By Ibe Pascal
The global reactions and outrages have continued grow after the Head Of Catholic church in the World, Pope Francis approved priests to bless same-sex unions.
However, a declaration issued by the Vatican on Monday clarified that “such blessings should not be conducted with any church rites that offer the impression of a marriage”.
In the Catholic Church, a blessing is a prayer or plea, usually delivered by a minister, asking God to look favourably at the person(s) being blessed.
The declaration added that “the doctrine regarding marriage does not change, and the blessing does not signify approval of the union” and that “only sexual relations between a man and a woman in the context of marriage are considered lawful”.
In 2021, the Vatican decreed that the Catholic Church would not bless gay marriages because God “cannot bless sin”.
But in a turn of events two months ago, Francis hinted that he would be open to having the Catholic Church bless same-sex unions.
In 2020
Pope Francis said that he thinks same-sex couples should be allowed to have “civil unions”.
According to BBC, he made the comments, which observers say are his clearest remarks yet on gay relationships, in a documentary directed by Evgeny Afineevsky.
“Homosexual people have a right to be in a family,” he said in the film, which premiered.
“They are children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out or made miserable over it.
“What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered.”
He added that he “stood up for that”, apparently referring to his time as Archbishop of Buenos Aires when, although opposing same-sex marriages in law, he supported some legal protections for same-sex couples
The film Francesco, about the life and work of Pope Francis, premiered as part of the Rome Film Festival.
As well as the Pope’s comments on civil unions, the film also shows him encouraging two gay men to attend church with their three children.
Pope Francis’s biographer, Austen Ivereigh, told the BBC he was “not surprised” by the latest comments.
“This was his position as Archbishop of Buenos Aires,” said Mr Ivereigh. “He was always opposed to marriage being for same-sex couples. But he believed the church should advocate for a civil union law for gay couples to give them legal protection.”
Under current Catholic doctrine, gay relationships are referred to as “deviant behaviour”.
In 2013,
in the book On Heaven and Earth, the Pope said that legally equating same-sex relationships to heterosexual marriages would be “an anthropological regression”.
He also said then that if same-sex couples were allowed to adopt, “there could be affected children… every person needs a male father and a female mother that can help them shape their identity”.
That same year, he reaffirmed the Church’s position that homosexual acts were sin, but said homosexual orientation was not.
“If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” he asked.
In 2014
it was reported that Pope Francis had expressed support for civil unions for same-sex partners in an interview, but the Holy See’s press office denied this.
In October 2023, Pope Francis suggested there could be ways to bless same-sex unions, responding to five conservative cardinals who challenged him to affirm church teaching on homosexuality ahead of a big meeting where LGBTQ+ Catholics are on the agenda.
The Vatican published a letter Francis wrote to the cardinals on July 11 after receiving a list of five questions, or “dubia,” from them a day earlier. In it, Francis suggests that such blessings could be studied if they didn’t confuse the blessing with sacramental marriage.
New Ways Ministry, which advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics, said the letter “significantly advances” efforts to make LGBTQ+ Catholics welcomed in the church and “one big straw towards breaking the camel’s back” in their marginalization.
The Vatican holds that marriage is an indissoluble union between man and woman. As a result, it has long opposed gay marriage. But even Francis has voiced support for civil laws extending legal benefits to same-sex spouses, and Catholic priests in parts of Europe have been blessing same-sex unions without Vatican censure.
Francis’ response to the cardinals, however, marks a reversal from the Vatican’s current official position. In an explanatory note in 2021, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said flat-out that the church couldn’t bless gay unions because “God cannot bless sin.”
In his new letter, Francis reiterated that matrimony is a union between a man and a woman. But responding to the cardinals’ question about homosexual unions and blessings, he said “pastoral charity” requires patience and understanding and that regardless, priests cannot become judges “who only deny, reject and exclude.”
“For this reason, pastoral prudence must adequately discern whether there are forms of benediction, requested by one or more persons, that do not transmit a mistaken conception of marriage,” he wrote. “Because when a benediction is requested, it is expressing a request for help from God, a plea to be able to live better, a trust in a father who can help us to live better.”
Kazakhstan archbishop condemns
Tomash Peta, archbishop of Saint Mary in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Tuesday condemned the Vatican’s approval of blessings for same-sex couples.
In a joint statement on Tuesday alongside Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary bishop, Peta called the pope’s new stance a “great deception”.
The archbishop forbade all priests and parishes in his archdiocese from blessing same-sex couples, noting that it “directly and seriously contradicts Divine Revelation and the uninterrupted, bimillennial doctrine and practice of the Catholic Church”.
The clergymen said the Vatican’s orders do “not walk uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel” and called on the Pope to revoke the permission to bless couples in an “irregular situation” and same-sex couples, so that the Catholic Church may shine clearly as the “pillar and ground of the truth”.
Peta also warned priests that “this effort to legitimize such blessings” will have “far-reaching and destructive consequences” and, at least in practice, turns the Catholic Church into a “propagandist of gender ideology”.
Credit: BBC, The Cable
