Fiducia Supplicans
On December 18th, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) published a document called Fiducia Supplicans, which most secular media interpreted as permission from Pope Francis for the Catholic Church to bless same-sex unions. A lot of ink has been spilled on this document, but I will try my best to summarize.
Documents to Read
First, it is always helpful to read the documents themselves, when possible, rather than relying on commentary.
Dec. 18th – the document itself, found here.
Dec. 23rd – clarifying interview from Cdl. Fernández (head of the DDF), found here.
Jan. 04th – clarifying press release from the DDF, found here.
Background
The DDF knows that the Church’s teaching on marriage and sex cannot change, since it is rooted in Scripture and the divine law, so Cdl. Fernández (presumably at the encouragement of Pope Francis) was trying to find a way to reach out to and pastorally accompany same-sex couples. This is in response to the fast moving[1] conversation about same-sex marriage all across the developed world, the rouge actions of the Church in Germany and Belgium in providing liturgical blessings to same-sex unions, and the persistent presence of this question in the Synodal listening documents. This is also in response to the poor reception in certain Church circles of the 2021 DDF responsum that same-sex unions cannot be blessed.
Solution
The solution that Cdl. Fernández found was to create a distinction between different kinds of blessings. When most of us think of a blessing, we think of blessing Rosaries and Bibles, or providing blessings for travel or birthdays or anniversaries. We might think of the blessing at the end of Mass. In fact, sometimes we use the word blessing colloquially to mean approval, as in “my boss blessed the approach I want to take on the project.” However, Fiducia Supplicans recognizes that oftentimes blessings are very messy – that people are coming up to a priest on the street or in a shrine or after Mass – and that it is okay for a priest to bless people, as a sign of God’s pastoral solicitude for his children, without first making sure they are without sin (as we might need to do with sacramental blessings). By making this distinction, Cdl. Fernández hoped that same-sex couples could receive the love and care of the Church, without sacrificing the Church’s teaching that same-sex sexual unions are gravely immoral.
Controversy
Unfortunately, issues of sexuality are impossible to touch without getting burned. Even though Fiducia Supplicans tried to make clear the unchanging nature of the Church’s teaching and the distinction between blessings as approval and blessings as intercessory prayer, it also contained ambiguous language (including the phrase “Blessings of Couples of the Same Sex”) that allowed people to read it according to their own biases. The narrative quickly collapsed into “Catholic Church approves same-sex blessings” (with the word “blessing” here always being interpreted as “approval”). And the left and the right flanks of the Church reacted accordingly.
Cdl. Fernández has now gone out of this way to try to clarify things as much as possible, with the Jan. 04 press release being the most helpful to-date. And the clarification is that the Church does not and cannot approve of same-sex sexual relationships, but the Church can pray along with all people who ask for prayers (as long as these prayers are not done in a way that suggests an analogy to a marriage or a sacrament).
My Thoughts
What is most interesting to me about all of this is how utterly uncontroversial any of this would be to a parish priest (or, at least, a parish priest of the Archdiocese of Seattle). People come up to me after Mass all the time and ask for blessings. While I am careful not to bless anything superstitious or sinful, I usually find something to bless in or about a person’s life. Apart from the controversies and ambiguities, Fiducia Supplicans is just recognizing a reality that every parish priest lives daily.
Unfortunately, the Vatican seems not to understand the social and media context of North America and Western Europe, and any parish priest could also have told them exactly how this was going to play out in our countries. I am sure an African parish priest would say the same thing about the reactions they have seen in their countries. Well, the Church has never taught that the Pope is perfect, just that he cannot officially teach error. Nothing has changed about that, either.
[1] Remember, same-sex marriage was universally legalized in the U.S. fewer than 10 years ago.
Fr. Moore 