by Aubrey Gulick
When Bishop Karl-Heinz Wiesemann asked priests, deacons, and lay pastoral workers in the German Diocese of Speyer to offer blessings for same-sex unions and remarried couples early last month, his letter made international news — and it should have. That’s because the Catholic Church believes same-sex unions are sinful and contrary to both the law of God and the laws of nature.
That teaching — that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is, in fact, a sin — has repeatedly put a Church hierarchy dedicated to “inclusion” and “solidarity” in a tight spot. Progressives both inside (men like Wiesemann and Fr. James Martin) and outside of the Church have repeatedly pressured Catholic leadership to offer some kind of legitimization to homosexual unions.
On Monday, those progressives celebrated what they thought was a big win. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) released a new declaration, Fiducia Supplicans: On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings, which permits certain kinds of blessings to be offered to same-sex couples in very limited circumstances. Like many documents issued by the Vatican, the announcement has made a big splash but didn’t change anything about the way the Church approaches the issue — it simply made everything far more confusing.
An Issue Coming to a Head
The issue of whether or not Catholic clergy can offer blessings to same-sex unions has come to a head during the last year as Catholics from around the world prepared to meet in Rome for the Synod on Synodality in October. Leading up to the Synod, five cardinals submitted a series of questions in the form of a dubia. The Vatican responded to those questions in late September, and one of the key questions had to do with the issue of blessings on homosexual unions.
The Vatican’s response at the time was confusing. While Pope Francis confirmed that the Catholic Church doesn’t recognize homosexual unions, he did suggest that “pastoral prudence” should be used in determining whether or not a member of the clergy could offer the couple a blessing without conveying “a misconception of marriage.” Essentially, Francis clarified that the individuals in a homosexual union could receive blessings — but the union itself can’t.
The introduction to Fiducia Supplicans states that the document serves as further clarification to the September response to the dubia. The DDF seems to have believed that there was sufficient confusion on the issue to merit a better response to it. In essence, Fiducia Supplicans simply restates the response while making further distinctions when it comes to blessings.
Same-Sex Couples Can Be Blessed Non-Liturgically and Spontaneously
The Church has, of course, a liturgical blessing intended for sacramental marriage — a blessing that, Fiducia Supplicans explains, cannot be offered for homosexual unions:
[W]hen it comes to blessings, the Church has the right and the duty to avoid any rite that might contradict this conviction [that marriage is between a man and a woman open to having children] or lead to confusion. Such is also the meaning of the Responsum of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, which states that the Church does not have the power to impart blessings on unions of persons of the same sex.”
Furthermore, the document explains that “From a strictly liturgical point of view, a blessing requires that what is blessed be conformed to God’s will, as expressed in the teachings of the Church…. the Church does not have the power to confer its liturgical blessing when that would somehow offer a form of moral legitimacy to a union that presumes to be a marriage or to an extra-marital sexual practice.”
That all seems crystal clear. So, if the Church has explicitly stated that it cannot (as in does not have the power to) bless homosexual unions, why the headlines?
The document goes on to clarify that there are nonliturgical blessings, some of which have rituals or formulae attached to them (found in the Book of Blessings) and some of which are “spontaneous.” Blessings of same-sex couples — not same-sex unions — fall into this nonliturgical category; in order to avoid confusing or scandalizing anyone, the Church discourages the creation of any kind of ritual by “ecclesial authorities to avoid producing confusion with the blessing proper to the Sacrament of Marriage.”
Fiducia Supplicans justifies this kind of “spontaneous” blessing by pointing out that nonliturgical blessings are given to individuals who:
recognizing themselves to be destitute and in need of [H]is help—do not claim a legitimation of their own status, but who beg that all that is true, good, and humanly valid in their lives and their relationships be enriched, healed, and elevated by the presnece of the Holy Spirit.
Essentially, the Vatican has simply clarified that, while same-sex unions cannot receive any kind of legitimization in the form of a liturgical, ritualized blessing, the individuals or the “couple” can receive a nonliturgical, spontaneous blessing — the same kind of blessing a priest might offer if you asked him to bless your car.
Just in case offering that kind of spontaneous blessing might become confusing, Fiducia Supplicans prohibits any kind of blessing from being associated intentionally with any external sign of the same-sex union — if they’re wearing wedding dresses and have just signed papers to validate a civil union, clergy are not supposed to offer a blessing.
Distinctions Between Blessings Are Important
Unfortunately, rather than clarifying the Church’s stance on homosexuality to the masses, Fiducia Supplicans seems to have had the opposite effect. Major progressive figures within the Church have celebrated the declaration as a win.
Jesuit Fr. James Martin praised the DDF on X just hours after the Vatican made its announcement. He remarked that “[Fiducia Supplicans] is a marked shift from … the conclusion ‘God does not and cannot bless sin’ from just two yeas ago. The declaration opens the door to non-liturgical blessings of same-sex couples, something that had been previously off limits for bishops, priests and deacons.”
The Vatican's new declaration "Fiducia supplicans" is major step forward in the church's ministry to LGBTQ people and recognizes the deep desire in many Catholic same-sex couples for God's presence in their loving relationships. It is also a marked shift from…
— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) December 18, 2023
Of course, what Martin fails to point out is that the document published by the Vatican in 2021 prohibits blessings on same-sex unions, the new document simply permits simple, spontaneous, non-ritualized blessings on same-sex couples. There is, as with everything in theology and philosophy, an important distinction between the two things. That distinction ultimately means that Bishop Wiesemann’s injunction that priests within his diocese bless same-sex unions is just as invalid and wrong-headed as it was at the beginning of November.
Tragically, given that nobody is interested in reading the actual document, it’s a distinction that few individuals (and no leftist media organization) will bother to make.
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Aubrey Gulick is a recent graduate from Hillsdale College and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute Fellow at The American Spectator. When she isn’t writing, Aubrey enjoys long runs, solving rock climbs, and rattling windows with the 32-foot pipes on the organ. Follow her on Twitter @AubGulick.
