Defending Fiducia Supplicans: On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings, Part 3

Part 3 is the last in the series of the defense of the papal Declaration, Fiducia Supplicans.

You can read Part 1 of my defense here.  

Part 2 here.  

Note: This next section was written just before Christmas, and I began to have some doubts, as you will read.

Before I respond to specific comments, and given my schedule before the holidays may not be timely, let me post Cardinal Fernández’s explanation through an interview.  Cardinal Fernández is the man who wrote the document for Pope Francis.  He explains the controversial part this in the interview:

 

These kinds of blessings are simply simple pastoral channels that help to express people’s faith, even if those people are great sinners.

 

Therefore, by giving this blessing to two people who spontaneously come forward to request it, one can legitimately ask God to grant them health, peace, prosperity—the things that we all ask for and that a sinner can also ask for.

 

At the same time, since one can think that in the daily lives of these two persons, not everything is sin, one can therefore pray for them [to receive] a spirit of dialogue, patience, mutual help.

 

But the declaration also mentions a request for help from the Holy Spirit so that this relationship, which is often unknown to the priest, may be purified of everything that does not respond to the Gospel and the will of God, and may mature along the lines of God’s plan.

 

As I was saying, sometimes the priest, on a pilgrimage, does not know that couple, and sometimes they are two very close friends who share good things, sometimes they had sexual relations in the past and now what remains is a strong sense of belonging and mutual help. As a parish priest, I have often met such couples, who are sometimes exemplary.

 

Therefore, since it is not a question of the sacrament of confession(!), but of a simple blessing, it is still asked that this friendship be purified, matured and lived in fidelity to the Gospel. And even if there was some kind of sexual relationship, known or not, the blessing made in this way does not validate or justify anything.

 

Actually the same thing happens whenever individuals are blessed, because that individual who asks for a blessing — not absolution — may be a great sinner, but we do not deny a blessing to him.

 

But clearly we have to grow in the conviction that non-ritualized blessings are not a consecration of the person, they are not a justification of all his actions, they are not a ratification of the life he leads. No. No. I do not know at what point we have so exalted this simple pastoral gesture that we have equated it with the reception of the Eucharist. That is why we want to set so many conditions for blessing.

I continue to believe FS is theologically sound.  So where is the disconnect?  It occurred to me this morning waking from a lousy sleep.  I must have been turning this over in my mind.  In my claim-dispute-refutation exercise I said this:

 

Dispute against claim #3: If you’re blessing a sinner whose identity is integral with a sin, then you are affirming that sin.

Refutation #1

No sinner’s identity is integral to a sin in the eyes of God. It is wrong for a person to identify himself as homosexual, for example, because it reduces the dignity of a human being to a mere act. But it is just as wrong to consider the identity of a person as such because you are doing the same thing in reducing that person to a mere act, even if that person identifies himself as that sin. No one coming before anyone, especially a priest, should be looked at as having the identity as gay or having an identity of a sin.

That refutation may be true but it requires a lot of spiritual growth, a growth not possible to expect from the general public or even the general Catholic layman.  I don’t even know if I have it.  I’ve grown toward it and certainly I try to look at the sinner as not the sin.  As a lay Dominican I’m pushed toward it through regular prayer, frequent confession, spiritual retreats, adoration, and such.  There is no way anyone can expect the general public to not separate the sinner from the sin.  So this ties in to

Dispute against claim #4-1: A gay couple coming before a priest for a blessing de facto implies an affirmation of homosexual marriage/unions.

Unfortunately to the general public that’s how it will be taken.  I don’t know if there will be enough preaching on the subject to change public perception.  This gay identity thing is so engrained in the culture that it will not budge.  While it may be theologically sound, it is not practical.  The Vatican will have to modify FS.

So modify to what?  I think they need to strip the word “couple” out of it and apply the blessing toward individuals or large groups (I’m thinking of the priest who blessed the passengers on the bus.)  Even that can be abused but at least the perception goes away.

So hopefully I answered most of your criticisms.  Have a blessed Christmas if I can’t come back.

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Note: This was written after Christmas, and overcame the doubt and back to supporting FS.

