ROME (AP) – The Vatican declared on Monday that the Catholic Church cannot bless homosexual unions because God “cannot bless sin.”
The Vatican’s Orthodox Bureau, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a formal response Monday to a question about whether the Catholic clergy can bless gay unions.
The answer, contained in a two-page explanation published in seven languages and approved by Pope Francis, was “negative.”
The decree distinguished between receiving and blessing the church of gay people, which it supported, but not their unions, because such sacramental recognition could be confused with marriage.
The Vatican claims that homosexuals must be treated with dignity and respect, but that homosexual sex is “intrinsically disordered.” Catholic teaching holds that marriage, a lifelong union between a man and a woman, is part of God’s plan and is intended to create a new life.
As gay unions are not meant to be part of this plan, they cannot be blessed by the church, the document says.
“The presence in such relationships of positive elements, which in themselves must be appreciated and appreciated, cannot justify these relationships and can make them legitimate objects of ecclesial blessing, because positive elements exist in the context of an unordered union of the Creator. the plan “, said the answer.
God “does not bless and cannot bless sin: He blesses the sinful man so that he can recognize that he is part of his plan of love and allow himself to be changed by him,” it was said.
Francis approved granting legal protections to gay couples in gay unions, but this refers to the civil sphere, not the church. These comments were made during an interview with a Mexican television station, Televisa, in 2019, but were cut by the Vatican until they appeared in a documentary last year.
In the new document and an unsigned accompanying article, the Vatican said questions had been raised about the blessing of gay unions in recent years and after Francis insisted on the need to receive and accompany homosexuals better in church.
In the article, the Vatican stressed the “fundamental and decisive distinction” between homosexuals and homosexual unions, noting that “negative judgment on the blessing of same-sex unions does not imply a judgment on persons.”
But he explained the reason for forbidding the blessing of such unions, noting that any union involving sexual activity outside of marriage cannot be blessed because it is not in a state of grace or “ordered to receive and express the good that is pronounced and given the blessing. ”
He added that blessing a same-sex union could give the impression of a kind of sacramental equivalence with marriage. “This would be wrong and misleading,” the article said.