Did Pope Francis change Catholic teaching on gay marriage?
The short answer is no. Despite the number of headlines and photos you’re seeing all across the media, Catholic teaching understands now and always that marriage is a privileged union that can only exist between one man and one woman. That bond is forged in the Sacrament of Matrimony, which, like every sacrament, was instituted by Christ and entrusted to the church.
So what’s everyone talking about?
A new doctrinal declaration, titled Fiducia supplicans, issued Dec. 18 by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the head of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, offers provisions for how and when gay couples might be blessed.
What’s in the document? And what should Catholics make of it?
Catholic teaching on marriage
Pope Francis did not redefine marriage. The new declaration teaches, “rites and prayers that could create confusion between what constitutes marriage — which is the ‘exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to the generation of children’ — and what contradicts it are inadmissible” (Fiducia supplicans, No. 4). Marriage is a gift given by God from the beginning when human beings were created male and female.
Furthermore, the church teaches that the liturgical rites proper to marriage must be safeguarded for that sacrament. The document teaches, “when it comes to blessings, the church has the right and the duty to avoid any rite that might contradict this conviction or lead to confusion” (No. 5).
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a statement, “The Church’s teaching on marriage has not changed, and this declaration affirms that, while also making an effort to accompany people through the imparting of pastoral blessings because each of us needs God’s healing love and mercy in our lives.” The declaration, therefore, is not a matter of doctrine as such, but a practical response to encounter and encourage people in their response to the movements of God’s grace.
Spontaneous prayers
So what did change? The pope has called for a willingness to pray with those who are seeking God. The document states, “People who come spontaneously to ask for a blessing show by this request their sincere openness to transcendence, the confidence of their hearts that they do not trust in their own strength alone, their need for God, and their desire to break out of the narrow confines of this world, enclosed in its limitations” (No. 21). Responding to spontaneous prompts is a key part of what the declaration envisions. The new document teaches that people seeking God shouldn’t be turned away, regardless of their state of life or moral situation.
Before the new declaration, there had been questions about whether an ordained minister could bless couples in an irregular situation. An irregular marital situation in the eyes of the Catholic Church includes same-sex unions but also includes couples where one or both spouses are divorced and remarried (without a declaration of nullity). In fact, the document also states that the church cannot grant “moral legitimacy” to extramarital sex.
Blessings, not sacraments
The new declaration advances Pope Francis’ theology of accompaniment by which people are led to a deeper relationship with Christ and his church. The declaration teaches, “To seek a blessing in the church is to acknowledge that the life of the Church springs from the womb of God’s mercy and helps us to move forward, to live better, and to respond to the Lord’s will” (No. 20). There is no person, the declaration insists, who should be excluded from this kind of prayer.
The declaration teaches, “It is essential to grasp the Holy Father’s concern that these non-ritualized blessings never cease being simple gestures that provide an effective means of increasing trust in God on the part of the people who ask for them, careful that they should not become a liturgical or semi-liturgical act, similar to a sacrament” (No. 36). In this way, the declaration distinguishes between marriage, conducted according to the formal rituals of the church and an impromptu prayer, even said by a minister of the church, that encourages couples to seek God’s will.
Finally, to conform to these norms, blessings cannot be imparted during a civil ceremony, nor can it be performed with “any clothing, gestures, or words that are proper to a wedding” in order to prevent confusion and scandal (No. 39). This is the full mind of the pope on the matter. This guidance by the Vatican is final, with no further clarifications anticipated. Indeed, the declaration states, “no further responses should be expected about possible ways to regulate details or practicalities regarding blessings of this type” (No. 41).
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