I think you know me well enough to know what I think about this new document which deals with blessings for those engaged in a sin that “cries to Heaven” (cf. Jude 1:7).
More than ever there is greater need and urgency that we make sure our own “houses are in order”. If you don’t already,…
- start making thorough and honest examinations of conscience.
- Start making reparation for wrongs and sins.
- Undertake sincerely to forgive those who have harmed you.
- Do penances.
- Seek to purify memories.
- Perform corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
- Dedicate some time each day to prayer, especially the Rosary.
- Attend to the duties of your state in life.
- Read Scripture and review your catechism.
- Pray for priests and bishops.
- Go to confession regularly.
- Receive Communion only in the state of grace.
If it takes 5000 words to say:
Blessings can be given to individuals who ask for them with apparent sincerity and right intention.
Blessings cannot be given to couples/”unions” that are not a sacramentally married husband/wife.
Then we have reason to suspect the worst.
— Carl E. Olson (@carleolson) December 18, 2023
The document allows – perhaps encourages – priests to bless a homosexual union saying that they are not treating it like a marriage even though in the eyes of the world they are doing exactly that.
Start the countdown to a case brought against a priest (maybe even within the Church!) because a “couple” was denied a blessing.
The USCCB has released a statement HERE
This is a helpful video…
UPDATE:
A lot of people are pretty upset, and rightly so. However, please be considerate when posting in my combox. To those who do not at all like me, your comments can be weaponized against me. So, please think before posting and leave the rage and name calling out of it.
If not, I’ll have to shut down the comments.
Loading ...
This is the same ‘give and inch in the name of pastoral care’ that will result in a mile being taken by the heterodox forces that will later become a new norm that we have been witnessing for the last 60+ years. Pray folks.
I am watching Charlton Heston in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS…. again to make sure that they are not the TEN SUGGESTIONS… really.
It’s a good movie.
Kind of says a lot about the importance of the 10 commandments and their IN STONE purpose.
Can’t help but notice that in all the official statements (USCCB for one) and documents and “respectable” news sources, the emphasis is on “the Church’s teaching regarding marriage has not changed.” But that’s not really what’s at stake, is it? What ought to be emphasized is “the Church’s teaching that homosexual acts are disordered and a mortal sin, and that those who engage in such acts put their souls in grave jeopardy.”
Inch by Jesuitical inch, the sin of Sodomy is being rehabilitated by those who think they are so much smarter than God.
It’s not just that the church is now blessing what it considered throughout all time up until today disordered and objectively sinful, but he did this a week before Christmas. There were 51 other weeks in the year to issue such an edict, but he chose a week before the birth of Christ to do it.
Fr. Z, now that Francis has told the world that God approves of homosexuality:
1) How are we suppose to tell ourselves to stay Catholic?
2) How are we suppose to tell others that they should be Catholic?
3) How are we suppose to tell others that homosexuality is deadly?
Father Z.
I am speechless about all this.
At least we have you to right the storm and get us through this.
Even if it is my garage for Sunday service.
Pray for you daily.
Here’s what I don’t understand from Fr. Murray’s analysis. If the Declaration allows for the blessing of individuals rather than relationships, is it technically a departure from prior Church teaching? I understand the Declaration to be an evil attempt to green light sins that cry out to heaven, and I understand that it’s intentionally deceptive. But from a legalistic perspective, trying to assess where we are in the attack on the Church’s teaching and the course of Her Passion, is it a departure? It seems that even people in mortal sin can be given a blessing, as I never hear them exempted when the congregation is blessed at the end of Mass. So evil, deceptive, but technically is it a change in teaching?
