Vatican’s Blessings Declaration Is “Essential But Awkward” Progress, Writes Theologian

In a Commonweal essay about the Vatican’s declaration approving blessings for same-gender couples, theologian Xavier Montecel examines the significance of the document for LGBTQ+ conversations by focusing on, as his title states: “What ‘Fiducia supplicans’ has changed – and what is has not.” Montecel highlights the awkwardness of the declaration’s attempt to maintain church doctrine on same-gender sexual activity while providing what he terms “a pastoral workaround.”

Montecel, a previous guest contributor to Bondings 2.0, began by noting what has not changed: “the teaching of the Church on marriage and the morality of homosexual acts,” as the declaration itself states. What has changed, though, is more difficult to grasp. The changes are highlighted when Fiducia Supplicans is compared to the 2021 responsum ad dubium issued by the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which initially prohibited such blessings, citing two reasons. First, the responsum stated blessings cannot signify grace in sexual relationships considered “objectively disordered.” In the harsh language of the responsum, God “does not and cannot bless sin.” And second, the CDF cautioned that such blessings might appear too similar to the sacrament of marriage, especially in any liturgical or public context. 

Montecel strongly endorses Fiducia Supplicans’ rootedness in what he names “pastoral prudence,” and he argues that the declaration’s preference for “pastoral care and accompaniment over doctrinal enforcement” is deeply reflective of Pope Francis’ pontificate and his attempts to make “room for the reality of persons who are on the road to holiness, refusing to let the perfect become the enemy of the good.” Additionally, the pastoral restrictions placed upon blessings in Fiducia Supplicans (i.e., the requirements for spontaneity, non-formality, and, broadly, a “non-liturgical” form of blessing) seem, according to the declaration, to avoid the danger of confusion with the sacrament of marriage.

Fiducia Supplicans avoids the question of whether same-gender relationships can be blessed at all, leading to what Montecel identifies as awkwardness. He explains:

“The solution offered by the declaration does not adequately address the [2021] Responsum’s central theological claim, which is what is most harmful to LGBTQ Catholics. The Responsum argued that it is not only inappropriate but actually impossible for the Church to bless same-sex couples because a blessing cannot signify grace in the context of a relationship that is not ordered to grace. Rather than revising this judgment, the declaration proposes a pastoral workaround. It limits the Responsum’s concern about misrepresentation only to liturgical blessings and suggests that, in the context of same-sex relationships, a personal attitude of sincerity and repentance is sufficient to merit another kind of blessing. No mention is made of the love between two people, their endurance and self-giving, the life and family they may have built together, or the joyful witness of their union to the Church. Neither is there any mention of the presence and action of God in these relationships. Once again, the relationship is reduced to sexual activity so that it cannot be acknowledged as a site of grace.”

This move provides room for continuing development of doctrine, and is a step forward in relationship to the 2021 responsum, Montecel argues. And yet offering same-sex couples “a lower category of blessing,” and the fact that doctrinally “the magisterium still regards LGBTQ Catholics and their relationships as sinful,” “as incapable of carrying grace worthy of expressing through blessing,” makes this “an essential but awkward step forward” in our journey together as Catholics. In Montecel’s concluding words:

“However, until the magisterium realizes that same-sex couples are in themselves a blessing to the Church, that their relationships are not reducible to sex, and that God is speaking in the life and love they share, then there is still work to be done.”

In February, New Ways Ministry hosted Xavier Montecel, along with pastoral leader Yunuen Trujillo and theologian SimonMary Aikhiokai, for a conversation of Fiducia Supplicans and its implications. A recording of the panel, “Being Blessed: The Challenge of Fiducia Supplicans,” is available here.

—Brian Flanagan (he/him), New Ways Ministry, April 2, 2024