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Pope OKs blessing same-sex couples; Baton Rouge bishop weighs in on reach of Christ's love
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ROME — The Vatican announced Monday that Pope Francis now formally approves blessings for same-sex couples, though the shift in policy that is aimed at making the church more inclusive also maintains its strict ban on gay marriage.
The Rev. Michael Duca, the bishop of Baton Rouge, was visiting WBRZ shortly after the announcement Monday and said the church had an obligation to reach out to all.
"Christ came for everyone, and so I think it's important that we say that," Duca said in an interview with John Pastorek. "Christ loved ... it extends to all people that we meet."
"I tell people, when I go down on death row at Angola, ... every one of them wants a blessing. God can always reach out and touch people," the bishop said. "We become the conduit to bring them Christ's love, then his love will take over after that."
The document reaffirms that marriage is a lifelong union between a man and a woman, and it stresses that the blessings in question must not be tied to any specific Catholic celebration or religious service and should not be conferred at the same time as a civil union ceremony. Moreover, the blessings cannot use use set rituals or even involve the clothing and gestures that belong in a wedding.
But it says requests for such blessings for same-sex couples should not be denied. It offers an extensive and broad definition of the term “blessing” in Scripture to insist that people seeking a transcendent relationship with God and looking for his love and mercy shouldn’t be held up to an impossible moral standard to receive it.
“For, those seeking a blessing should not be required to have prior moral perfection,” it said.
“There is no intention to legitimize anything, but rather to open one’s life to God, to ask for his help to live better, and also to invoke the Holy Spirit so that the values of the Gospel may be lived with greater faithfulness,” it added.
The document marks the latest gesture of outreach from a pope who has made welcoming LGBTQ+ Catholics a hallmark of his papacy. From his 2013 quip, “Who am I to judge?” about a purportedly gay priest, to his 2023 comment to The Associated Press that “Being homosexual is not a crime,” Francis has distinguished himself from all his predecessors with his message of welcome.
“The significance of this news cannot be overstated,” said Francis DeBernardo of New Ways Ministry, which supports LGBTQ+ Catholics. “It is one thing to formally approve same-gender blessings, which he had already pastorally permitted, but to say that people should not be subjected to “an exhaustive moral analysis” to receive God’s love and mercy is an even more significant step.”
The Vatican holds that marriage is an indissoluble union between man and woman. As a result, it has long opposed same-sex marriage and considers homosexual acts to be “intrinsically disordered.” Nothing in the new document changes that teaching.
And in 2021, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said flat-out that the church couldn’t bless the unions of two men or two women because “God cannot bless sin.”
That 2021 pronouncement created an outcry and appeared to have blindsided Francis, even though he had technically approved its publication. Soon after it was published, he removed the official responsible for it and set about laying the groundwork for a reversal.
In the new document, the Vatican said the blessing is about helping people increase their trust in God. “It is a seed of the Holy Spirit that must be nurtured, not hindered,” it said.
It stressed that people in “irregular” unions of extramarital sex — gay or straight — are in a state of sin. But it said that shouldn’t deprive them of God’s love or mercy. “Even when a person’s relationship with God is clouded by sin, he can always ask for a blessing, stretching out his hand to God,” the document said.
“Thus, when people ask for a blessing, an exhaustive moral analysis should not be placed as a precondition for conferring it,” the document said.
Traditionalists were outraged. The traditionalist blogger Luigi Casalini of Messa in Latino (Latin Mass) blog wrote that the document appeared to be a form of heresy.
“The church is crumbling,” he wrote.
University of Notre Dame theologian Ulrich Lehner was also concerned, saying it would merely sow confusion and could lead to division in the church.
“The Vatican’s statement is, in my view, the most unfortunate public announcement in decades,” he said in a statement. “Moreover, some bishops will use it as a pretext to do what the document explicitly forbids, especially since the Vatican has not stopped them before. It is — and I hate to say it — an invitation to schism.”
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