A Reflection on Fiducia Supplicans
I am a Christian who holds to the classical orthodox faith. I am a protesting Pentecostal, who believes in the universality of the Church. I am not Roman Catholic, but I would like to offer reflections on the recent document Fiducia Supplicans: On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings. This document has been popularly interpreted as the Vatican’s affirmation of homosexual relationships and representing a change in Roman Catholic teaching regarding human sexuality. In the spirit of Christian fraternity, I have carefully read the document. I would like to offer some reflections.
First, Fiducia Supplicans claims that it does not reflect a change in Roman Catholic teaching regarding human sexuality. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved (2357, emphasis added).
Fiducia Supplicans affirms marriage as the “exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to the generation of children” and “it is only in this context that sexual relations find their natural, proper, and fully human meaning. The Church’s doctrine on this point remains firm” (4). Furthermore, the “Church does not have the power to impart blessings on unions of persons of the same sex” and has “the duty to avoid any rite that might contradict this conviction” (5). This document does not affirm homosexual civil unions. It consistently refers to homosexual relationships as “irregular.”
Fiducia Supplicans “offers a specific and innovative contribution to the pastoral meaning of blessings, permitting a broadening and enrichment of the classical understanding of blessings.” Herein lies the rub. Traditionally, “the Church does not have the power to confer its liturgical blessing when that would somehow offer a form of moral legitimacy to a union that presumes to be a marriage or to an extra-marital sexual practice” (11). It is here that the document presents a change in church teaching by removing the moral condition of a blessing and “the blessing is transformed into inclusion, solidarity, and peacemaking. . . a positive message of comfort, care, and encouragement” (19). In effect, God‘s grace is extended to unrepentant sinners in the hope that the Church’s blessing will have an evangelical effect.
This begs the question, “How can the Church bless that which is grave depravity and intrinsically disordered?” Nowhere in this document is there a call for repentance or submission to the moral teaching of the church. The document declares fidelity to the moral teaching of the Church by precluding “the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples without officially validating their status or changing in any way.” Even so, by failing to call sinners to repentance, and offering an innovative definition of “blessing,” the effect is to affirm same-sex couples in their depraved, disordered, and irregular relationships.
The pastoral intent of Fiducia Supplicans is to offer grace that affects reconciliation. The pastoral failure of the document is that it fails to acknowledge the necessity of repentance. The authors have not provided clarity on Church teaching, rather they have offered a document filled with implied and explicit contradictions. The document’s stated intent is to avoid confusion and scandal. It this regard, it has utterly failed.
Addendum: The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has offered a press release on the significance of this document. Click here to read.
