(LifeSiteNews) — Father Gerald Murray, a priest and canonist of the Archdiocese of New York, has denounced the newest document of the Vatican, Fiducia supplicans, for allowing priests to bless the mortal sins of sodomy and adultery.
Speaking with Robert Royal on The Catholic Thing‘s podcast The Vatican Thing, Murray said that with Rome’s new instruction, “The message given is: what the Catholic Church has condemned in the past as being mortally sinful… now they’re encouraging priests to bless those relationships.”
Not development of doctrine but a corruption
Asked whether the proposed “blessing” of same-sex couples could truly be called a development of the Church’s teaching on marriage and blessings, the priest emphatically denied this, saying the novel practice is a contradiction of the Church’s perennial teachings on the matter.
“No, that’s a misuse of the word development,” he said. “It’s accurate to call it innovative because it’s an innovation, meaning it’s something new that hasn’t happened before. And the reason it hasn’t happened before is it’s a contradiction of the Church’s teaching.”
READ: Pope Francis publishes norms for clergy to ‘bless’ homosexual couples
Murray explained that, as St. John-Henry Newman, true development requires continuity, not corruption. “A thing becomes more fully itself as an acorn becomes a tree over time with nourishment and sunlight,” he said. “Likewise, the understanding of the Church – for instance on the papacy, the Holy Eucharist, the other sacraments—it develops over time, because… until someone asks a question an answer’s basically implicit, not explicit. So to make explicit what a thing is, is not to change its nature or to corrupt it.”
False distinction of different kinds of blessing
Murray denounced the much-touted attempt to distinguish between liturgical and non-liturgical blessings as nothing less than casuistry seeking to endorse sodomy and adultery.
“The major problem with this document is its casuistry… Casuistry is basically a deceptive and unfair use of Revelation to try and arrive at a predetermined conclusion. And this basically says there’s a difference between a liturgical blessing and a non-liturgical blessing… This is ridiculous! Every blessing in the Church comes from the fact that God blessed us in Jesus Christ, and we primarily, in the Church, as a hierarchical organization, bring those blessings through public ministries. So to say there’s something that’s like an unofficial blessing – they compare it to a parent blessing his children, you know, at the dinner table; wait a minute, this has nothing to do with a mom and a dad saying, ‘I bless you Tommy, I bless you Sally’ – this is a relationship.”
“When two people come forward and say, we just got married at City Hall, two men, and we’d like to bless our relationship, well, what’s the relationship? It’s a promise to commit immoral acts. Same with people in the second adulterous marriage: we’re going to commit adultery even though our former wife or husband, you know, is still living in the same town.”
“So it’s a dodge to say we bless people without asking questions. Therefore, we shouldn’t ask questions next time two people who are involved in an incestuous relationship come in and say, ‘Father, would you bless us? You know, we’re brother and sister but we think sex is beyond the restrictions that used to be.’ Is a priest supposed to say, well, if you feel it’s important maybe I should bless you? Of course not! Everybody would know that’s endorsing incest.”
“This really for me is one of the most shocking things about this, all of this casuistic reasoning. This is casuistry on the very people who condemn true moral reasoning as being casuistry. So for me the scandal here is that the Pope, Cardinal Fernandez, and all those who agree with him – they are telling people who are engaging in sodomy and adultery, no problem, the Church agrees that your behavior, while not up to perfection, is something that we can bless. This is unreal.”
READ: Pope Francis’ approval of ‘blessings’ for homosexual couples is a disaster in Church history
Mortal sin cannot be blessed
Murray went on to emphasize that the blessing of homosexual or adulterous relationships would be nothing less than giving approval to the sinfulness of the relationship, and that when persons in such relationships seek a blessing from the Church, priests are bound to call them to repentance.
“The Lord is interested in the moral status of our souls because, guess what, this life is not the whole story. Then we die; the soul goes before God for judgment.”
“What this [document] is doing is basically saying mortal sin is not a big deal, so don’t ask too many questions. But wait a minute, the people who are engaged in a same-sex union that involves sodomy, they’re coming to the priest to be affirmed that the Church is okay with this, because if they didn’t care they wouldn’t be there.”
READ: Malawi bishops forbid ‘blessings’ of homosexual unions amid confusion over Vatican document
“This distinction here between a liturgical and a pious blessing, it’s an irrelevant question. The question is, what is the essential thing that the priest is now being asked to do, which is, he’s to ask, to say, we believe God will favor your behavior and therefore we’re going to ask Him – and as a minister of the Church I’m asking in my capacity as a priest—to bless your relationship. And why do people want a blessing? They want reassurance that God is not opposed to their behavior, in fact, that God is willing to favor it. So, if the Church gives the misimpression that sodomy is no longer a big deal, then, of course, blessing that’s just a minor detail.”
“The real question that they want to know is am I doing something wrong if I engage in sodomy,” Murray insisted.
The canonist also explained the kind of dilemma priests now face, should they refuse to grant blessings to same sex couples: “Two men come in, say, Father, we just got married at City Hall. We’d like you to bless our behavior. And I say, well, the Church teaches that mortal sin has to be repented [of], [there] has to be a firm purpose of amendment, you can’t continue to practice sodomy. And then the couple say, well, wait a minute, the Pope just told you that you can bless us, and don’t ask too many questions. And then the answer is, the Pope got it wrong? And that’s really the saddest part, well one of the sad parts of this, the teaching itself is now being questioned and the questioning is happening by the Pope.”