I am getting beyond weary of the now weekly fresh Hell coming out of the Vatican. I don’t know how much more of this scandal and confusion the I can tolerate. I know the Church has suffered long periods of faithless pontiffs before but in this age of instant communication it shouldn’t take too long for this to be remedied by the Cardinals. However, since so many are compromised and in lockstep with PF I don’t see any holy order being restored in my lifetime. Faithful priests and bishops are being cancelled for being, well, faithful. I now feel like I’m back in the Episcopal Church that I fled because of this debauchery 15 years ago. I spent most of that time afterward in a Continuing Anglican Church for which I must admit that I am starting to feel a bit of wistful longing. Please have some words of encouragement. I shouldn’t feel this lost.
How would this not be the sin of scandal?!
This blessing?
Ab illo benedicaris in cujus honore cremaberis.
And furthermore: Why this one particular mortal sin? The Holy Father has been very strict about people involved in organized crime. Should the major mafiosi gather their sergeants and show up at the rectory door, asking for a blessing on their “business arrangements”? Or how about big companies that practice strip mining and who fill the oceans with plastic? Will their engineers and vice presidents be given blessings for “pursuing their vocation in the world”? How about pimps and their prostitutes? They surely need blessings.
No, just THIS particular mortal sin. It starts to look like all the folks involved in this document really don’t think it’s … that bad. I wonder why…
For all the hair-splitting about no one possibly confusing The Brand New Papally-Approved Same-Sex-Couple-Blessing™ with marriage, the headline for the whole world is in fact that in, a massive pivot, the Catholic Church is “finally getting with the times” and now not only approves of but even *blesses* homosexual relationships. That’s the takeaway, everyone who’s honest will admit that. Any apologists who insist that nothing has changed either have their heads buried in the sand or are actively lying to you. God help us. It pains me to say it, but very wicked men are now steering the Barque of Peter… right over Niagara Falls.
There is a great story about Pius IX, some Anglican travelers, and that blessing.
Great advice Fr Z, just looking for some insight into “purifying memories.” I’ve never heard of this before.
APX asks, “How would this not be the sin of scandal?!”
Exactly! My wife and I have been talking about this… nonsense from Rome all day. I made that very same point to her.
I teach CCD to juniors in h.s. They *will* ask me about this. All of the kids will be talking about this – not just the high school aged kids. Those in junior high and *below* will be talking about this! ?
Therein lies the scandal. Our Blessed Lord said something about a millstone for those who scandalize His little ones. (“…whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” Mt. 18:6)
I know several people who are ready to jump to Orthodoxy. They have had enough. What can I tell them to persuade them to stay?
I must admit that although I wouldn’t put any heterodoxy past PF, I didn’t go to bed last night expecting today to be contemplating the withdrawal of a not insignificant amount of time, talent and treasure from my parish. My parish priest is a good man and quite conservative but I think the bishop is the type that most priests feel they have to keep their heads down.
Good advice as always Father. Are we really surprised at this news? I’m not. Do the math as they say.
Oh and spare a prayer for all those poor souls being told they are getting a blessing. Some of them don’t hear the truth anywhere. All they hear are lies. Lies about God, lies about the Church and lies about sins. It truly is a terrible time for these people, and for all of us.
May I promote my pawns to kings now?
Father should just say, “I think it would confuse you. Since I want to be obedient to this document’s directions, if you want a blessing, go to mass, everyone gets one at the end.”
Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
Well, that statement from the USCCB turns out to be a big nothingburger.
I pray not, but it looks like schism on the horizon.
That’s all I’ll have to say at this point.
Replying to myself! Fr. Murray was kind enough to reply on YouTube that the Declaration refers to blessing couples, so there’s no way of even technically defending the attack on Church teaching. I should probably have read the thing before posting but just can’t bring myself to look at it.
Where is the intervention of the Holy Spirit to prevent the teaching of error in faith and morals by this pope?
We have all these people out there arguing for the orthodoxy of this document. Even if it could be interpreted in an orthodox way, it would still be offensive to pious ears — which is apparently no longer a thing in a world where we Catholics are no longer horrified by sin.
