Blessing Queer Couples Can Remind the World of What Relationships Are Truly About

Derrick Witherington

Today’s post is from Derrick Witherington, Ph.D., assistant director of Campus Ministry and adjunct faculty at Loyola University Chicago, where he teaches courses in systematic, sacramental, and historical theology. 

This past summer, I presented a paper at the College Theology Society on recently developed Catholic liturgies blessing same-sex unions from Belgium and Germany.  Despite the directions in Fiducia Supplicans, the Vatican’s 2023 document that blessing same-sex couples should be wholly spontaneous, private, non-liturgical, and in no way seen as being equal to the Sacrament of Matrimony, these Belgian and German blessings are framed rubrically, public in nature, and explicitly liturgical. Moreover, one of these liturgies has even received episcopal approval and neither one has (to date) been criticized or condemned by the Vatican.

Let’s look at a couple of the prayers from these two liturgies.

The Belgian blessing liturgy is envisioned as being prayed by the entire assembly over a couple:

God and Father, we surround N. and N. today with our prayer. You know their hearts and the path they will take together from now on. Make their commitment to each other strong and faithful. Let their home be filled with understanding, tolerance, and care. Let there be room for reconciliation and peace. Let the love they share delight them and make them of service in our community. Give us strength to walk with them, together in the footsteps of your Son and strengthened by your Spirit.

The first thing to notice is that the basis of the couple’s commitment to each other is their mutual fidelity and their commitment to help each other flourish as they walk in the footsteps of Jesus and are strengthened by the Spirit. Understanding, tolerance, forgiveness, and reconciliation are to be hallmarks of the couple’s relationship. Finally, the “end” or telos of the partnership is directed outward–toward service in their community.

This outward and service-orientated dimension of the couple’s relationship is what I found most striking. A common homophobic criticism of queer people is that they are inward-looking and narcissistic, supposedly exemplified by the fact that their union is not oriented to the generation of life in the same way a heterosexual marriage is. This prayer, however, is very Catholic in the sense that it sees the openness to the generation of new life as being a constitutive part of the blessed union–but “life” is here understood much more broadly than in a narrow biological sense. The blessed couple is called to generate life in the service to the world around them, by walking with the excluded, creating spaces of healing, hospitality, and dialogue, and by living a common life which radiates understanding, tolerance, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

This theme is even more explicit in the German liturgy. Prior to the prayer of blessing over the couple, the presider addresses the assembly:

Brothers and sisters in the faith, we have heard the testimony of N. and N. God’s kingdom is germinating in our time when people love one another and share their lives together. So, I ask you: are you willing to support N. and N. so that this seed [of the Kingdom] can develop in their partnership and the world can be perfected in God’s love through their witness? If so answer: Yes, with God’s help.

Here, the couple’s love is explicitly identified as being a sign of the Kingdom of God emerging or “germinating” in our midst. The support offered by the community to the couple is seen as allowing the “seed of the Kingdom” to fully grow and develop until it is, in the end, perfected in God’s love. The prayer of blessing over the couple continues this theme:

We ask you, loving Father, to bless N. and N. and the life they share together. Receive the new heart that you have given them and that ignites their love. Let their covenant be fruitful for your church and for all people, so that your love may increase among [us] until the world is brought to completion in you.

In this prayer, God is identified as being the source of their love and that which continually ignites it. Their commitment to each other is framed in terms of it being a covenant which results in fruits oriented outward to the building up of the Church.

One comment I received after my presentation was a question as to whether or not this focus on mission and service unjustly burdens queer couples insofar as the Rite of Marriage is much less explicit in framing the couple’s common life in terms of service in the world. This was a fair point, but perhaps these liturgies could serve as fuel for theological reflection, not only about the “ends” or purpose of Christian marriage, but also about the ultimate end of all meaningful human relationships and friendships more generally.

At a time of increasing polarization, a widening gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots,” and a time when many thoughtful people are rightfully concerned about the effects of climate change, hunger, and social injustice more generally, perhaps being reminded of our obligation to bring forth the Kingdom of God is more urgent than ever. Perhaps queer couples seeking these blessings are called to prophetically remind everyone of what all meaningful human relationships are about, namely, always being open, receptive, and hospitable to those in need.

—Derrick Witherington, September 2, 2024