Eastern Catholic bishop in US says no to same-sex blessings
January 10, 2024
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CWN Editor's Note: Echoing a statement by the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, a bishop who leads three Eastern Catholic jurisdictions in North America said that Fiducia Supplicans does not apply in the Byzantine Catholic tradition.
Bishop Kurt Burnette of the Ruthenian Catholic Eparchy of Passaic (NJ) said that “by ancient tradition and by current laws of the Church, in the East, a couple is married sacramentally by the blessing” of a priest, while in the West, the priest or deacon witnesses the couple’s consent. Thus, in the East, “one might commit the crime of simulating a sacrament by giving the appearance of blessing an unlawful union.”
Bishop Burnette, who is also the apostolic administrator of the Ruthenian Catholic Eparchy of Phoenix and the apostolic administrator of the Slovak Catholic apostolic exharchate of Toronto, revealed that “priests in recent years in our (Eastern Catholic) churches in the United States have been excommunicated and involuntarily laicized for attempting to marry two males.”
“Take care not to compromise a priest by encouraging him to do something he is forbidden to do by the Church or by Divine Law or by his conscience,” Bishop Burnette advised his faithful.
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