Tired of Lies

For those in the Catholic media world, peace on earth was slow in coming this advent, as a mini firestorm blew up on December 18th with the release of Fiducia Supplicans, a declaration from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on the pastoral meaning of blessings.

You might think that blessings would be a pretty non-controversial topic, perhaps even a boring one. Blessings are everywhere in Catholic life. It's quite normal for a parish priest, at the request of his parishioners, to bless rosaries and other sacramentals, cars, houses, etc. 

Nor are blessings something reserved only for some spiritual or moral elite. Indeed, it is common for priests to suggest that at communion, those who may not be in union with the Church, or who may be in an unabsolved state of serious sin, cross their arms to show that they would like to receive a blessing from the priest rather than the Eucharist.  In this very common move, it is precisely those who are in some state of sin or disunion with the Church who routinely receive blessings. So in no way are blessings reserved for the few or the perfect.

But this document comes in the midst of an already simmering rift in the Church over whether the Church's teachings on cohabitation, on divorce and remarriage, and on whether marriage can be contracted between two people of the same sex can be changed. The Synodal Way initiative pursued by the German Catholic bishops has openly called for a wholesale revision of Catholic teaching on sexual morality and German bishops have given permission for the blessing of same sex marriages by their priests.  The Belgian bishops have published liturgical text for blessing same sex marriages. And although the Vatican has said that this is not possible, it has also declined to in any way stop the Belgian and German bishops, even while showing in other areas that it is quite willing to interfere in very local liturgical matters and remove bishops for seemingly minor issues (as in the case of the Bishop of Arecibo in Porto Rico.)

It's important to note that the document itself states the Catholic teaching on marriage repeatedly. This is not to say that there not nits which one might pick with it theologically. It continues the recent trend of referring to "irregular" relationships, as if a sexual relationship with the Church considers to be clearly sinful were merely an issue due to some fussy technicality. And its suggestion that a couple can be blessed as a couple (not as two Christians seeking God's grace) while at the same time holding that the union is itself sinful seems hard to maintain to human and practical terms. If this same argument were made for blessing other questionable social groupings (say a street racing club -- those can, I am told, lead to relationships that "are family") one imagines that Cardinal Fernandez would be more hesitant.

But issues asides, the document is clearly one which was written with conscious attention to being compatible with established Catholic teaching.

So why has it been greeted with such sharp reactions?  Why have the bishops of Germany and Belgium (who are explicitly violating its rules) declared the document to be a good start, while the bishops of the many conferences throughout Africa have reacted so negatively that under Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar is working to put together a unified continental response to confusion arising from the document?

Fr. James Martin, SJ, celebrated the release of Fiducia Supplicans by calling a NY Times reporter and photographer to document his first official 'informal and non-liturgical' blessing of a gay couple.

I think it's impossible to look at these developments outside the context of the last thirty years of history among the broader world of Christian communities across the world. 

The issue of same sex marriage has split multiple Protestant denominations over the last few decades. Even as the news of the new Vatican document dominated headlines, the United Methodist Church was completing a massive split over LGBT issues. For Episcopalians in the US, the split came a while ago, with congregations which held to traditional Christian teaching on morality re-aligning themselves to belong to a hierarchy centered on (non-coincidentally) Anglican bishops in Africa. Africa is not merely a thriving region for Catholics, but for a number of Protestant denominations as well, including Anglicans, Lutherans and Methodists -- all of whom in the US are dominated by progressive theology (though as with all things Protestant, it's complicated and fractured.)

Growing up, a lot of my friends were Episcopalian, and fairly involved in their churches, so I heard a lot about the developing split in the Episcopal Church over same sex marriage. One of the things that struck me then was the amount of double-talk and outright lying about objectives which went on from the progressive side.

Again and again, I saw people who clearly supported same sex marriage argue, "Why should it be a problem if Gene Robinson is a bishop and openly lives with a same sex partner?  We know that lots of bishops are sinners.  All of us are in need of forgiveness.  Was it ever a tenet of the faith that bishops are without sin?"

