OPINION:
Less than a month ago, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith – historically, the guardian of Catholic orthodoxy – with the approval of Pope Francis, issued the Declaration on the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings. Its Latin title, derived from its opening words, is “Fiducia Supplicans.”
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This document, unparalleled in the 2,000-year history of Catholicism, authorizes ordained ministers – bishops, priests and deacons – to confer blessings upon same-sex couples, and upon opposite-sex couples in “irregular situations,” like those who are cohabiting without the benefit of matrimony.
“Fiducia Supplicans” is a direct reversal of a March 2021 “Responsum” from the same dicastery, which stated that “it is not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships … that involve sexual activity outside of marriage,” and which went on to say that God “does not and cannot bless sin.”
Although Fiducia is careful to characterize such blessings as non-liturgical and emphasize that they should not approximate the Sacrament of Marriage, it represents, nonetheless, a revolutionary departure from the unequivocal Catholic rejection of same-sex relations rooted in Sacred Scripture, Apostolic Tradition, natural law and two millennia of magisterial teachings.
Biblical prohibitions against same-sex relations, (in classical Catholic theology, the sin of Sodom), can be found in the Old Testament in Genesis and in Leviticus, and in the New Testament, in Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Romans and to the Corinthians, and in the Epistle of Saint Jude.
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The Church’s first catechism, the Didache, written during the lifetime of the Apostle John, specifically enjoins Christians to avoid the practice of pederasty.
Numerous Fathers and Doctors of the Church have condemned same-sex relations, including Saint Augustine, Saint John Chrysostom, Saint Gregory the Great, Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Peter Damien.
In modern times, the “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 1992, presents the most detailed Church teaching on homosexuality, explicitly rejecting same-sex relations as “grave depravity,” and “intrinsically disordered.” The catechism states that such relations are “contrary to natural law,” and declares that “Under no circumstances can they be approved.”
Intense opposition
A Papal document as unprecedented as “Fiducia Supplicans” has produced, not unpredictably, a Newtonian reaction.
In 1968, there was widespread dissent against Pope Paul’s encyclical “Humanae Vitae,” which disappointed church liberals by upholding traditional Catholic teaching against contraception.
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That dissent, however, took the form of bishops and theologians arguing that the encyclical was not binding upon the individual consciences of Catholics. Those same priests and prelates were careful to avoid an open repudiation of Pope Paul VI and his teaching.
The opposition to “Fiducia” is dramatically different. Cardinals, archbishops and bishops, even entire national hierarchies, are expressing blunt condemnations of this Papal innovation, and in many cases, are ordering their clergy not to comply with it.
The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church – the second largest church in Catholicism after the Roman Rite – has stated that “Fiducia” “has no legal force” in its church.
The national hierarchies of Angola, Cameroon, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Malawi, Poland, Nigeria, Uruguay and Zambia have denounced “Fiducia” and prohibited same-sex blessings in their jurisdictions.
The nine bishops of the ecclesiastical Province of Rennes in France have said that they will bless individuals, but not same-sex couples and 157 Spanish priests have signed a petition calling upon the Pope to annul Fiducia.
Critics of “Fiducia” include some of the highest-ranking officials who served in the Roman Curia. Cardinal Gerhard Muller, the former Prefect of the then Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has called Fiducia “self-contradictory.”
In a reflection on “Fiducia,” Cardinal Robert Sarah, who until 2021 was the Vatican’s Prefect for Divine Worship, wrote, “We do not oppose Pope Francis, but we firmly and radically oppose a heresy that seriously undermines the Church, the Body of Christ, because it is contrary to the Catholic faith and Tradition.”
Unanswered questions
One of the unresolved issues in the application of “Fiducia Supplicans” is the fate of faithful priests who may be punished, deprived or sanctioned for refusing to do what no priest has been asked to do before in the history of the Church.
The President of the Austrian Bishops Conference, Salzburg Archbishop Franz Lackner, said that “Fiducia” meant that priests “can no longer say no” when asked for a blessing by any couple. Later, a spokesman for Lackner appeared to walk back that remark.
In a statement on January 8, the Archbishop of Dublin, Dermot Farrell, said that Irish priests would not be permitted to make “a total or definitive denial” to requests for blessings from same-sex couples.
Will orthodox priests now be removed from their parishes, have their faculties suspended, or even be laicized, if they refuse to comply with a novel practice unknown and unheard of in Catholic history? Time will tell.
An examination of Pope Francis
After a Pontificate of more than a decade, it is possible to draw, reasonably, certain conclusions about the attitudes of Pope Francis and the ambitions of his Papacy.
From his relentless effort to suppress the ancient Latin liturgy of the Church and his relentless criticism of anyone attached to it, we may surmise that Francis seems to be animated by a visceral hostility to any expression of traditional Catholicism.
It is apparent, from his arbitrary removal of Texas Bishop Joseph Strickland and Puerto Rico Bishop Daniel Torres, and his punitive measures against American Cardinal Raymond Burke, that the Argentine Francis, unlike his immediate predecessors, is willing to use the powers of his office to reward his friends and punish his perceived enemies.
From his famous remark “Who am I to judge?” to his promotion of Jesuit dissenter and homosexual apologist James Martin to “Fiducia Supplicans,” it would seem clear that Francis views the Scriptural and natural law tradition of Catholicism regarding homosexuality as something negotiable.
“Pastor Aeternus,” the document from the First Vatican Council which defined the powers of the pope, said that the charism of the papacy was not to “make known new doctrine, but…[to] inviolably keep and faithfully expound the Revelation, the Deposit of Faith, delivered through the Apostles.”
Francis seems to possess a rather opposite and much more expansive view of papal authority.
As recently as last November, Francis, in a new apostolic letter, called for “a paradigm shift” in Catholic theology, for a “courageous cultural revolution” to create a “contextual theology … capable of reading and interpreting the Gospel in the conditions in which men and women daily live.”
That new interpretation of the Gospel would, it would seem, on issues of sexual ethics, bring the Church into comfortable conformity with the dominant secular culture.
The Church has had problematic papacies before. It has endured and survived personally corrupt popes, popes who, for reasons of cowardice or politics, were derelict in the performance of their duties, and popes who stumbled into material heresy.
Francis is unique, however. The Church has never had a pope before who was at enmity with its traditional moral theology.
His method seems to be one of revolution by increment. Rather than mount a frontal assault on Catholic Faith and morals, the strategy of Francis is to change praxis – church customs, pastoral practice and sacramental discipline – so as to render doctrine a dead letter, which will, eventually, be forgotten.
In one of his earliest encyclicals, “Amoris Laetitia,” Francis suggested, via a footnote to the text, that Catholics in an objective state of adultery, who were divorced and remarried while their spouse was still alive, could receive Holy Communion.
Francis did not formally repudiate Catholic teaching on the indissolubility of marriage but undermined it by refusing to enforce it in the administration of the sacraments.
The ultimate question about the Francine papacy is whether this is the last gasp – the Ludendorff Offensive – of the liberal revolution that washed over the Church in the 1960’s, or whether it constitutes a new direction for the Church, similar to the acquiescence of mainline Protestant churches to modern secular values and the spirit of the times.
From a Catholic perspective, history and the Holy Ghost would argue against the latter.
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C.J. Doyle is the Executive Director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts. Over the last three decades, he has appeared in the news media more than two thousand times, articulating Catholic positions on public issues.
Prior to the founding of the Catholic Action League, Doyle served on the staff of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and was National Director of Operations for the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.
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