My take on Fiducia supplicans

Every person or priest I have tried to talk to about Fiducia supplicans has been at best evasive about the subject and on public media.

No priest I know has had the courage to declare himself publicly on the document emanating from the Dicastery of the Faith which is the doctrinal office of the Church in concurrence with Pope Francis.

Allow me some space therefore to express myself on this matter. I am not doing so vacuously, but as a lay member in the Church, I feel I have the right to consider the matter publicly sharing through my active Church membership in the common priesthood, prophecy and servant leadership of Christ (Lumen Gentium). After all, Amoris laetitia speaks clearly of the need for dialogue in the Church without the need to offend anyone. Jurgen Habermas, of the Frankfurt School, emphasises this need for dialogue and solidarity in the lay world to be able to synthesise a way forward in the world and this is underlined in Amoris laetitia, a Church document. Ever since the Second Vatican Council, the emphasis on synodality and dialogue to deal with the resolution of new issues in the Church has been emphasised, and it has always been the way that the Church has dealt with theological and social issues, since its apostolic foundations (vide Council of Jerusalem and all the other Church councils since).

Throughout my life, I have been involved in working with people. In my youth with various Youth movements, in my 45 years of political life in Malta and abroad, in my 40 years of medical practice in hospital (first posting was in a psychiatric services) and as a GP, in my 30 years as a University of Malta and MCAST lecturer and in my 35 years of marriage and fatherhood, I think I have earned my twopence worth to pronounce myself on the matter with my personal contribution to the sensus fidei fidelium.

I am very much aware of what is written in scripture which is the Word of God, but scripture was instituted by the authority that Christ instituted in the Apostolic Church and their successors, which had the authority to redact scripture, to select it and to interpret it. Non solo scriptura! – not scripture alone. The Church’s Tradition precedes scripture and together with scripture forms the authority to determine doctrine.

Karl Rahner liked to state that doctrine is not a static object. Through the two thousand years of the Church new issues have cropped up in the life of the Church which needed updating and a new interpretation of Church teaching, leading to various new developments in Church doctrine, so one can speak of an evolution of doctrine. (eg. de Rerum Novarum, on the new things in the world, by Pope Leo XIII). Christ prepared us for this by stating in John’s gospel (16:12-15) that “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

The post-synodal synthesis released after the first session of the synod on synodality, states very clearly that, “in different ways, people who feel marginalized or excluded from the Church because of their marriage status, identity or sexuality, also ask to be heard and accompanied. There was a deep sense of love, mercy and compassion felt in the Assembly for those who are or feel hurt or neglected by the Church, who want a place to call ‘home’ where they can feel safe, be heard and respected, without fear of feeling judged.” That postsynodally, this document was followed by the declaration of the Dicastery of Faith as confirmed by the Pope smacks very much of magisterium to me and is not one borne out of gnosis.

I am not going into the technical details of Fiducia supplicans, but basically it deals with the informal pastoral blessings of persons who may find themselves outside of the moral norms of the church. Marriage is what it is between a man and a woman and this cannot change or be changed because it is an institution established by God. However in today’s epoch, people may find themselves, due to their own choices or possibly not, caught outside the norms, and the Church is finding ways to make these people feel welcome by instituting an informal non-liturgical pastoral blessing for these people. We do after all bless animals, guns, cars and whatnot, why not individual human beings? In an informal blessing a priest cannot enter into the moral merits or demerits of the individuals asking for the blessing such as done sacramentally in confession or when applying the sacraments! There was an old custom, now forgotten, when people on the street used to ask priests to bless them. Fathers and mothers may even bless their children! I do not think that in these circumstances one should hold off an informal blessing.

St Augustine states clearly the connection between faith and reason and in his City of God he clearly states quoting Marcus Varro, that of all the categorical attributes of religion of a mythical, city/state or one based on philosophy and science, the Christian religion has attributes of the latter type. St Thomas Aquinas in fact did build a synthesis of the Christian faith and Aristotelian Hellenistic philosophy which the west had discarded/lost but rediscovered in the writings of our Muslim brethren. But even St Thomas’ conclusions had to be updated with the progress of science. He believed like Aristotle that human life begun in ways that are today considered silly (a small man – a sperm, in a uterine cave) when compared to what we now know through genetics, gynaecology and embryology. The Church like science today, believes that human life starts at conception. It updated throughout the ages, its previous position which was Aristotelian.

The science pertaining to homosexuality and other sexual identity issue, belongs to the remit of the physical/psychological and social sciences to categorize, not that of Church doctrine. In this case as science upgrades information, so must Church doctrine be upgraded. I cannot here in this article enter into the vagaries of the scientific/social causes of these different sexual identities. One may follow the work of Alfred Kinsey (biologist, sexologist and zoologist) and other workers in related fields on sexual medical/psychological/social matters. Suffice it to say that the conclusions are that there may be an action in these fields that is determined in a free way and other actions where one is not free to act at all, being predetermined by genetics/epigenetics, psychological or social causes.

May I remind that in the Cathechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), a thorough reading of the section on morality distinguishes clearly the difference between the Moral Object and the Moral Act. Whereas the moral object remains unchangeable and is determined by objective ethics, the moral act also contains determinants such as intention and circumstances that may qualify the guilt in an act especially if a person is not free to act at all. This position is parallel to the work carried out in philosophy on Christian Personalism (Christian existentialism) in the work done by Gabriel Marcel and Emmanuel Mounier. This qualification of guilt is often considered in the sacrament of confession and even in legal circles! Can guilt be reduced to zero if the person acting has no freedom to choose? Maybe we should leave that judgement in the hands of our Lord. This remission of guilt is not completely qualified when there is the rupture of an absolute right such as in abortion where the right to life of an innocent human being is an absolute right. Therefore no one in imparting a pastoral blessing is in a position to deny it without knowing the facts of the particular circumstances and intentions of the persons involved offhand. One cannot prejudice other persons. Therefore, such informal pastoral blessing should not be withheld arbitrarily.

St Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, was once listening to a meditation by one of his priests talking about the gifts God has given man. At one time, the priest said that God’s greatest gift to man was freedom. Escriva did something at this point which he had never done before. He stood up, asked the priest to stand down and continued the meditation himself. Because the greatest gift of God to humanity was not freedom but Divine filiation. We are all children of God through our brotherhood with the Logos, the second person of the Trinity and we approach God only through Him, the only mediator between God and man. To quote Einstein, God does not play dice in creating the world! His creations ex nihilo in creating man are never spurious. Let us therefore approach this issue without prejudice, without malice or too much rigidity or fear of change. The Church is always a Church in transition as a thorough reading of the gospel of St. John shows in fact one of a Church always in dire transition. The last gospel was written as the early Christians slowly transited from being an early Jewish sect expelled from the synagogues into a mixed Jewish/Hellenistic sect in Roman times and finally into the universal institution it is today! As the psalmist says, be strong let your hearts be bold all you who hope in God.