So now ss couples may go to Mass, holding hands, and then go up and cross their hands to receive a blessing. I think for many it would be for provocation, for the effect on others. I think if they were to go Mass to worship that remaining in their seats would be a greater impetus to correct their situation.
I think, *technically* from the highlights I read on The Pillar, the blessing can’t take place at a church and it has to be “spontaneous” and “simple,” but it can take place at a shrine. So what’s to stop a priest from making a “simple, spontaneous” blessing of two individuals who just happen to be civilly “married” at a shrine, and a picture to show up on social media? I’m sure the world wouldn’t mistake that for a “wedding,” right?
There needs to be an appropriate prayer blessing (not necessarily to the liking of those seeking it) for such couples.
+Fatty may be getting an apology, soon, from the Nuncio. That was a spontaneous blessing, right?
In reading the whole document through, it appears that there is once again, ‘much ado about changing nothing.’
Fiducia Supplicans amounts to saying, ‘Yes, clerics can bless anybody’ – in the manner of when somebody sneezes, you say, “God bless you” (which would be a ‘descending’ blessing #15). It states the logical obvious: anybody can thank or bless God (ascending #15) and the kind of ‘calling down’ (descending) blessing is allowed for anybody, including those in any kind of objectively sinful situation, including irregular ‘marriages’ and those who are acting out temptations particular to SSA. Makes logical sense, especially given that the usual line when first entering a confessional is “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
It however rules out (in #36) something where a cleric puts on a stole and blesses somebody in a pseudo-union which appears like a ‘liturgical or semi-liturgical act’ reminiscent of something in the Roman Ritual. This is most especially forbidden if this has any appearance of a ‘marriage’ blessing (c.f. #38, #39).
So, it does go to some length (esp. in #38), to tell the Germans and Belgians to stop making pseudo-rituals. #39 would arguably render any attempted blessings of such ‘unions’ invalid. I think some extra teeth from CIC, Book VI to back up nn. 38, 39 would help here, but … sigh … no, we won’t probably get that.
#41 pretty much says enough with this question to both the cardinals who raised the dubia, and to the other side who have been spamming Francis’ mailbox, asking for all sorts of things.
Will people twist this to do something stupid? Probably. Given that it’s been kicked up to the top of the secular news heap, it has certainly been cherry-picked for one bias or another. Does it change anything for me personally? Nope. By imparting a blessing during a wake or the occasional funeral-outside-of-Mass, I’ve probably already unknowingly blessed people in the two categories of discussion. If such people asked me for their blessing, I would probably do what I usually do for anybody – pray for their health, ask that God grant them wisdom and understanding, and the courage to live the Gospel. I would take care to be (prudently c.f. #41) aware of my surroundings to make sure somebody wouldn’t use such a request for a generic/simple blessing as a photo opportunity in such a charged political climate, lest scandal should be a danger (#30).
To those of you thinking of leaving the Church, to whom shall you go? As Aragorn put it when questioned, “How is a man to judge in such times?”: “Ever as he has judged.” Stay the course!
A future Pope will reverse this mistake.
I hope and pray, the next Pope. If not, eventually some better Pope will come along who will.
It could be next year, it could be next decade, it could be next century. But it will happen.
Very interesting that a simple, semi-impromptu, informal blessing, …still requires 45 paragraphs to explain.
This is impossible.
The Church can bless harvests, fishing fleets, and fire departments, asking God to help them achieve success in their work for the community.
The Church can bless individual people, asking God to grant their prayers and help them find their path to eternal life.
She can bless individual gay and transgender people, with the same intention.
She can formally and sacramentally bless a couple entering into a marriage that the Church recognizes.
She can’t bless a couple in a relationship that is based on behavior that the Church itself deems sinful. It is logically impossible to pray that sin might prosper.
I am not a kook.
Francis sows division and doctrinal confusion. He is a bad shepherd.
@ Matthew111
No, they’re being promoted to queans.