Advocates insisted they weren't trying to change doctrine, they just wanted to have blessings, or have commitment ceremonies, or have house blessings. All sorts of halfway steps were endorsed and people insisted they were obviously the end point and it was conspiracy minded to see this as one big push for same sex marriage.  Until, of course, enough people had become accustomed to the idea and then suddenly it was a push for same sex marriage and congregations which wouldn't go along with the changes were getting evicted from their churches by bishops.

Now, as a Catholic, I think there's an obvious difference here.  Yes, we have some parts of the Catholic Church which are deathly sick and may wither away. Germany and some other European countries may well see an institutional collapse of the Church in the coming decades.  But I believe that the Holy Spirit is guiding the Catholic Church as a whole and will preserve it from teaching error.

That said, as we can see from Church history, a great deal of confusion, conflict, and loss of faith very much can go on even as though in the long run the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church. Whether we live through times of re-awakening and evangelization, or times of confusion and apostacy, can very much depend on our own actions and those of the Church's leaders.

When it comes to confusion, there is at least an honesty to the German Synodal Way, which is stating outright that it wants a complete change in Catholic teaching on sexual morality. They may be wrong, but it's clear where they stand.

Far more frustrating are the people who seem like they would be ecstatic if the Church were to change its teaching on same sex marriage, and yet who keep insisting that they are not advocating for any such thing but rather just want to provide people with blessings.

Indeed, one whole line or argument which I have seen is that the way that the Church could gradually change doctrine is by first changing practice -- making it seem completely normal for same sex couples to get blessings from priests while opposite sex couples get marriage ceremonies -- and then when the blessing of unions seems like a standard part of Catholic life, start pushing the question of "how is it fair that some couples get weddings and others only get blessings?"

And knowing that some of those out there insisting "We only want blessings!  We don't want any change in doctrine!" are lying and very much do want to change doctrine makes those who are eager to protect doctrine wary of everyone advocating for blessings, even though (as the new DDF document shows) there is a way of thinking about blessings for people in relationships that the Church sees as sinful which is no change in doctrine and indeed no change in practice from the current one.

For those who've been seeing this issue play out in the wider Christian community for decades, the loud insistence that "We're very, very excited about this important new document, but you guys need to shut up because it absolutely is not a change in doctrine in the direction that we've been advocating for" sounds (to use an overused term) like gaslighting.  People know very well that there are those out there who want to change doctrine and see a liberal application of blessings such as that celebrated for the NY Times by Fr. James Martin, SJ (himself a darling of the Vatican at the moment -- though that may change if his public victory lap is seen has instrumental in causing the explosion among the bishops in Africa) as a means for gradually enacting that change.

I think there are a number of other leaders in the hierarchy who really do think that informal blessings are a way to somehow paper over the growing split on moral doctrine without having to hash out the underlying issues. To these institutionally minded clerics, encouraging blessings (which really are nothing new) provides a way seem more accepting without actually changing doctrine, which they recognize would be incompatible with the Church's self understanding. The problem is that this attempt to have it both ways -- to satisfy those who actually want same sex marriage and also those who want doctrinal fidelity -- risks making the split seem even bigger than it is. Those who are focused on doctrinal fidelity see the offer of blessings to be a sign of loyalty to the pro same sex marriage faction.

It is actively good to be pastoral and tell people, no matter their actions and attachments, that God loves them and wants to shower down grace upon them. It will be a bad outcome for the Church if good priests and bishops become convinced they must be stingy with blessings in order to seem not to be endorsing doctrinal change.

What Church leaders should do is BOTH crack down hard on those within the Church who are flouting Church teaching on same sex marriage, and ALSO encourage the use of blessings for all people who are eager for God's mercy, grace, and forgiveness.  And those who disagree with the Church's perennial and unchanging teaching on marriage and sexuality should at least have the decency to stop lying and admit that they disagree.  The lies are poisoning the whole Church.