate same-sex couple blessings

Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who has served as archbishop of Munich and Freising in Germany since 2008, has instructed the priests and full-time pastoral staff in the archdiocese to introduce the controversial handout “Blessing Gives Strength to Love” as the basis of pastoral care.

Priests who do not want to carry out such blessing celebrations for homosexual marriages or remarried divorced people must refer the couples to the dean or other staff.

A letter from the cardinal, which Die Tagespost reported on Monday, indicates that the handout should be “the basis of pastoral care” and beginning in June, various offices within the archdiocese are to offer further training as to the design of the blessing celebrations for all full-time officials in pastoral care.

Marx emphasized that “the blessing is not the celebration of a sacramental marriage.” However, this does not mean that the blessing of a non-sacramental union, which in many cases is already a civil marriage, moves the couple to the margins of the community and the Church.

According to Tagespost, Marx instructed that the “theological meaning” of the text be explained to all those “who still struggle with this blessing.”

The handout “Blessing Gives Strength to Love” is the result of a process that emerged from a vote at the Synodal Way. In March 2023, the fifth synodal meeting adopted the text of the handout with 92% of the votes. The Joint Conference of the German Bishops’ Conference (DBK) and the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) presented the text of the handout in spring 2025.

In the Church in Germany, the handout is highly controversial. Official recommendations were issued by the dioceses of Limburg, Osnabrück, Rottenburg-Stuttgart, and Trier. However, the Archdiocese of Cologne and the dioceses of Augsburg, Eichstätt, Passau, and Regensburg all rejected the application and referred to Fiducia Supplicans for justification.

According to Fiducia Supplicans, the Vatican declaration on the pastoral meaning of blessings issued by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, or CDF) in December 2023, blessings of connections in irregular situations and of homosexual couples are possible — although the CDF claimed the opposite only two years earlier.

Paragraph 31 of the document states that the form of the blessings may not be “ritually determined by the ecclesiastical authorities … so as not to cause confusion with the blessing of the sacrament of marriage.”

According to paragraph 38, one should neither promote the blessing of couples who are in an irregular situation nor provide a ritual for it. Blessings according to No. 39 are expressly excluded “in direct connection with a civil celebration.” Also “the clothes, the gestures, and the words that are the expression for a marriage” are therefore to be refrained from.

Numerous bishops — including entire bishops’ conferences — have rejected the Vatican approval of blessings for same-sex unions. Thus, there is a struggle for direction in the Church between those who adhere to the Church’s traditional teaching on homosexuality and those who consider blessings of same-sex couples to be possible in principle — whether in the form outlined by the Vatican or in the form that is largely common in Germany.

The Catholic Church in the catechism, basing its teaching in sacred Scripture and tradition, distinguishes between homosexual inclinations or tendencies and homosexual acts, calling such acts “intrinsically disordered” and contrary to natural law. “They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved,” the catechism says in No. 2357.

The Church at the same time strictly forbids discrimination against homosexuals, saying they must always be accepted with “respect, compassion, and sensitivity.” Furthermore, the Church calls persons with same-sex attraction to chastity — as all are called to according to their state in life — and to “fulfill God’s will in their lives” (No. 2358).

According to Catholic doctrine, marriage is exclusively the union of one man and one woman, and their union has a twofold end: “the good of the spouses themselves, and the transmission of life” (No. 2363). The catechism says these two values of marriage may never be separated.

This story was first published by CNA Deutsch, the German-language sister service of EWTN News, and has been translated and adapted by EWTN New English.