To the question posed: “Does the Church have the power to impart the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex?”, The answer is “negatively”.
Back on responsum of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to a dubium. The practice in use for years atformer Holy Office this time it concerns the blessing of same-sex unions, a practice that some priests around the world, especially in Northern Europe and Germany, have made their own without, however, the Holy See ever having its say. The Vatican, through the dicastery headed by the cardinal Luis Ladaria and by the archbishop Giacomo Morandi, he replies by arguing “no” also with a long explanatory note which, as a tradition, is signed with three asterisks. The responsum, it is explained, comes out after Francis has been informed “and has given his consent to the publication”.
“Illicit”
The former Holy Office explains that the answer to the dubium “declares illegal any form of blessing that tends to recognize their unions”. Illegality that the explanatory note accompanied by the responsum refers to a triple order of reasons, in connection with each other.
Truth and Value of Blessings
The first is given “by the truth and the value of blessings”. They belong to the genus of sacramentals, which are “liturgical actions of the Church” which require a consonance of life with what they mean and generate. “Consequently, a blessing on a human relationship requires that it be ordered to receive and express the good that is said and given to it.”
The union between man and woman
The second reason is inherent in the fact that “the order which enables one to receive the gift is given by the designs of God inscribed in Creation and fully revealed by Christ the Lord”. “Drawings, continues the note,” to which relationships or partnerships, even stable ones, do not respond, which involve a sexual practice outside marriage, that is, outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman, open in itself to the transmission of life . This is the case of same-sex unions ”. But, explains the Congregation led by Ladaria, it is not only the case of homosexual couples “as if the problem are only such unions”. “But any union that involves an exercise of sexuality outside of marriage, which is illegal from a moral point of view, according to what the uninterrupted ecclesial teaching teaches”.
Induction into error
The third reason is given “by the error, into which one would easily be led, to assimilate the blessing of same-sex unions to that of matrimonial unions”. For the relationship that blessings on people have with the sacraments, the note continues, “the blessing of such unions could in a certain way constitute an imitation or a reference to analogy with the nuptial blessing, imparted to the man and woman who unite in the sacrament of marriage. Which would be erroneous and misleading ”.
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For these reasons, for the Vatican “the blessing of homosexual unions cannot be considered lawful”. Declaration that the former Holy Office specifies “which does not in any way prejudice the human and Christian consideration in which the Church holds every person. So much so that the answer to the dubium does not exclude blessings being given to individuals with a homosexual inclination, who manifest the will to live in fidelity to God’s revealed plans as proposed by ecclesial teaching ”.
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The Holy See does not want this release to be read as “unjust discrimination” for homosexuals. The meaning, they say, is to “recall the truth of the liturgical rite and of what deeply corresponds to the essence of the sacramentals, as the Church understands them”. The former Holy Office recalls, in fact, that “the Christian community and pastors are called to welcome people with a homosexual inclination with respect and delicacy, and will be able to find the most adequate ways, consistent with ecclesial teaching, to proclaim the Gospel in its fullness. At the same time, they recognize the sincere closeness of the Church – which prays for them, accompanies them, shares their journey of Christian faith – and they accept their teachings with sincere availability ”.
The end of the note, in its literal tenor, mentions the fact that “the Church does not have, nor can it dispose of, the power to bless same-sex unions in the sense understood above”. Does this seem to leave a door open to the blessing of same-sex unions in another sense, to unions of homosexuals who are committed to living their bond in virginity? The document seems to leave a door open in this direction, but it will be necessary to wait for any developments in the magisterium.
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