Jennifer Ugwueke
In a decree approved by Pope Francis, the Vatican on Monday said that priests cannot bless same-sex unions, describing such relationships as”not ordered to the Creator’s plan.”
“The blessing of homosexual unions cannot be considered licit,” the church said.
The “explanatory note,” issued by the Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog, carries the weight of a universal ground rule for the Roman Catholic Church — and it regards one of the most controversial issues inside an institution divided over its stance on sexuality.
Many gay Catholics had been hopeful that Francis would create more openness inside the church, not only by speaking more welcomingly about homosexuality, but by changing church law. In a documentary released last year, the pontiff had called for the creation of civil union laws so that same-sex couples are “legally covered.”
But Monday’s decree suggests that Francis, while interested in outreach to the church’s LGBT followers, does not favor a dramatic overhaul of church teaching. In various nations, the Catholic church has long fought against LGBT rights, and past popes have called same sex unions deviant or a moral evil. Officially, the church teaches that homosexual acts are “disordered.”
The decree, rather than changing official church practice, is an attempt to dissuade priests who might already be considering performing such blessings. Some bishops have spoken out in favor of giving church blessings to same-sex unions, and the issue has become a major topic in countries like Germany, where many leaders feel the church needs to modernize in its social teachings.
Monday’s note referred vaguely to proposals to bless same sex unions “being advanced” in some quarters.
But the church’s doctrinal body, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said that blessings can only be invoked on a relationship when it is “positively ordered to receive and express grace.”
“For this reason, it is not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage (i.e., outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open in itself to the transmission of life), as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex,” the church wrote.
The church said such a determination was not intended to be “a form of unjust discrimination,” and called on priests to welcome those with “homosexual inclinations” with respect and sensitivity. The decree said that individual gay people could continue to be blessed by the church, provided they show “the will to live in fidelity to the revealed plans of God as proposed by Church teaching.”
Andrea Rubera, 55, spokesperson for Paths of Hope, an Italian Christian LGBT association, said the church’s pronouncement was a from-the-books determination that didn’t take into account the “reality” of peoples’ lives.
“They don’t realize that having a sexual life outside of marriage is not a choice, because there can be none,” Rubera said. “I would ask [the church]: What becomes of all of these believing same sex couples?”
Francis DeBernardo, the executive director of New Ways Ministry, a group that ministers to and advocates for LGBT Catholics, called the Vatican’s pronouncement disappointing but not surprising. The news, he said, is that the Vatican formalized an existing position.
“It’s not going to stop Catholic people in the pews and Catholic leaders who are eager for such blessings to happen,” he said.
DeBernardo said that this will simply motivate people to continue to fight for change within the church.
“It’s impotent, it has no power,” DeBernardo said. “God has already blessed these couples. A ritual blessing is simply a recognition that the blessing has already taken place.”