The Vatican and other church officials need to come out and reiterate that the Church still considers homosexual acts intrinsically disordered. The Media is now saying otherwise.
https://youtube.com/shorts/QAUyOQtZcpE?si=ZDB4cJ3elGxt_qiv
In todays “cancel culture” , Satan is trying to cancel everything normal, age old and good. I suggest that people who are imbracing this , go back to scripture and read about Sodom and Gomorrah.
Years ago when Massachusetts was pushing to recognize “same sex unions” for “tax and insurance purposes”, A younger woman came at me and asked what I had against homosexuals. I asked her if she belived in God and the bible as the word of God. She said Yes! I asked her what about Sodom and Gomorrah? She said, Oh I don’t believe in that part.
Is it time that our belief that marriage is between a man and a woman and that homsexuality is a sin become Dogma?
I would like to know more about the purifying of memories. I have not heard of this, but it would be very helpful to me, as I have some horrible memories which haunt me……there is a constant battle going on in my head.
“da qualche fessura sia entrato il fumo di Satana nel tempio di Dio”
Pope Paul VI was spot on. The smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God. For, oh, the past 10 years or so, it’s been nauseating reading news from Rome.
Excellent advice, Fr. Z.
We are being purified. We didn’t care enough about the Faith, the truth, the Church. It was all on auto-pilot. Not now.
Pray for Papa Bergoglio. Pray for the next pope.
I see this quite simply: yes, anyone can receive a blessing from God; however, when a COUPLE presents themselves for a blessing they are asking that they be blessed in light of their relationship to each other, not as an individual son/daughter of Christ. Therefore, this document encourages blessing illicit unions and is heresy, just as Amoris Laetitia was before it.
The criteria for infallibility is quite narrow and this document does not meet them. Therefore, the Church remains free of error while its members continue spreading heresy.
Dear SimonK,
A future Pope will reverse this mistake.
That is a wish, not a certainty.
There are also the following three possibilities.
1. The Church will actively stick to what the Holy Father now has decided, for all the time until our Lord returns. And will then be told in explicit terms that that was wrong.
2. The decision will become obscure, will be put into “the oblivion which the Church so wisely has in store for the unimportant things”, as Graham Greene once put it. Eventually, the astounding claim that to bless a same-sex couple as such were a good Catholic thing to do will die down as obvious nonsense, as, let’s face it, all good Catholics think today; but it won’t ever be reversed officially, as little as the rule from 1905, when motor-cars were a new and wild thing feared by the decent populace, the rule that is that cars must only drive 3 mph at night and be preceded by a walking man with a lantern apparently has not been reversed in some jurisdictions. When our Lord comes and “all the world is mended”, to quote Tom Bombadil, then yes it will be officially reversed, but no earlier, and even then it will be an afterthought.
3. (I don’t like to bring up that possibility, nor do I think it likely, but when it’s the pope and he’s not in a formal, logical sense attacking Catholic dogma, as I take him not to be, just in an “if he’s not kidding us obviously he must be” manner”, it has to be mentioned…) It might even be that the Pope and the “Pope’s fraction” of the Roman Curia and their shenanigans and trickeries, giving themselves the air of reversing Catholic moral doctrine while keeping loopholes to be able to still say that’s not actually what they’re doing, might be justified by some greater good that has not been made known to us. There, I said it. (I do not think it’s likely.)
Personally, I think my no. 2 most likely; which would not be the worst thing in the world. It is, granted, hard on Germans and possibly Anglo-Saxons not to get an official retraction of offial decree when that decree’s quite unmistakably wrong. I really would like to see a retraction, or the soothing feeling of the knowledge that if I don’t see it my or my friends’ grandchildren, and if not them their grandchildren at the very latest. But I am afraid I just am not certain of that; I would not even bet a moderate amount of money on it.
Gonna have to bless three-somes. And four at that. All irregular.
