A group of 90, consisting of Catholic priests, scholars, and authors are asking bishops and cardinals to reject a Vatican declaration that approved the pastoral, nonliturgical blessings of same-sex couples and to refuse to implement it within their various dioceses.
The coalition have signed a “Filial Appeal” addressed to the leaders of the Church, which asks them to forbid any blessings of same-sex couples within their jurisdictions and to directly ask the Holy Father Pope Francis to withdraw the document. They claim that the declaration Fiducia Supplicans contradicts “both Scripture and the universal and uninterrupted Tradition of the Church” and “produces a serious scandal.”
The letter reads: “It is definitely not justifiable, especially for a cardinal or a bishop, to remain silent, since the scandal that has already occurred is serious and public, and if it is not stopped, it is bound to be more and more amplified. The threat does not become smaller but more serious, since the error comes from the Roman See and is destined to scandalize all the faithful.”
The Vatican has justified Fiducia Supplicans by emphasizing a distinction between liturgical blessings, which are not available to same-sex couples, and pastoral blessings, which are now allowed. However, the scholars in the letter are contesting the legitimacy of this distinction as a means of justifying the blessings.
Bishops worldwide have been divided on how to implement the declaration or whether to implement it at all.
What Fiducia Supplicans says:
The Vatican declaration, which was published by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on December 18, 2023, emphasizes a distinction between “liturgical” and “pastoral” blessings.
The declaration asserts that liturgical blessings, are not permitted for same-sex couples, because such a blessing “requires that what is blessed be conformed to God’s will.” The declaration states that the Church does not have the power to confer such blessings on same-sex couples because it would “offer a form of moral legitimacy to a union that presumes to be a marriage or to an extra-marital sexual practice.”
The document, however, claims that pastoral blessings are different. It states that pastoral blessings “are meant for everyone” and “no one is to be excluded from them.” It also states that priests can provide pastoral blessings for same-sex couples “without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage.” Such blessings, the declaration adds, cannot “be performed with any clothing, gestures, or words that are proper to a wedding.”
“Rites and prayers that could create confusion between what constitutes marriage — which is the ‘exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to the generation of children’ — and what contradicts it are inadmissible,” the declaration reads.
Why these scholars oppose the declaration:
The scholars voicing objections to the declaration Fiducia Supplicans say in their letter that the attempt to create a distinction between liturgical and pastoral blessings is “impossible.”
They argue that pastoral care “always presupposes a theory and … if pastoral care performs something that does not correspond to the doctrine, what is actually being proposed is a different doctrine.”
Regardless of whether the blessing is liturgical or pastoral, the scholar’s letter claims that a blessing has an “immediate communicative effect … (that) always implies an approval of what is being blessed” even if the document claims that is not the intent. It also argues that the declaration has already been interpreted as approval “by those few episcopates and prelates that for decades have been openly advocating a change in the doctrine on sexual morality” and by much of the public.
“In practice, the faithful will not even be aware of the subtle theoretical justifications introduced by the declaration…,” the filial appeal stated. “The message that is effectively launched, and that the people of God, and the entire world, will inevitably register and are already registering is that: The Catholic Church has finally evolved, and now accepts homosexual unions, and, more generally, extramarital unions.”
The scholars add that the traditional doctrines on sexual morality “must be considered infallible” and that “this is a doctrine of the natural law, which does not allow for any change.”
“In this difficult moment, a clear word of truth would be the best example of your faithful and courageous dedication to the people of God entrusted to you, a sign of fidelity to the true mission of the papacy and at the same time the best help for the pope himself, an eloquent ‘fraternal correction,’ which he urgently needs in this last and most critical period of his pontificate and probably of his life,” the filial appeal implores the bishops and cardinals.
Who has signed this document?
The 90 signatories include Catholic priests, scholars, and authors from across Africa, Europe, North America, South America, and Australia. They aim to increase the number of signatories by a February 15 deadline and intends to publish a larger, more comprehensive list by February 17.
Among these signatories are Thomas Ward, president of the John Paul II Academy on Human Life and the Family; Father Robert Sirico, president of the St. John Henry Newman Institute and founder of the Acton Institute, and Dr. Michael Pakaluk, professor of ethics and social philosophy at the Catholic University of America.
Other signatories include Dr. César Félix Sánchez Martínez, professor of philosophy at the Universidad Nacional de San Agustín, Perú, German sociologist and author Gabriele Kuby, The Cornerstone Forum President Gil Bailie, and Father Gerald Murray, pastor of the Church of the Holy Family in New York City.
The “Filial Appeal” has been published in several languages, including English, French, Spanish, Italian, and German.
The Vatican’s response to the controversy:
Catholic Bishops around the world have taken a variety of different approaches to Fiducia Supplicans. In some cases, they have taken a broad view of the declaration, and in others, they have reportedly taken a very narrow view. Some of them, including numerous bishops’ conferences, have also refused to implement it.
On January 5, 2024, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, responded to some of the backlash in a five-page press release.
“There is no room to distance ourselves doctrinally from this declaration or to consider it heretical, contrary to the Tradition of the Church or blasphemous,” Cardinal Victor said, noting the declaration’s language about marriage and sexual morality.
“We can help God’s people to discover that these kinds of blessings are just simple pastoral channels that help people give expression to their faith, even if they are great sinners,” he added. “For this reason, in giving a blessing to two people who come together to ask for it spontaneously, we are not consecrating them nor are we congratulating them nor indeed are we approving that type of union.”
