Gay couples failed by the CDF
LGBT+ blessings
In the debate about the attitude to its gay and lesbian members, the
Catholic Church has been blown open by a curiously inopportune statement
from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the CDF).
Answering in the negative the question whether gay couples can receive a
blessing, the statement seems designed to forestall any further
development in the Church’s understanding of same-sex relationships. In
fact, it may well have accelerated it.
The statement is
consistent with previous CDF comments on homosexuality, summed up in its
ruling that while God may bless many things, “he does not and cannot
bless sin”. With circular logic and brutal insensitivity, this brushes
aside all the psychological, emotional and pastoral situations in which
gay people may find themselves, and defines them solely by such intimate
sexual relationships as they may be presumed to have engaged in. This
is a stark reversal of the direction of travel under Pope Francis, who
has, for the first time, made gay and lesbian Catholics begin to feel
welcome in the Church.
A sexual orientation exists in terms of relationships. It is about whom a person desires, and whom a person loves. To reject the defining relationships of LBGT+ people is to reject them, even if the Church insists, as the CDF does again, that they are not rejected individually. They can only retort, as many have done: well, rejection is exactly what it feels like. This is the heart of the gay Catholic dilemma, and it is dishonest to pretend it does not exist.
Questions have been asked about the origins of the CDF statement, even its authenticity. The Church – minus the Congregation – is clearly on a journey here that has not yet reached its destination. It is not helped by poor theology, which the statement is riddled with. A blessing, it says, is classified as a “sacramental”; sacramentals must relate to one of the seven sacraments, in this case, it says, to marriage. Gay couples cannot marry because their actions are not “open to the transmission of life”, to use the standard phrase. Hence – another standard phrase – “there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family”. So they cannot receive a blessing. This is a series of non sequiturs. If blessings must always relate to a sacrament – which is itself dubious – then it is to baptism. The Catholic Catechism affirms that all the baptised may impart a blessing, which may be of “persons, meals, objects and places”. A blessing, which is sometimes a plea for God’s help in meeting the demands of the Gospel, is perfectly appropriate for a loving couple committed to each other’s welfare.
Fortunately the CDF does not have the power to control God’s grace. Pope Francis in his subsequent Angelus remarks sought to emphasise God’s inclusive love for everyone, which was taken to indicate that he wanted to distance himself from the tone and content of the CDF’s unhelpful intervention. Other senior figures in the Church have done the same. So there is movement. And it is not in the CDF’s direction.
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