When the first rites of blessing for same-sex couples came out in the Anglican church, they were accompanied by a lot of bluster about how they were not to be equated with marriage rites and that they did not constitute a change in doctrine. In 2003, the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster in Canada published a form of blessing for same-sex couples. Then-Bishop Ingham made a point to distinguish these blessings from the sacrament of marriage. “This is not a marriage ceremony,” he said, “but a blessing of permanent and faithful commitments between persons of the same sex in order that they may have the support and encouragement of the church in their lives together under God.”
As a former Episcopalian “priest,” I have concerns about Fiducia Supplicans, the new document from the Vatican allowing blessings for same-sex couples. That the text reasserts the Traditional doctrine and sacrament of marriage is not exactly enough to allay them, I’m afraid. I’m grateful for it, don’t get me wrong. But it feels like déjà vu. If you want to know what it sounded like as conservatives were dealing with the liberalizing actions of Anglican hierarchs, just read Catholic social media and news articles in the wake of Fiducia Supplicans. It is all so painfully familiar. Conservatives trying to excite themselves about small victories, liberals running full steam into flagrant offenses, all while leaders talk about listening, learning, and loving.
Many conservatives defended Fiducia Supplicans because of its strong reassertion of the Traditional doctrine of marriage and its protestation that nothing is changing regarding the sacrament of marriage. But I’ve heard that before. You’ll have to forgive me if I remain a bit uneasy and feel like I’m reliving a nightmare.
What you must understand is that for many liberals doctrine doesn’t matter. It is not revealed by God or even a human proposition that corresponds to divine revelation. It is merely an expression of human experience about God that is limited by the culture and categories in which it was expressed. Doctrine should be as open to change as the style of vestments or the color of the walls in the local parish.
What you must understand is that for many liberals doctrine doesn’t matter. It is not revealed by God or even a human proposition that corresponds to divine revelation. It is merely an expression of human experience about God that is limited by the culture and categories in which it was expressed. Doctrine should be as open to change as the style of vestments or the color of the walls in the local parish. What you must understand is that for many liberals doctrine doesn’t matter. It is not revealed by God or even a human proposition that corresponds to divine revelation.Tweet This
What matters for liberals is the core experience of compassion and love. Faith is less about knowledge and more about experience, subjectivity, and community. A doctrinal faith to them is a kind of bastardization of true faith, an attempt to reduce the experience of faith to thoughts or ideas. Indeed, doctrines are often seen by liberals as excuses for conservatives not to practice mercy, love, and justice. They serve as walls that keep the world out, so they must be broken down and relativized. The first step in this process is to try to redefine and repurpose them so that it sounds as though a new practice is doctrinally correct or inconsequential.
There are several aspects of Fiducia Supplicans that are causes for concern. But the one that I want to focus on here is how it perpetuates the idea that pastoral practice can be disconnected from doctrinal and moral teachings and, further, that pastoral mercy is of greater importance than doctrinal fidelity. In order to be as fair and deferential to the magisterium as possible, I want to offer a close but hopefully not overly tedious reading of the key aspects of the text.
An Innovation that Permits Pastoral Blessings of Same-Sex Couples
It seems to me that Fiducia Supplicans gives two reasons why it was necessary. On the one hand, the document repeatedly speaks of the need to “respond” to Pope Francis’ “pastoral vision” which variously calls for Church ministers to move beyond the strict confines of doctrine and morals to offer generous pastoral care and divine mercy to all people, including those in same-sex relationships.
On the other hand, especially as the German bishops began to formally bless same-sex couples, leaders in the Church have been submitting to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) “questions of both a formal and an informal nature about the possibility of blessing same-sex couples.”
The key problem here is the discrepancy between such blessings and the 2021 declaration of the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) which concluded that the “Church does not have, and cannot have, the power to bless unions of persons of the same sex.” Fiducia Supplicans admits that Pope Francis’ response to various dubia have not been “sufficiently clear” (FS, 3). Thus, Fiducia Supplicans seeks to clarify exactly how blessings can be given to same-sex couples without running afoul of the 2021 statement.
Some conservatives and defenders have said that the document proposes nothing new, that people are blessed casually all the time and there’s no reason why same-sex couples couldn’t be so blessed. But the Preface makes clear that the document offers an innovation: “The value of this document…is that it offers a specific and innovative contribution to the pastoral meaning of blessings, permitting a broadening and enrichment of the classical understanding of blessings…based on the pastoral vision of Pope Francis.”
What is this innovation? It is the establishment of a rationale for blessing same-sex couples that avoids confusion with blessings for married couples. As the opening line of the first section tells us, the key issue of the document is “avoiding that ‘something that is not marriage is being recognized as marriage’” (FS, 4). I think we need to be honest that the magisterium itself sees this document as a “development” and a contribution of a new practice.
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