(LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Gerhard Müller declared that Church leaders and the Catholic faithful must reject “blessings” for homosexual “couples” endorsed by Pope Francis in Fiducia Supplicans because they contradict Catholic teaching and “lead to heresy.”
“Fiducia Supplicans must be considered doctrinally problematic, for it contains a denial of Catholic doctrine,” he wrote in a new essay for First Things on Friday criticizing the “grave defects” of the document, which Pope Francis approved in December. “For this reason, it is also problematic from a pastoral point of view.”
READ: Fr. Murray condemns Fiducia Supplicans: ‘Pope Francis has not upheld the Catholic faith’
Fiducia Supplicans’ affirmation of “blessings” for homosexual relationships “violates, at least, the second paragraph of the Profession of Faith” because “to bless these persons as same-sex couples is to approve their unions, even if they are not equated with marriage,” the former Vatican doctrine chief said.
Such a proposal, he warned, is “contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church” and “logically leads to heresy.”
“This means that these pastoral blessings for irregular unions cannot be accepted by the Catholic faithful, and especially by those who, in assuming an ecclesiastical office, have taken the Profession of Faith and the Oath of Fidelity, which calls first of all for the preservation of the deposit of faith in its entirety,” he stressed.
Moreover, the prominent cardinal and theologian explained that Catholics can publicly repudiate Fiducia Supplicans and that doing so, far from being disrespectful to Pope Francis, is actually a service to him.
“This refusal to accept Fiducia Supplicans, which can be expressed publicly insofar as it concerns the common good of the Church, does not imply any lack of respect for the Holy Father, who signed the text of Fiducia Supplicans; on the contrary,” he wrote. “For service to the Holy Father is due to him precisely insofar as he is the guarantor of the continuity of Catholic doctrine, and this service is honored primarily by exposing the grave defects of Fiducia Supplicans.”
READ: Cardinal Müller: Belgian bishops’ homosexual ‘blessings’ are ‘heresy and schism’
‘Blessing’ homosexuals ‘is to confirm them in their sin’
Cardinal Müller rebuked Fiducia Supplicans’ purported distinction between “blessings” for homosexual “unions” and “couples,” warning that to “bless” a sodomitic “couple” “is to confirm them in their sin and thus alienate them from God.”
“Indeed, if one blesses the couple qua couple, that is, as united by a sexual relationship other than marriage, then one is approving that union, since it is the union that constitutes them as such a couple,” he wrote.
He also refuted a “new semantic change in the official explanations of Fiducia Supplicans” that describes homosexual “couples” as merely “persons” who are “together.”
“Now, to bless two people together who are together precisely because of the homosexual relationship that unites them is no different than to bless the union,” Cardinal Müller said. “No matter how much one repeats that one is not blessing the union, that is exactly what one is doing by the very objectivity of the rite being performed.”
In the case of two persons living in an irregular situation, what pastoral reason is there for blessing the persons together rather than as individuals? Why would these persons want to be blessed together, if not because they want God’s approval of their union? To bless them together, therefore, is to confirm them in their sin and thus alienate them from God.
READ: Benedict XVI exposed the ‘destructive’ lies of gender ideology and the LGBT movement
He further noted that every blessing necessarily “implies the approval of what is being blessed,” as taught by the “constant tradition of the Church, based on Sacred Scripture.”
“In fact, the Greek word used in the New Testament for ‘blessing’ is eulogein, which, like the Latin benedicere, literally means ‘to say that something is good,’” the prelate explained.
“Moreover, in Scripture, to bless something is not just to declare it good, but to say that it is good because it comes from the Creator,” he pointed out. “Blessings are addressed to God’s creation, which He saw as very good, so that God himself may bring it to maturity and fullness.”
For this reason, he said, blessings “cannot be invoked over relationships or situations that contradict or reject the order of creation, such as unions based on homosexual practice, which St. Paul considers a consequence of denying the Creator’s plan (Rom. 1:21-27).”
And Fiducia Supplicans’ claim that “blessings” for homosexual “couples” are permissible because they are “pastoral” rather than liturgical is also baseless, Cardinal Müller stated.
“Now, this distinction between blessings,” he wrote, “is a novelty that Fiducia Supplicans introduces, which has not the slightest basis in Scripture, the Holy Fathers, or the Magisterium.”
“Consequently, given the impossibility of distinguishing between liturgical and pastoral blessings, one must conclude that Fiducia Supplicans is doctrinally problematic,” regardless of whether it purports to affirm Catholic teaching, he declared.
“We are dealing with an issue that touches on both natural law and the evangelical affirmation of the sanctity of the body, which are no different in Malawi than in Germany.”
READ: Cardinal Sarah strongly rejects Fiducia Supplicans, ‘heresy’ of same-sex ‘blessings’
The Catholic Church condemns homosexual activity as “intrinsically disordered,” gravely sinful, and a “sin that cries to heaven,” in accordance with Sacred Scripture and the constant Tradition of the Church. The Church also teaches that the homosexual orientation is itself “objectively disordered.”
In Ecclesia in Europa, Pope St. John Paul II condemned “attempts … to accept a definition of the couple in which difference of sex is not considered essential.”
Catholic teaching against homosexual acts is a “revealed truth” and “to deny it would violate the first paragraph of the Profession of Faith and would be heretical,” Cardinal Müller affirmed in his First Things essay.
And though ignored by Pope Francis and other pro-LGBT ecclesial figures, homosexuality results in serious physical harms. Practitioners of sodomy face a nearly 30-times higher risk of HIV and a 80-times higher rate of anal cancer, as well as elevated risks of other cancers and STDs, as Catholic pro-family organization Fieles a la Verdad has detailed.
READ: Cdl. Müller: ‘Nobody can change’ Catholic doctrine that homosexuality is ‘grave sin’
Fiducia Supplicans, authored by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, has caused a firestorm of controversy in the Church since its unexpected release in December.
More than a dozen bishops’ conferences, many of them in Africa and Eastern Europe, have rejected “blessings” for homosexual “couples” in defiance of the papal document, as have numerous high-ranking prelates, including Cardinal Robert Sarah and Cardinal Joseph Zen, diocesan bishops, priestly orders and communities, and leading Catholic figures.
In January, the bishops of Africa issued a unified statement declaring that there will be “no blessing for homosexual couples in the African churches.”
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