VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The Vatican, in a letter to the German Bishops Conference (DBK) last week, rejected the conference’s recent request for an indult to allow laypeople to deliver homilies or sermons during Mass.
In a June 17 letter to Bishop Heiner Wilmer, SCJ, the president of the DBK, Cardinal Arthur Roche, the prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, citing canon law and Redemptionis Sacramentum, the Vatican’s 2004 liturgical guidelines, reaffirmed that preaching during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is reserved to priests or deacons and rejected Wilmer’s March request for an indult to allow both laymen and laywomen to preach.
In recent months, the Vatican has repudiated some of the German bishops’ requests, including allowing for the liturgical “blessing” of homosexual “couples.” At the same time, the Vatican has continued to uphold Pope Francis’ heterodox innovations, such as “spontaneous blessings” for such “couples.”
“The requested indult concerns the provision of can. 767 § 1 of the Code of Canon Law, according to which the homily, as an integral part of the liturgy, is reserved to a priest or deacon,” Roche wrote. “This norm has been repeatedly reaffirmed by the Magisterium, particularly in the instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum (nos. 64–66), which expressly excludes the possibility that lay faithful might deliver the homily during the celebration of Mass, even under a different name.”
Roche stressed that these liturgical norms are not only disciplinary but also reflect the homily’s theological and liturgical nature.
“This norm is not merely disciplinary in nature; rather, it reflects a reality that is closely linked to the theological and liturgical nature of the homily is linked,” the prefect wrote. “As a distinct part of the Liturgy of the Word, it is inseparably linked to the proclamation of the Gospel and to the presiding over the celebration, and constitutes a specific exercise of the munus docendi entrusted to the ordained minister.”
“This responsibility of the ordained minister is rooted in the very nature of the sacred Liturgy itself, which is not merely an occasion for instruction, but the privileged place where the faithful are drawn into the mystery of redemption,” he added.
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In recent months, the Vatican has reaffirmed its rejection of proposals of the German bishops that contradict the Church’s teaching and traditional practices.
In April, Pope Leo, on a return flight from his trip to Africa, when asked by a reporter about the German Church issuing formalized “blessings” for homosexual “couples,” said that the Vatican had objected. However, he added that the impromptu “blessings” of homosexual “couples” and those in adulterous unions, as outlined in Fiducia Supplicans, were still permitted, and he also minimized sexual sin.
“We tend to think that, when the Church is talking about morality, the only issue of morality is sexual. In reality, I believe there are much greater and more important [moral] issues, such as justice, equality of freedom for men and women, freedom of religion, that would all take priority before that particular issue,” the pope said at the time.
In May, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) published a 2024 letter that its prefect, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, sent to Bishop Stephan Ackermann of Trier in Germany, saying that the DBK’s proposed guidelines for the “blessing” of homosexual “couples” contradict Fiducia Supplicans, which allows for the spontaneous, “non-liturgical blessing” of homosexuals, in contradiction to the Tradition of the Church.
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Days later, Fernández confirmed that the Vatican had rejected the German bishops’ conference’s (DBK) proposed official guidelines for the formal “blessings” of homosexual and other irregular “couples,” as well as the DBK’s official guidelines published last year.
“What was said in that letter … also applies to the text of the current Vademecum, which does not have the approval of the Congregation,” he said at the time.