(LifeSiteNews) — The latest document of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Fiducia supplicans, signed by Pope Francis, allowing the blessing of “couples” in irregular unions and same-sex “couples,” is a masterful work of deceit, namely, the lie of claiming to uphold infallible Catholic teaching on marriage, sexuality, and the granting of blessings, all the while departing radically from that very teaching in practice.
READ: Pope Francis publishes norms for clergy to ‘bless’ homosexual couples
The insidiousness of the deceit can be seen in the intellectual summersaults that faithful Catholics – bishops, priests, and laity – are attempting to do to save face from the accusation that the blessings proposed by Rome do in fact approve, endorse, and legitimize the adulterous or homosexual relationships of such “couples.” And all the while the pro-LGBT faction of heretics in the Church, and its counterpart in society, universally rejoice that Rome has now openly said the Church will bless what it previously declared it in no way could.
In the document, Cardinal Victor Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery (formerly Congregation) for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Pope Francis went so far as to leave out nothing of the Church’s essential points on marriage, sexuality, and blessings. They claim to reaffirm every essential point. They state that the constant and universal teaching of the Church is reaffirmed. The definition of marriage as a lifelong, exclusive union between a man and a woman open to the generation of new life is reaffirmed. The grave sinfulness of all sexual acts outside of marriage is reaffirmed. The grave sinfulness of all homosexual acts is reaffirmed. The impossibility of a sacramental blessing of sexual unions outside of marriage is reaffirmed. The impossibility of any liturgical, ritual blessing of sexual unions outside of marriage is reaffirmed. Even the previous, contentious, prohibition of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the granting of blessings to same-sex couples is reaffirmed.
With such reaffirmations, one would expect the matter to be settled. But no, not for those who do not actually accept what they so vociferously claim to uphold.
READ: Most American bishops are going along with Pope Francis’ ‘blessings’ for homosexual couples
Equipped with a specious distinction of blessings, now the departure from Catholic sexual morality is made possible in practice. Under the category of a “pastoral blessing,” now priests can bless “couples” in sexual unions outside of marriage and “couples” in same-sex unions.
However, such an act is essentially a blessing of the gravely sinful relationship of that couple.
When a couple present themselves for a blessing from the Church, it is not the individuals as such that the Church is blessing. If this were all that were being approved by Rome, this would be nothing novel, nothing to be newly celebrated by those who dissent from the Chruch’s sexual morality, such as Father James Martin, Cardinal Blase Cupich, or the German, Austrian, and Swiss bishops.
Rather, it is the couple as a couple, the individuals as part of a relationship, that are seeking a blessing. What makes the couple a couple is their relationship. Therefore, when a couple ask a priest for a blessing, it is insofar as they are in a relationship that they seek the blessing and are blessed, which is to bless the very relationship that unites them and makes them a “couple.” If this relationship is gravely sinful, then every such blessing is a sacrilegious and blasphemous blessing of mortal sin.
READ: Archbishop Peta, Bishop Schneider ban ‘blessings’ of homosexual couples in Kazakhstan archdiocese
This is precisely why such blessings have previously been absolutely prohibited by the Church: the relationship of a couple in adultery, fornication, or sodomy is fundamentally and gravely sinful; therefore, the Church can neither approve nor bless such relationships, as “God cannot bless sin.”
To declare now that such relationships and couples can be blessed is to directly and explicitly contradict the prior teaching of the Church on this very matter. And to claim to reaffirm such prior teaching while in the next breath manifestly contradicting it is a lie and an insidious snare designed cleverly to disarm those who faithfully adhere to the Church’s universal teaching on marriage, while giving those who have long dissented from that teaching a green light to demand openly the acceptance and approval of relationships and activities that God Himself condemns as abominations that cry out to heaven for vengeance.
Such a contradiction is touted in the document as a development of the Chruch’s very prohibition against all such blessings of sin. This is a manifest falsehood. Such claims to a development of doctrine, and the reaffirmations of Church teaching on marriage and sexuality, serve here as theological cover for a grave departure in practice from that very teaching.
READ: Bishop Eleganti responds to Pope Francis: ‘A sinful practice and union cannot be blessed’
In a similar move, at the end of the 2015 Synod on the Family, which openly pushed the granting of Communion for the divorced and remarried, i.e. those living in adultery, two true models of holiness within marriage were canonized in Rome, Sts. Louis and Zelie Martin, the incredible parents of St. Therese of the Child Jesus, whose holiness in no small way shaped that of the Little Flower.
No one who knows anything of these saints could object to their canonization. Nor do I. But to canonize them at the end of a synod pushing the acceptance of immoral sexual relationships, to which such saints stand as the perfect antithesis, could arguably be understood as a blasphemous use of something holy to subversively hide what is gravely and insidiously evil – a blasphemous hiding of the agenda to push Communion for adulterers under cover of the pious canonization of two saints, whose exemplary fidelity in marriage would make them utterly and unequivocally condemn such a heterodox sacramental practice.
