The Bishops’ Conference of Holland has rejected blessing for same-sex couples proposed by Fiducia Supplicans, saying a prayer may be said only over individual believers asking God for “strength & assistance under the invocation of the Holy Spirit so that he/she may understand”.
On December 18, the Holy See’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith (DDF) released Fiducia Supplicans. That Declaration stated that priests may spontaneously bless couples in “irregular” situations—e.g., “remarried” or same-sex couples—within certain limits. Those limits were supposed to protect the Church’s witness to her teachings on sexual ethics and marriage, truths knowable by reason and divine revelation. Yet many bishops and episcopal conferences have expressed concern that providing such blessings would impede that witness, undermining the Church’s teachings that (1) marriage is the indissoluble union of husband and wife and that (2) all non-marital sexual acts are gravely sinful.
In response, the DDF has issued a press releaseattempting to clarify Fiducia Supplicans. But the press release is grossly inadequate. Heeding it will not begin to prevent the grave harm that the DDF says it had hoped to head off. The twelve paragraphs below explain why we urge that bishops and priests should not authorize or provide the blessings at issue: The circumstances in which they will avoid doing grave harm are rare, if not practically non-existent—at least without the set of conditions we will mention.
1. With one minor exception, discussed below, the press release only accentuates aspects of Fiducia Supplicans that make it an obstacle to handing on, defending, and living by the gospel’s teaching on sexual morality.
2. The press release insists that Fiducia Supplicans, being a Declaration, “is much more than a responsum or a letter.” But both documents neglect a centrally relevant gospel teaching that was reaffirmed in a previous Declaration of the same dicastery, Persona Humana (December 29, 1975):
The observance of the moral law in the field of sexuality and the practice of chastity have been considerably endangered, especially among less fervent Christians, by the current tendency to minimize as far as possible, when not denying outright, the reality of grave sin, at least in people’s actual lives. . . .
A person . . . sins mortally not only when his action comes from direct contempt for love of God and neighbor, but also when he consciously and freely, for whatever reason, chooses something which is seriously disordered. For in this choice . . . there is already included contempt for the Divine commandment: the person turns himself away from God and loses charity. Now according to Christian tradition and the Church's teaching, and as right reason also recognizes, the moral order of sexuality involves such high values of human life that every direct violation of this order is objectively serious. . . .
Pastors of souls must therefore exercise patience and goodness; but they are not allowed to render God’s commandments null, nor to reduce unreasonably people’s responsibility. “To diminish in no way the saving teaching of Christ constitutes an eminent form of charity for souls. But this must ever be accompanied by patience and goodness, such as the Lord Himself gave example of in dealing with people. Having come not to condemn but to save, He was indeed intransigent with evil, but merciful towards individuals.”
The article: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/01/more-confusion-about-same-sex-blessings
“Informality elevated to a system has perhaps allowed Pope Francis to feel like he is in control. At the same time, it allows everyone to interpret his choices and decisions in willy-nilly. Likewise, using exceptionally “light” documents without consultations makes it nigh on impossible to understand the heart of the decisions.
“A solitary individual, however exceptional, cannot make history except very badly. What is striking is that around Pope Francis there are many “guardians of the revolution” ready to attack any criticism and to demonstrate how the Pope’s choices for rupture are essential in our times.
“This informality puts not only this pope but the papacy and the Church at various risks: conceptual, institutional, and structural. So, one wonders whether those who uncritically defend every choice of the Pope perhaps no longer love what the Pope represents for them, so much as they love what his peculiar and hyper-personal rule is doing to the Church.”
The article: https://www.ncregister.com/commentaries/pope-francis-informality-as-a-system
10 For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.”
Gal 1:6-10
Archbishop Schneider appeals to all Catholics, especially those who suffer as they witness our Holy Mother Church live through an unprecedented crisis” to “take refuge in the Immaculate Heart of Mary through the daily Prayer to Implore Holy Popes.”
“The resulting chaos and self-inflicted danger to the unity of the Church should be taken as a lesson to refrain in future from such antics by newcomers who want to do everything differently to their predecessors, and to impose their subjective and not well-thought-out opinions on the whole Church in an authoritarian manner,” Cardinal Gerhard Müller said of #FiduciaSupplicans. Criticism of an “ambiguous declaration” is necessary, he added, if one is to show “obedience to God’s truth.”