I was somewhat rushed when I put out my last comment, so let me back fill and also add some further thoughts I’ve had over these last few days.  I have read FS a fourth time now.  I continue to maintain this document is theologically sound.  The critics of this, it seems to me, make two errors, either intentionally or by inference-conclusion bias.  There is also a third criticism of the document which I’ll address as well.

The first error is that of conflating union with couple.  Cardinal Muller does this over and over.  He beats on a strawman argument.  He uses the word union throughout his commentary, and FS clearly states numerous times that no union is being blessed.  A couple does not have to be a union.  A couple, while it may delineate a bond between the two, in no way delineates a specific relationship.  When my wife and I were dating, we were a couple.  With my wife and I being in a married union, we are still a couple.  The nature of what that couple is has changed.  But it’s still the word couple.  A married couple in an irregular union (divorced and remarried without annulment) is also a couple.  You don’t know whether they are living in an adulterous state or as “brother and sister” as they are supposed to live while the annulment process completes.  Two gay men can be a couple in a “union” or in a sexual relationship or in a platonic relationship.  The first two are not acceptable to the Catholic Church.  The third is not a sinful state.  All of these are couples.  The state of grace in these souls is unknown to the outside world.  All of the people in these examples are sinners, including me and if you’re honest including you.  All are in need of grace.  From paragraph 31: “a blessing may be imparted that not only has an ascending value but also involves the invocation of a blessing that descends from God upon those who—recognizing themselves to be destitute and in need of his help—do not claim a legitimation of their own status, but who beg that all that is true, good, and humanly valid in their lives and their relationships be enriched, healed, and elevated by the presence of the Holy Spirit.”  In Catholic anthropology there is no such thing as a gay union.  The document only uses the word union to make clear what is not being blessed.  A couple are any two individuals that are approaching for a blessing.  The nature of their relationship is irrelevant.  They are sinners not claiming to legitimate their status (whatever that may be) but seeking healing by the presence of the Holy Spirit.  If you think that gay platonic relationships don’t exist, you’re wrong.

The other error I keep seeing concerns the nature of a blessing.  As FS delineates, a blessing has multiple functions.  One function is to provide favor or affirmation.  A boy scout helps an old lady across the street and on reaching the other side she blesses him.  That is an affirmation for the good the boy just did.  That is not the type of blessing being offered in FS.  Another type of blessing is that to a sinner as an imparting of grace for the sinner to be spiritually strengthened—that is as I’ve quoted from FS above, to be “healed and elevated by the presence of the Holy Spirit.”  A person not in a state to receive communion walks up with his arms crossed to receive a blessing.  That blessing is not an affirmation of anything.  It is an imparting of grace.  In a confessional, the absolution is a blessing not of what a good job you did but a grace to be strengthened.  In fact the very first words you’re supposed to say in the confessional is “Bless me Father for I have sinned.”  All sorts of sinners receive blessings.  Soldiers going off to battle receive blessings.  People undertaking arduous tasks, say an astronaut, receive blessings.  Criminals in jail receive blessings.  People on their death beds in a coma receive blessings.  None of these is an affirmation of any sin past or present.  The two paragraphs following par. 31 make this clear:

 

32. Indeed, the grace of God works in the lives of those who do not claim to be righteous but who acknowledge themselves humbly as sinners, like everyone else. This grace can orient everything according to the mysterious and unpredictable designs of God. Therefore, with its untiring wisdom and motherly care, the Church welcomes all who approach God with humble hearts, accompanying them with those spiritual aids that enable everyone to understand and realize God’s will fully in their existence.

 

33. This is a blessing that, although not included in any liturgical rite, unites intercessory prayer with the invocation of God’s help by those who humbly turn to him. God never turns away anyone who approaches him! Ultimately, a blessing offers people a means to increase their trust in God. The request for a blessing, thus, expresses and nurtures openness to the transcendence, mercy, and closeness to God in a thousand concrete circumstances of life, which is no small thing in the world in which we live. It is a seed of the Holy Spirit that must be nurtured, not hindered.

Do you see that?  FS is quite clear.  It is people’s inference-conclusion bias—otherwise known as jumping to a conclusion—that is the source of the confusion.  The document is not confused.  It’s people’s reading comprehension that has them confused.

