Vatican ‘clarifies’ Fiducia Supplicans [News Analysis]

January 04, 2024

Responding to a groundswell of resistance of Fiducia Supplicans by Catholic bishops around the world, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) has released a lengthy press release to clarify the document.

The new document insists that negative reactions to Fiducia “cannot be interpreted as doctrinal opposition, because the document is clear and definitive about marriage and sexuality.” Therefore the DDF suggests that the widespread opposition to the directive is rooted in misunderstanding of its fundamental purpose.

While the DDF argues that Fiducia cannot be understood as granting pastoral approval for same-sex unions, and that there are “several indisputable phrases in the declaration that leave this in no doubt,” concerned bishops have criticized the document for causing deep confusion (or worse) on that point.

Merely by issuing this clarification—barely more than two weeks after the initial directive—the DDF has tacitly conceded the confusion. In Fiducia Supplicans itself the Vatican dicastery had said that the directive gave clear guidance on the sort of blessings that it recommended, and therefore “no further responses should be expected about possible ways to regulate details or practicalities regarding blessings of this type.”

The bishops’ prerogatives

Today’s clarification concedes that diocesan bishops may make their own judgments on how to implement the Vatican directive: “Each local Bishop, by virtue of his own ministry, always has the power of discernment in loco, that is, in that concrete place that he knows better than others precisely because it is his own flock.” However the DDF places a limit on the individual bishop’s discernment, saying that he may “allow for different methods of application, but not a total or definitive denial” of the message of Fiducia Supplicans.

The clarification goes on to say that some bishops may opt against authorizing blessings for same-sex couples because local laws make homosexual activity a crime. In such cases, “it goes without saying that a blessing would be imprudent.” More generally the DDF says that opposition to Fiducia may be rooted in “strong cultural and even legal issues that require time and pastoral strategies that go beyond the short term.” Again, the Vatican dicastery does not admit the possibility—raised repeatedly in statements by bishops from different countries—that Fiducia conveys an implication that the Church supports couples engaged in same-sex unions.

Responding to such concerns, the DDF clarification says, regarding the blessing of a same-sex couple: “Obviously it is not a marriage, but equally it is not an ‘approval’ or ratification of anything either.” The priest, in giving a blessing, does not indicate support for homosexual activity, the DDF maintains. Yet the clarification goes on to state explicitly that the priest who gives such a blessing “does not impose conditions and does not inquire about the intimate lives of these people.”

Here the DDF fails to respond to the point made by Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, who has pointed out that in the Byzanytine tradition a priest’s blessing always conveys an approval, and therefore the message of Fiducia Supplicans cannot apply to the Eastern Catholic churches.

The real novelty

According to today’s clarifying statement, the “real novelty” of Fiducia Supplicans “is not the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations. It is the invitation to distinguish between two forms of blessings: ‘liturgical or ritualized’ and ‘spontaneous or pastoral.’” In his December 18 letter introducing the directive, Cardinal Manuel Fernandez had said that Fiducia allowed for “a broadening and enrichment of the classical understanding of blessings.”

This “real development” in Church teaching, which the DDF credits to Pope Francis, allows for blessings that “do not require the same conditions as blessings in a liturgical or ritual context.” Leaving aside the likelihood that some same-sex couples would seek blessings in situations that did resemble liturgies (and many priests would grant them), the DDF does not explain how the blessings recommended in Fiducia Supplicans would differ from the blessings that any Catholic could request, of any priest, at any time.

—Phil Lawler

 

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Further information:

• Dicastery for Doctrine of the Faith clarifies application of ‘Fiducia supplicans’ (DDF)