READ: EXCLUSIVE: Bishop Strickland urges bishops to say ‘no’ to Francis’ ‘blessings’ of homosexual couples
It is notable that both in the case of Communion for the divorced and remarried and in the case of the blessing of same-sex couples, the moral reasoning that is touted is the same. There are many “good elements” of such relationships that ought to be “acknowledged,” “affirmed,” and “blessed,” it is said. Fidelity, love, care for the other, lifelong commitment, a shared life – are these not good and worthy of the Church’s approbation? So it is argued.
As though sexual “fidelity” to a person who is not your spouse, while your spouse yet lives, is good. As though “love” is always and everywhere a good thing, irrespective of what is loved or the manner in which it loved. As though “care for another” can ignore another’s gravely sinful actions and the other’s salvation. As though a “lifelong commitment” to continue committing mortal sin with another is not a hardening in that very sin. As though “a shared life” that leads to hell is laudable.
READ: Prominent canon lawyer Fr. Murray excoriates new Vatican doc endorsing ‘blessings’ of gay couples
The present proponents of same-sex blessings, just as the proponents of Communion for the divorced and remarried, emphatically point out the “positive elements” of adultery and sodomy by which they “approach” the “ideal” of a sacramental marriage. One deceit behind such language is that its proponents ignore the fact that sin always includes some element of what it parodies.
Adultery and sodomy are sinful precisely because they include things that are proper to marriage alone, while not being marriage because they lack something constitutive of the sacrament, which union alone pleases God. Just because marriage, adultery, and sodomy include sexual acts, for example, does not mean the latter two can be called good as marriage is good. It is because they include sexual acts outside of marriage that they are gravely sinful.
READ: Malawi bishops forbid ‘blessings’ of homosexual unions amid confusion over Vatican document
Nor, likewise, is every “love” good just because it is called “love.” Evil things are loved by evil men – they are loved in an evil and sinful way. A man who commits embezzlement sinfully loves money that is not his own as though it were his own. A man who commits adultery or fornication sinfully loves a woman who is not his wife as though she were his wife. A homosexual sinfully loves another person of the same sex as though he or she were a sexual partner who can replace a spouse of the opposite sex.
“Positive elements” and “love” do not make grave sin any less grave. Any moral reasoning to the contrary is deceit. In the end, the whole matter of blessing couples in sinful sexual relationships outside of marriage, be it adultery, fornication, sodomy, incest, or polygamy, boils down to this: the Church cannot bless sin, because God cannot bless sin.
The contradiction of this universal prohibition is the particular positive affirmation, the Church can bless this sin, which is what Fiducia supplicans is proposing. While claiming to not contradict the universal prohibition that the Church cannot bless sin, Pope Francis and Cardinal Fernández are in fact saying the Church can bless the sin of sodomy and the sin of adultery. This is a direct and manifest contradiction of Catholic teaching.
READ: Vatican’s homosexual ‘blessings’ document invites priests to fudge both doctrine and practice
If a priest now refuses to grant a couple in a sinful relationship such a blessing, he may now be pitted against the Pope’s explicit approbation of such blessings. But if he does grant a blessing, the priest will be invoking the name of Jesus Christ and that of the most holy Trinity upon an objectively, gravely sinful relationship and union. He will be asking almighty God, before whose perfect goodness the angels tremble, to favor, approve, confirm, increase, and bless with His grace what He Himself has revealed is repugnant to His divine goodness. Such an invocation, and such a “blessing,” will be nothing less than a blasphemy against the holiness of the name of God, and a sacrilegious use of the power of the priest to bless.
It is hoped that priests and bishops will have the clarity of understanding, the uprightness of will, and the indomitable courage needed to keep holy the Lord’s name and refuse to bless sin. In the face of the inevitable pressure to grant such blessings, under which all priests and bishops will now labor, it is hoped that pastors of souls will have the strength to shepherd their flocks rightly in their time of testing.
RELATED
Zambia bishops latest to forbid ‘blessings’ of homosexual couples
Cardinal Müller: The West would put Jesus in jail today for His teaching on marriage
Pope’s homosexual ‘blessings’ document pretends to be magisterial teaching but is not
‘Scandalous’: SSPX issues statement on Vatican’s approval of same-sex ‘blessings’
SSPX superior general: Vatican approval of same-sex blessings ‘accelerates the loss of souls’
Joe Biden welcomes Pope Francis’ decision to allow blessings for homosexual ‘couples’
Former homosexual: Pope Francis is inviting humanity to join Satan in mocking Christ and His Church