Vatican speaks out to deny same-sex unions
THE Vatican has decreed that the Catholic Church cannot bless same-sex unions because God “cannot bless sin”.
The Vatican’s orthodoxy office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a formal response to a question about whether Catholic clergy can bless gay unions. The answer, contained in a two-page explanation published yesterday in seven languages and approved by Pope Francis, was “negative”.
The decree distinguished between the church’s welcoming and blessing of gay people, which it upheld, but not their unions, since any such sacramental recognition could be confused with marriage.
The document immediately disheartened advocates for LGBT Catholics and threw a spanner in the debate within the German church, which has been at the forefront of opening discussion on issues such as the church’s teaching on homosexuality. Francis DeBernardo, executive director of United States-based New Ways Ministry, which advocates greater acceptance of gays in the church, predicted the Vatican position will be ignored, including by some Catholic clergy.
Mr DeBernardo said: “Catholic people recognise the holiness of the love between committed same-sex couples and recognise this love as divinely inspired and divinely supported and thus meets the standard to be blessed.”
The Vatican holds that homosexual people must be treated with dignity and respect, but that gay sex is “intrinsically disordered”. Catholic teaching holds that marriage between a man and woman is part of God’s plan and is intended for the sake of creating new life.
Since gay unions are not intended to be part of that plan, they cannot be blessed by the church, the document said. “The presence in such relationships of positive elements, which are in themselves to be valued and appreciated, cannot justify these relationships and render them legitimate objects of an ecclesial blessing, since the positive elements exist within the context of a union not ordered to the Creator’s plan,” it read.
God “does not and cannot bless sin: He blesses sinful man, so that he may recognise that he is part of his plan of love and allow himself to be changed by him,” it added.
Pope Francis has endorsed providing gay couples with legal protections in same-sex unions, but only in reference to the civil sphere, not within the church.
The Pope’s comments were made during an interview with a Mexican television station, Televisa, in 2019, but were removed from broadcast by the Vatican until they appeared in a documentary last year.
In the new document and an accompanying unsigned article, the Vatican said questions had been raised about whether the church should bless same-sex unions in a sacramental way in recent years, after Pope Francis had insisted on the need to welcome gay people in the church.
In the article, the Vatican stressed the “fundamental and decisive distinction” between gay individuals and gay unions. The article explained the rationale for forbidding a blessing of such unions, noting that any union that involves sexual activity outside of marriage cannot be blessed because it is not in a state of grace, or “ordered to both receive and express the good that is pronounced and given by the blessing”.