The Roman Catholic Church and Homosexual Unions
In October, the Roman Catholic Church held a three-week synod at the Vatican. On the agenda was “LGBTQ+ Catholics and their place in the Church”. Five conservative cardinals had previously challenged the Pope to explain comments he had made about the possibility of blessing same-sex couples. They wanted him to affirm that the Church cannot bless same-sex marriages. The Pope wrote to them and, finding his answer unsatisfactory, they rephrased five questions that they had put to him and asked him to answer yes or no. When he did not do so, the cardinals decided to make the correspondence public and issue a “notification” warning to the “faithful” under their care. A warning of this nature, in opposition to the Pope, is considered a very serious step.
In the published correspondence, the Pope is recorded as reiterating that matrimony is a union between a man and a woman but states that homosexual unions require patience and pastoral charity, and that priests cannot become judges “who only deny, reject and exclude . . . . For this reason, pastoral
prudence must adequately discern whether there are forms of benedictions, requested by one or more persons, that do not transmit a mistaken conception of marriage.” He claims that, “when a benediction is requested, it is expressing a request for help from God, a plea to be able to live better, a trust in a father who can help us to live better”.
Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director of New Ways Ministry (which campaigns for “justice, education and reconciliation” for LGBTQ+ Roman Catholics), welcomed the Pope’s “openness”. He said, “The allowance for pastoral ministers to bless same-gender couples implies that the Church does indeed recognise that love can exist between same-gender couples”.
The Roman Catholic Encyclopaedia states that “blessing may be described as a rite, consisting of ceremony and prayer, performed in the name and with the authority of the Church, by a duly qualified minister, by which persons or things are sanctified or dedicated to Divine service, or by which certain marks of Divine favour are invoked upon them”. The Pope is now advocating this type of blessing of same-sex couples in church and in the name of God. Since the Fall, man thinks of himself as a god, knowing good and evil, and is always ready to think that he knows better than God Himself. This would seem to be especially true of the Pope, “who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” (2 Th 2:4). FRD
The Pope and Homosexual Unions
The Pope continues to make evasive and equivocal statements about the “blessing” of homosexual unions. In response to a written question from some cardinals, he replied that marriage is an “exclusive, stable and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to conceiving children. . . . For this reason, the Church avoids all kinds of rites or sacramentals that could contradict this conviction and imply that it is recognising as a marriage something that is not.” But he states that, on the other hand, pastoral charity is also necessary, and “defence of the objective truth is not the only expression of that charity, which is also made up of kindness, patience, understanding, tenderness, encouragement. . . . For that reason, pastoral prudence must adequately discern if there are forms of blessing, solicited by one or various persons, that do not transmit a mistaken concept of marriage.” So it would seem that there may be a possibility of Roman Catholic blessings on homosexual unions. Such blessings are, apparently, already taking place in parts of the Roman Church, but the question is whether they have ecclesiastical approval. The Pope’s answer is as given above.
This “yea and nay” has been a feature of Romanism – whenever it is under
pressure – at least since the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century. How different it is from the clarity of Protestantism and the Word of God: “But as God is true, our word toward you was not yea and nay. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in Him was yea. For all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him Amen, unto the glory of God by us” (2 Cor 1:18-20). There is no blessing on sodomy: “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind . . . shall inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 6:9-10). DWBS