Where to go? Obviously, we have to tread carefully in the Latin Church. That’s because we have seen gays demanding cakes for gay occasions and then weaponizing them; it will be used in the same way against more orthodox Catholics
Expect gay-friendly clerics like Fr. Martin will pummel us with this nefarious agenda on social and mainstream media. I can imagine a couple of bishops who I believe will be up quickly for such a “blessing.”
Dubia, Strickland, Burke, TC, now this. It’s pretty clear meant to drive us from the Church. Either we leave, or we submit. From the Bishop of Rome and his crew’s viewpoint, that’s a win/win.
AEGSEMJE,
Puryfying of memory works. I am an old guy. I had found that most of my sins were those of memory. By confessing and receiving absolution through the Grace of God , those memories have been locked away.
I did tell the Priest what it was I was trying to do and it took time and many confessions. Go for it .
This document, like this papacy, is all about the normalization of homosexuality.
The project of the normalization of homosexuality, along with a lot of other projects, stems from the loss of the theological virtue of faith (which is really tragic as faith is lost last of the three theological virtues). What we are witnessing is that a great many in the church (from the lowest to highest rank) have dispaired of the transforming nature of the life of grace – that God can and does bring man to full participation in His own divine life, and that man can and truly does leave behind vice, sin, malice, etc. and is not only capable of living the virtues/commandments, fulfilling the Law, but is required to and is elevated beyond a life lived under the Law, but to a true participation (via Mystical Marriage) in the life of the Just One.
So much of what many do in the Church today is to accompany men in their sins and to take away their charity, their hope, and their faith in the reality of the life of grace which results in theosis. Those in the Church do this because they have despaired of it for themselves.
Pray for them and all involved that they might hear the voice of the Baptist this Advent: “Repent and prepare the way of the Lord.” The Life of Grace not just possible but is given to all, without cost, for those who approach the living waters and the wellspring of grace!
Makes me wonder if communion for the divorced and remarried will be approved next.
acardnal
A great question, if overly limited
What other unrepentant sinners are to be blessed? And if a priest blesses them in that that state, would he or his extraordinary ministers of communion withhold it from them?
You can imagine the list of the “marginalized”, whom the backward clergy won’t accompany them
Just not traditional Catholics. Oh no. Not that lot.
Lurker 59,
This is exactly what I have been thinking for some time now. It’s obvious that many in the Church either don’t understand or don’t believe in the power of Grace to transform us and help us to live a pious life. If they believed that Grace could transform us, they wouldn’t be trying to figure out little loopholes to excuse sin.
It was pretty telling when Monsignor Ricca took Santa Marta. Anyhow. I will be at Mass on Sunday and still a Catholic. Time and history will not be their friend.
Oh yeah, remember that one Cardinal that Francis was friends with who was just recently found guilty of financial crimes? Exactly. I think the timing between THAT and Christmas is 100% on purpose.
Remember how important it is to the devil to discourage you and me.
Remember that and cultivate the virtue of fortitude.
There’s no explicit doctrinal shift here. It’s how people are and will interpret it.
For those saying they will go Orthodox over this…. Keep in mind that the Orthodox have tolerated divorce and remarriage for centuries… arguing that it is objectively sinful, but can be accommodated due to human weakness.
From the New York Times Dec 19, with photos you can imagine:
“In New York City, Damian and Jason Steidl Jack, who were married last year, had previously discussed the possibility of a blessing with Father Martin, a longtime friend of Jason’s. When Father Martin texted on Monday afternoon and asked if they wanted a blessing, they leaped at the offer.”
Not exactly “spontaneous.” The priest called THEM.
Hang on. Here we go.
Father Martin Fox has the right of it. I will stand firm in faith, laboring in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior (apologies for the older form, it’s the one I still know best). If I’m not around to see it personally…
Will shall be the sterner
Heart the bolder
Spirit the greater as our strength lessens.
His will be done.
Pingback: MONDAY NIGHT EDITION • BigPulpit.com