Vatican allows blessings for same-sex couples outside liturgy

December 18, 2023

The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) has issued a new document opening “the possibility of blessings for couples in irregular situations and for couples of the same sex, the form of which should not be fixed ritually by ecclesial authorities to avoid producing confusion with the blessing proper to the Sacrament of Marriage.”

In a document entitled Fiducia Supplicans, issued on December 18 with the approval of Pope Francis, the DDF encourages pastors to give blessings to those who seek them, while insisting that the form of the blessing should not suggest the approval of the Church for the irregular union.

In an introduction, Cardinal Victor Fernandez, the prefect of the DDF, asserts that “this declaration remains firm on the traditional doctrine of the Church about marriage, not allowing any type of liturgical rite or blessing similar to a liturgical rite that can create confusion.” A blessing conferred on a couple in an irregular union should take place “outside the liturgical framework, the document states. Moreover “this blessing should never be imparted in concurrence with the ceremonies of a civil union, and not even in connection with them. Nor can it be performed with any clothing, gestures, or words that are proper to a wedding.”

While initial news reports on the Vatican document in the secular media preserved the distinction that the DDF sought to make in Fiducia Supplicans, that distinction will undoubtedly be challenged as same-sex couples press their pastors for blessings in church services. And the Vatican document itself puts some pressure on pastors to accommodate such requests, saying that the Church “must shy away from resting its pastoral praxis on the fixed nature of certain doctrinal or disciplinary schemes.”

Fiducia Supplicans recommends that the blessings for same-sex couples or others living in irregular unions should not take a fixed form, “to avoid producing confusion with the blessing proper to the Sacrament of Marriage.” Instead the DDF suggests a “spontaneous” blessing in which the priests “could ask that the individuals have peace, health, a spirit of patience, dialogue, and mutual assistance—but also God’s light and strength to be able to fulfill his will completely.”

Cardinal Fernandez describes the new document as “a broadening and enrichment of the classical understanding of blessings.” The Church has always offered blessings for many different occasions, the document notes:

People who come spontaneously to ask for a blessing show by this request their sincere openness to transcendence, the confidence of their hearts that they do not trust in their own strength alone, their need for God, and their desire to break out of the narrow confines of this world, enclosed in its limitations.

However, the DDF cautions: “From a strictly liturgical point of view, a blessing requires that what is blessed be conformed to God’s will, as expressed in the teachings of the Church.” Therefore “the Church does not have the power to confer its liturgical blessing when that would somehow offer a form of moral legitimacy to a union that presumes to be a marriage or to an extra-marital sexual practice.”

Fiducia Supplicans is described by Cardinal Fernandez as an elaboration on the reply the Pope Francis gave to two cardinals who had sought clarification on the possibility of offering blessings to same-sex unions. However the cardinal discloses that the DDF had already been working on the question, and the Pontiff’s response “provided important clarifications” that guided the dicastery in drafting the declaration.

 

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Further information:

• Fiducia Supplicans [full text]
• Doctrinal declaration opens possibility to bless couples in irregular situations (Vatican News)
• Vatican approves blessings for same-sex couples in landmark ruling (Reuters)
• Pope approves blessings for same-sex couples if they don’t resemble marriage (AP)