LGBTQ+ Couples Are Not Only to Be Blessed: They Are Blessings to the Church

The debate over Fiducia Supplicans, the Vatican’s declaration allowing blessings for couples in situations deemed “irregular” by church leaders, has prompted one LGBTQ+ Catholic to reflect on not only same-gender love, but all forms of love not fully embraced by the church—and what a blessing they are.

Yunuen Trujillo, an author and leader in LGBTQ+ ministry, as well as Bondings 2.0 contributor, wrote about her reflections on love and relationship in view of Fiducia Supplicans. She writes in U.S. Catholic:

“In certain circles within the Catholic Church, marriage and procreation are often tokenized—used as a symbol of compliance with rules, a way to determine who is in and who is out. This often leaves many loving Catholics seemingly outside of the community that is their church: couples who are sacramentally married but choose not to have children, couples who have children but choose not to get sacramentally married, single mothers, and both heterosexual and same-sex couples who cannot physically have children, to mention just a few. . .

“We often practice imperfect forms of love, but at its most perfect stage, love leads to wholesomeness and wholeness. A union fueled by love is a union that adds; it does not subtract. At its best, love says: ‘I am more me because you’re here’; ‘I continue growing because you support my growth’; ‘I am freer because I love you’; ‘I am closer to God because I see the Divine in you’; ‘You are my safe space.’ At its most perfect expression, both people in a union continue their growth together and support each other’s growth instead of limiting it.”

Trujillo turns more specifically to the blessings declaration, which, she notes, does not change church teaching on marriage and issues some curtailments on what blessing an LGBTQ+ couple may involve. Still, even with these restrictions, Trujillo notes that “[s]ome Catholics seem baffled by this possibility.”  She poses a challenge to the naysayers, and indeed the entire church, that Fiducia Supplicans is not only about how the church can bless “irregular” couples, but how the church can understand such couples as themselves a blessing. She concludes:

“This openness to bless is a recognition of the existence of grace-giving love in so-called ‘irregular relationships’ and an invitation for all of us to reflect on how these unions already enrich our church.

“I have no doubt that a relationship like the one portrayed in [the movie] A Walk to Remember is holy. Similarly, I have no doubt that the committed and loving unions of LGBTQ Catholics, as well as other heterosexual Catholics in civil marriages or childless marriages, are life-giving and blessings in and of themselves. The Holy Spirit is calling us to discern how they are a blessing to the church and, consequently, to bless them in return.”

—Robert Shine (he/him), New Ways Ministry, March 25, 2024