ROME – The Vatican on Monday banned the blessing of same-sex relations, contradicting calls for the practice of progressive bishops in Germany and elsewhere and setting a limit on the conciliatory approach to homosexuals that marked Pope Francis’ pontificate.
The Vatican’s doctrinal bureau, in a document personally approved by Pope Francis, said the clergy were not allowed to pronounce blessings on any relationship outside of marriage between a man and a woman.
The document reaffirms the Catholic teaching on marriage and sexuality when several liberal bishops, including the head of the conference of German Catholic bishops, called for the blessing of same-sex couples in engaged relationships. Priests in Germany have widely blessed such couples for years, as have clerics in other parts of Northern Europe.
Such blessings are wrong, the Vatican said Monday, as it would seem to “approve and encourage a choice and a way of life that cannot be recognized as being objectively ordered to God’s revealed plans,” adding that God “does not and does not perhaps he blesses sin. ”
German bishops have clashed with the Vatican on other issues, including the issue of Lutheran communion, and are unlikely to return to their position of blessing homosexual unions. German bishops and lay Catholics are currently involved in a national synod that aims to change aspects of church life, including the possibility of clerical women and teaching about sexuality.
An action by German bishops to approve the blessings of same-sex unions would exacerbate tensions with more conservative parts of the church, including in Africa, and conservative American bishops in the United States have been critical of what they see as an excessively progressive removal from traditional teachings, the Archbishop of Denver warning in 2019 that German bishops are heading for a schism.
Pope Francis has taken a more liberal approach than his predecessors on some issues related to marriage and sexuality, including divorce and homosexuality. In one of the most famous statements of his pontificate, he answered a question about gay clergy in 2013: “Who am I to judge?” During his 2015 visit to the United States, he met privately with a gay couple in Washington, DC
In comments published last year, the pope expressed support for same-sex civil unions, saying gay couples “have the right to be legally covered,” a position he held as archbishop of Buenos Aires.
But the pope also wrote that “there is absolutely no reason to consider homosexual unions in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.”
The Vatican document on Monday acknowledged “the presence in such relations of positive elements, which in themselves must be appreciated and appreciated”, but said that such elements “cannot justify these relations and cannot make them legitimate objects of an ecclesial blessing,” because the positive elements exist in the context of an unordered union of the Creator’s plan. ”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, an official teaching manual, states that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered”, the inclination to perform them is “objectively disordered” and “in no case can they be approved”. But the catechism also states that gay people “must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Any signs of unfair discrimination against them must be avoided. ”
Monday’s reaffirmation of traditional teaching is likely to disappoint progressive Catholics who hope for further change and cheer up conservatives, as the pope made in February last year not to facilitate the ordination of married men to the priesthood.
“It’s not surprising yet disappointing,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of the New Ways ministry, which advocates for LGBT Catholics. “This decision is impotent, however, because it will not stop Catholic people from the pews or many Catholic leaders who are eager for such blessings to happen.”
The issue of homosexuality has affected other Christian denominations, favoring the division with Anglican communion worldwide between the liberal churches in Europe and North America and the more conservative churches in Africa. Last year, the United Methodist Church agreed in principle to break up due to disagreements over same-sex marriage and gay clergy, although a meeting to approve the move was postponed due to the pandemic.
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