It appears that the Catholic Church, despite confusing statements from the pope in the past, has settled the matter of whether it can or will bless “gay marriage” or “same-sex unions.”
In an official response to a question about the matter, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had a one-word answer: No.
There followed a 989-word explanation that explained why: Same-sex unions are illicit and cannot be blessed. That decision flows from the Church’s clear teaching that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and constitute mortal sin.
God, the response declares, cannot bless sin.
Question and Answer
The statement is framed as a response to this question: “Does the Church have the power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex?”
Answer: “Negative.”
The reason, Cardinal Luis Ladaria wrote for the Congregation, is that “blessings” are sacramentals, which are “sacred signs that resemble the sacrament” in that they “signify effects, particularly of a spiritual kind, which are obtained through the Church’s intercession.”
Though sacramentals do confer grace in the same manner as the seven sacraments, “they prepare us to receive grace and dispose us to cooperate with it.”
Thus, he continued, that which is blessed must be good:
When a blessing is invoked on particular human relationships, in addition to the right intention of those who participate, it is necessary that what is blessed be objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace, according to the designs of God inscribed in creation, and fully revealed by Christ the Lord. Therefore, only those realities which are in themselves ordered to serve those ends are congruent with the essence of the blessing imparted by the Church.
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 presence in such relationships of positive elements, which are in themselves to be valued and appreciated, cannot justify these relationships and render them legitimate objects of an ecclesial blessing, since the positive elements exist within the context of a union not ordered to the Creator’s plan.
Homosexual unions, he wrote, are illicit, and such a blessing would imitate a real nuptial blessing of a real marriage. But homosexual unions are not “remotely analagous” to the sacramental marriage of husband and wife.
While Ladaria’s answer does not mean a priest must refrain from blessing an individual, it “declares illicit any form of blessing that tends to acknowledge their unions as such.” Such a blessing, he wrote, would “approve and encourage a choice and a way of life that cannot be recognized as objectively ordered to the revealed plans of God.”
Continued Ladaria:
God Himself never ceases to bless each of His pilgrim children in this world, because for Him “we are more important to God than all of the sins that we can commit.” But he does not and cannot bless sin: he blesses sinful man, so that he may recognize that he is part of his plan of love and allow himself to be changed by him. He in fact “takes us as we are, but never leaves us as we are.”…
The Church does not have, and cannot have, the power to bless unions of persons of the same sex in the sense intended above.
Pope Francis approved the response.
Ladaria’s responsum to an official dubia is consistent with Church teaching on homosexual behavior.
Such acts “are intrinsically disordered,” the catechism says.
Dubium PDFThey 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.
Hurtful to Homosexuals
Predictably, the leftist media rounded up all the right critics to complain that the Vatican refused to sanctify homosexual relationships.
Jason Steidl, a homosexual theologian at St. Joseph’s college, spoke with the New York Times.
“The Vatican does what the Vatican does, and sometimes the Vatican really hurts people whose lives they are unfamiliar with,” he whined. “Pastorally, it’s a devastating pronouncement for L.G.B.T.Q. people.”
And saying the church cannot bless sin, another pro-sodomy activist told the Times, is extremely hurtful:
“That line in particular is going to cause tremendous pain and anger,” said Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA, a national advocacy group for gay Catholics. “The fact that our church still denies people a sense of sacredness about their relationships is deeply painful to those of who hold fast to our faith.”
The Associated Press found a “gay rights leader” in the Philippines. “We do not need any stress anymore from this church,” he said.