READ: EXCLUSIVE: Bishop Strickland urges bishops to say ‘no’ to Francis’ ‘blessings’ of homosexual couples
Boiling the whole matter down to its most fundamental question, Murray asked:
The question is, does the Catholic Church consider sodomy and adultery to be mortal sins? And when you have a mortal sin, you don’t come to the priest and say, I’m committing this sin now and will continue to do it, but I’d like you to bless me and the person with whom I habitually commit this sin, because we think that this is an important thing in our life. The Church would say the most important thing in your life is not what you consider to be valuable when it contradicts Revelation. So, what you have to do is have a firm purpose of amendment, remove yourself from the occasion of sin, and live a virtuous life. Then we’ll happily bless you, but we’re not going to bless the relationship that’s leading you on the road to hell.
Murray made similar comments in an interview on Newsmax on the Pope’s new document. When asked whether homosexuals in a union can receive Holy Communion, Murray insisted they cannot. “No because they’re committing a mortal sin.” He continued, “The problem with this document is that it’s now saying it’s no big deal if you’re committing mortal sin. The Church can bless you.”
The priest insisted that granting a blessing, however, “is to ask God to favor, and strengthen, and guide us. And the only reason we ask for a blessing is so that we can do his will. People who have pledged to do the exact opposite commit sin. We don’t bless those relationships. Now, unfortunately, [the] Pope says you can.”
READ: Pope’s homosexual ‘blessings’ document pretends to be magisterial teaching but is not
Murray condemned the document, saying, “It’s a basically a renunciation of the whole sexual morality teaching of the Church, and that’s been 2,000 years.”
Commenting on the novel distinction between “liturgical” blessings and “pastoral” blessings, Murray criticized it as “double talk,” together with the insistence that wedding clothes be avoided.
“You’re more concerned about what they’re wearing than what they’re doing?” he asked incredulously. “This is a real problem.”
“Of course, all those minutia of saying when and how to do it is all going to be ignored because the reason two people get civilly married in the same sex marriage, the reason they want a blessing, is they want to have the Church say we’re okay with what you’re doing. It’s a celebration. So why can’t I dress up?”
“The Vatican is giving not only confusion but misdirection,” Murray declared. “The mission of the Church is not to affirm people and what they think is right. It’s to say, this is what Jesus wants from you.”
Murray also drew attention to the timing of the release of the document, saying, “Here it is Christmas. We’re talking about the birth of the Savior. And what are we talking about? Now the Church is okay with being gay? I mean, wait a minute. Anybody who has a problem with homosexual attraction, we’re going to help them to get away from committing sin. Now this is saying, if you want to commit sin, we’re going to give you a blessing.”
READ: ‘Scandalous’: SSPX issues statement on Vatican’s approval of same-sex ‘blessings’
Emphasizing the need to repent of sin in order to truly receive a blessing from God, the priest continued, “If you’re committing a sin, we’ll bless you when you say I want to renounce the sin, not that I’m going to continue to do it. And this is precisely why this is wrong.”
He insisted that the Church’s teaching on the grave sinfulness of sodomy and adultery “is more important than the desire that you have for me to affirm you in your sin. The Church should never be doing this.”
The priest also pointed out that “this Pope just rescinded what his predecessors have said.” He noted, “John Paul II and Benedict never allowed this. Now he [Pope Francis] is. This unfortunately is turning religion into politics… What’s the administration’s policy now?”
However, Murray emphatically affirmed, “that’s not what Catholic doctrine is. Catholic doctrine comes from God, comes from Christ, and the Bible… Those things don’t change.”
A doctrinal revolution
The New York priest also made an appearance on “The Chris Salcedo Show,” underscoring the revolutionary nature of the papal approval of blessing homosexual and adulterous relationships.
“It’s the groundwork for redefining the nature of sin, because basically the Church has always said that sex outside of marriage is sinful, so all homosexual activity is sinful,” Murray said. “It’s an innovation, meaning it’s something new that was never there before. But it’s not a development of the Church’s teaching; it’s a contradiction and a corruption of that teaching.”
“The document also talks about people who are in invalid second marriages. The Church says, according to the words of Christ, that is adultery. So now the Church is saying that your behavior is gravely sinful, offensive to God, but the Church should bless you? And what does a blessing mean? It means that we ask God to favor you in that relationship. This is absurd. This is a horrific document. It is revolutionary.”
READ: Fr. James Martin announces he will bless his ‘friends in same-sex unions’ after Pope’s new text
“Quite clearly there’s a revolutionary streak in Rome right now. The cardinal who’s in charge of the department that wrote the document and got the Pope to agree to it, he is a known revolutionary in terms of doctrine, and this is a further example of it. We had the transgender godparents document not too long ago, as if being transgender is no problem for the Church. It is a problem if you pretend to be what you’re not.”
When asked about fear among the clergy, Murray said that many among both priests and laity are deeply upset with Rome’s departure from the Church’s perennial practice in the matter.
“The Catholics here [in the U.S.] are not getting with the program and going along with this liberalizing in the Church,” he said. “Well, Holy Father, we’re all subject to Christ, and we’re subject to the teaching of the Church and if you say things that contradict it, don’t expect applause—expect to be challenged.”
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