Vatican Clarifies Guidance on Blessing Same-Sex Unions

Vatican clarifies guidance

VATICAN CLARIFIES GUIDANCE. All around the world the pope has gottn major pushback for his guidance last month. It included a kind of “blessing” on same-sex couples. Yet “without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage.”

I have already written how it didn’t go quite as far as many say. But it did go into dubious territory and therefore drew much resistance. Especially in Africa and Eastern Europe. The Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops, for one, objected to the new guidance. It is “causing anxiety and even confusion among the Christians, and in general the people of God.”

Accordingly, the papal office headed by Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández issued a “clarification.” It asks for a “a full and calm reading of the Declaration so as to better understand its meaning and purpose.” He denies it could be considered “heretical, contrary to the Tradition of the Church, or blasphemous.” He said that such a “non-ritualized” blessing on same-sex couples should take only 10-15 seconds.

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Also, it “does not intend to justify anything that is not morally acceptable.” Nor is it a marriage or “approval” of anything. Rather it allows the “response of a pastor towards two persons who ask for God’s help.” Help for what? To become free of sinful attractions, or to make them more manageable? People will want that clarified too.

The cardinal seemed to make room for variations in applying the pope’s guidance. It depended “on local contexts and the discernment of each diocesan bishop with his diocese.” The cardinal went on to say, “It is not the answer that people in two or three countries would like to have. Rather, it is “a pastoral response that everyone could accept, albeit with difficulty.”

Difficulty will likely continue in accepting both last month’s statement and this month’s clarification. Loving sinners doesn’t mean overlooking self-destructive and ruinous sin.

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