A third criticism I see of FS is that the document rests on “legalistic language” or word contrivance.  Well, welcome to theology.  Have you tried reading Thomas Aquinas?  Or how about the Council of Nicaea with the definition of the Trinity?  Three separate persons but it’s still one God because they have one will and are made of one substance?  That’s not “word contrivance”?  Or how about transubstantiation?  The substance of bread and wine are changed to the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ but the material elements of the bread and wine remain the same to the senses?  Hmmm.  Or how about outside of Catholicism, because all religions do this, let’s say the Protestant notion of Once Saved Always Saved?  Because Christ was punished for my sins, I can commit any sin I want because it’s already been satisfied, as long as I believe in Christ?  I can go on with lots of examples.  Those looking suspiciously at another’s theology will always find word contrivance.  FS doesn’t even reach anywhere near the level of word contrivance as any of those examples.  In fact it’s quite clear that couple is not a union.

As I’ve ruminated on this over the last few days what I think has happened is that inference-conclusion bias shaped some readers views and then a hermeneutic of suspicion took root.  Some critics are commenting in good faith; some are setting up strawmen.  As I said before the holidays, the theological distinctions will probably go over the general public’s head and lead to the wrong conclusions.  It would require a large teaching effort on a subject that most priests and bishops even now loath to bring up.  I think FS would have been less controversial if it has used the word “group” instead of couple, and two is also a group.  I think that would have minimized the inference-conclusion bias.  Either they didn’t think of it or the Holy Father has his reasons.  No matter.  I remain docile to the teaching, faith seeking understanding.

Before the holidays I thought the Vatican would have to amend FS in time.  I’m not so sure now.  This was always left to the priest’s discretion, and now the Vatican has made it clear it’s up to the bishops as to the level of implementation.  That flexibility solves all criticism.  I suspect they will leave this alone.

I’m also more hopeful now that I’ve been away from the media on this.  This practice could actually be quite fruitful in teaching the Catholic anthropology of human sexuality.  It could also be quite fruitful in teaching of loving the sinner and not the sin.  I was just watching Johnny Mathis on TV singing a Christmas carol.  I know he’s same-sex attracted.  I know also he’s a Catholic convert.  Being almost ninety I doubt he’s sexually active, but I’m pretty sure he committed sexual sins in his past.  Whatever grace has brought him to sanctity had to do with the presence of the Holy Spirit.  All this blessing is doing is trying to lay the seeds for the Holy Spirit in people’s lives.  I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

But it supposedly took over a hundred years for the public to understand the Trinity

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Note: This was written just after the New Year as one last final defense.

I have to laugh when I see a polemicist like Robert Royal admit FS is not heretical and yet goes on to rant and rave against the Vatican and the Pope.  From his article today in The Catholic Thing: 

And as many of us could see at the start – and, therefore, were often accused of not having even read the text – though the document was technically not heretical and even restated Church teaching about real marriage, there was a wide chasm between what was explicitly said and what was implicitly communicated.

Ha!  Not heretical, and no you are reading into what is implicitly communicated.  Somebody must have walked him through what an inference fallacy is because just last week he was saying quite the opposite on TV.  There is no implicit communication in a Magisterial document.  What it says is what it say.  Royal goes on to even say how the effect of the document may have persuaded the German bishops to not go into schism.  And yet he rants and raves about how ill-timed the document is.  Huh?  Polemicists need to rant and rave in order to get clicks and to remove the egg on their face from previous statements.

I acknowledge that there are sincere people who honestly read FS and come away with the impression that the blessing of same-sex couples validates a relationship.  And every time I read their augmenting logic, I see the same application of the fallacy that a same-sex couple must by definition be in a state of sin.  I don’t know the name of that fallacy, but I know it’s a fallacy.  That is a conclusion based on an inference, not a fact.  It wouldn’t even hold up in court.

Yes, I know you’ve got a whole list of people who have succumbed to this fallacy, but there are enough who haven’t.  First off the US Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) have come out and supported the document.  I have not seen a single US Bishop dissent from FS, and that would include all the conservative ones, notably Cardinal Salvatore Cordileone.  Bishop Robert Barron, who heads the committee that this would fall under, came out with a specific statement which included:

 

The document allows for the possibility of blessing those in irregular or same-sex relationships. Despite some misleading reporting in the media, Fiducia Supplicans in no way sanctions irregular bonds or changes the Church’s teaching on marriage and sexuality. It further specifies that no liturgical blessing can be offered to those in such unions, but rather an informal pastoral blessing. This latter benediction is a calling forth of the divine grace to help those who receive it to live more fully in accord with God’s will and to enhance whatever is good, true, and beautiful in their lives.

Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire ministry published a tract (Clarity in Confusion: An Approach to “Fiducia Supplicans”) on the underlying logic of FS, written by a Dr. Richard Declue, who I have never heard of:  

 

 Here, I think, is another reason for the confusion: a distinction between blessing a same-sex couple and blessing their union. What does it mean to bless same-sex couples but not bless their unions? If you are blessing a couple, are you not blessing their union? In this case, no! And this is what is understandably difficult for people to immediately comprehend. It is not intuitively obvious that you can bless a couple without blessing or condoning their union.

 

So what kind of blessing are we even talking about, then? What is the purpose? The document describes the kind of blessing it has in mind: “These forms of blessing express a supplication that God may grant those aids that come from the impulses of his Spirit—what classical theology calls ‘actual grace’—so that human relationships may mature and grow in fidelity to the Gospel, that they may be freed from their imperfections and frailties, and that they may express themselves in the ever-increasing dimension of the divine love.” The term actual grace is defined in the Catechism: “Actual graces . . . refer to God’s interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification”.

Esteemed professor of moral theology at The Catholic University, Dr. John Grabowski, who specializes in sexual ethics, issued a positive statement.  Even more significant (at least to me being a Lay Dominican) is that Fr. Thomas Petri, O.P. was quoted in Our Sunday Visitor, the most prolific Catholic publication: 

 

Dominican Father Thomas Petri, president of the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, told OSV News he agreed with the USCCB’s assessment, saying the Vatican declaration “is clear.”

 

“There can be no blessing of same-sex relationships in a way that mimics marriage. There can be no ritual. No vestments. No liturgy. Nothing in conjunction with some recent civil ceremony for a couple,” Father Petri told OSV News. “On the contrary, what’s suggested only as a pastoral guidance is the possibility that in some profound religious experience, such as on a pilgrimage or at a spiritual retreat, that a couple striving to live the will of God might spontaneously seek a priest’s blessing (and) that they increasingly be able to do so.”

The Dominican House of Studies is the faculty that teaches theology to Dominicans friars, mostly those in the Eastern Province but accepts widely.  These are no theological slouches, and more importantly they are not of the polemical kind, neither polemical of the left nor of the right. 

But I also hope you’ll watch this less than ten minute homily by Fr. Terrance Chartier of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate.  He not only explains FS perfectly and succinctly and how it should be understood, but he also provides an understanding of how it should be applied.  (He even talks about sin of sowing Church discord, which people should take seriously.  I myself have taken that to the confessional more than once.)  He makes many of the same points I made throughout this OP, how all Church documents should be read in in the spirit of docility and not suspicion, and how the potential of abuse is no reason to not generate anything new.  Fr. Terrance also criticizes those on the polemical left and the polemical right.

 

He even quotes Thomas Aquinas!  Father, you should have been a Dominican!  I’m sending that video to Cardinal Dolan, the bishop of my diocese with a note it should be widely disseminated. 

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Now that I’ve had a few weeks to be away from the issue and certainly been away from the attacks, let me summarize with my final thoughts.

FS remains to me theologically sound.  The Declaration could have been improved by being more specific that persons are being blessed rather than a couple.  This is the cause of the confusion, but I think the Vatican has clarified it enough and given bishops the flexibility to enact it as best fit their diocese. 

The arguments against are the strawman argument about blessing a gay union, which is false, or that a same-sex couple innately implies a state of sin or, more to the point, a lack of desire to amend one’s life.  There is no affirmation of any sin.  The blessing is an imparting of grace to grow toward holiness.  That it can be abused is no argument.  Any sacrament can currently be abused. 

That the blessing of an irregular or same-sex couple can cause the public to misinterpret Catholic teaching is something that requires attention.  But still I do not feel it warrants concern.  The priest will have to use his judgement, but this now is an opportunity to catechize.  The blessing is a teaching moment, which in due time and practice may bring souls to Christ.

With the intercession of St. Catherine of Siena, patroness of this blog, and my personal patroness, I pray that it does so.