The Apostolic See has released a new document, a declaration by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith approved by Pope Francis, titled: Fiducia Supplicans. Excerpts follow:

[Intro:]
“It is precisely in this context that one can understand the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage.”

4. Pope Francis’ recent response to the second of the five questions posed by two Cardinals[4] offers an opportunity to explore this issue further, especially in its pastoral implications. It is a matter of avoiding that “something that is not marriage is being recognized as marriage.”[5] Therefore, rites and prayers that could create confusion between what constitutes marriage—which is the “exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to the generation of children”[6]—and what contradicts it are inadmissible. This conviction is grounded in the perennial Catholic doctrine of marriage; it is only in this context that sexual relations find their natural, proper, and fully human meaning. The Church’s doctrine on this point remains firm.

5. This is also the understanding of marriage that is offered by the Gospel. For this reason, when it comes to blessings, the Church has the right and the duty to avoid any rite that might contradict this conviction or lead to confusion. Such is also the meaning of the Responsum of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which states that the Church does not have the power to impart blessings on unions of persons of the same sex.

6. It should be emphasized that in the Rite of the Sacrament of Marriage, this concerns not just any blessing but a gesture reserved to the ordained minister. In this case, the blessing given by the ordained minister is tied directly to the specific union of a man and a woman, who establish an exclusive and indissoluble covenant by their consent. This fact allows us to highlight the risk of confusing a blessing given to any other union with the Rite that is proper to the Sacrament of Marriage.

19. In his mystery of love, through Christ, God communicates to his Church the power to bless. Granted by God to human beings and bestowed by them on their neighbors, the blessing is transformed into inclusion, solidarity, and peacemaking. It is a positive message of comfort, care, and encouragement. The blessing expresses God’s merciful embrace and the Church’s motherhood, which invites the faithful to have the same feelings as God toward their brothers and sisters.

26. In this perspective, the Holy Father’s Respuestas aid in expanding the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2021 pronouncement from a pastoral point of view. For, the Respuestas invite discernment concerning the possibility of “forms of blessing, requested by one or more persons, that do not convey an erroneous conception of marriage”[17] and, in situations that are morally unacceptable from an objective point of view, account for the fact that “pastoral charity requires us not to treat simply as ‘sinners’ those whose guilt or responsibility may be attenuated by various factors affecting subjective imputability.”

31. Within the horizon outlined here appears 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.

39. In any case, precisely to avoid any form of confusion or scandal, when the prayer of blessing is requested by a couple in an irregular situation, even though it is expressed outside the rites prescribed by the liturgical books, 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. The same applies when the blessing is requested by a same-sex couple.

40. Such a blessing may instead find its place in other contexts, such as a visit to a shrine, a meeting with a priest, a prayer recited in a group, or during a pilgrimage. Indeed, through these blessings that are given not through the ritual forms proper to the liturgy but as an expression of the Church’s maternal heart—similar to those that emanate from the core of popular piety—there is no intention to legitimize anything, but rather to open one’s life to God, to ask for his help to live better, and also to invoke the Holy Spirit so that the values of the Gospel may be lived with greater faithfulness.

41. What has been said in this Declaration regarding the blessings of same-sex couples is sufficient to guide the prudent and fatherly discernment of ordained ministers in this regard. Thus, beyond the guidance provided above, no further responses should be expected about possible ways to regulate details or practicalities regarding blessings of this type.

43. The Church is thus the sacrament of God’s infinite love. Therefore, even when a person’s relationship with God is clouded by sin, he can always ask for a blessing, stretching out his hand to God, as Peter did in the storm when he cried out to Jesus, “Lord, save me!” (Mt. 14:30).

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My Comments

My opinion is that this decision of the Holy Father might turn out to be imprudent. I hope for the best response to this declaration. But I’m concerned that some sinners will use this permission to speak and act as if couples in irregular situations (e.g. divorced/remarried; same-sex couples) have now had their relationships approved by the Church. I’m concerned that liberal parishes will use this blessing to promote the approval for grave sin of various kinds. For we know that even the text of holy Scripture is often misused by sinners for their own purposes.

The document was clear in saying:
* “the Church has always considered only those sexual relations that are lived out within marriage to be morally licit, 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”
* “the Church does not have the power to impart blessings on unions of persons of the same sex”
However, sinners will often distort the teachings and disciplines of the Church. The decision to allow blessings on persons in irregular situations is of discipline, not doctrine; it is changeable. If it turns out to be imprudent, Pope Francis, or a future Pope, can change the practice or do away with it.

However, nothing in this decision by Pope Francis contradicts the teaching of the Church on faith or morals. And the declaration clearly states that such blessings must not be considered to be equivalent to marriage, nor to constitute approval for grave sin. Rather, this is the Church giving blessings to sinners, just as Jesus blessed the Samaritan woman by staying in her town and, by providence and grace, making her a way to announce Jesus to her neighbors. She held false ideas about religion. The Samaritans practiced an altered version of Judaism. She was in an irregular relationship. But Jesus did not reject her, nor refuse to work through her.

[John 4]
{4:1} And so, when Jesus realized that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made more disciples and baptized more than John,
{4:2} (though Jesus himself was not baptizing, but only his disciples)
{4:3} he left behind Judea, and he traveled again to Galilee.
{4:4} Now he needed to cross through Samaria.
{4:5} Therefore, he went into a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the estate which Jacob gave to his son Joseph.
{4:6} And Jacob’s well was there. And so Jesus, being tired from the journey, was sitting in a certain way on the well. It was about the sixth hour.
{4:7} A woman of Samaria arrived to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me to drink.”
{4:8} For his disciples had gone into the city in order to buy food.
{4:9} And so, that Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, being a Jew, are requesting a drink from me, though I am a Samaritan woman?” For the Jews do not associate with the Samaritans.
{4:10} Jesus responded and said to her: “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who is saying to you, ‘Give me to drink,’ perhaps you would have made a request of him, and he would have given you living water.”
{4:11} The woman said to him: “Lord, you do not have anything with which to draw water, and the well is deep. From where, then, do you have living water?
{4:12} Surely, you are not greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and who drank from it, with his sons and his cattle?”
{4:13} Jesus responded and said to her: “All who drink from this water will thirst again. But whoever shall drink from the water that I will give to him will not thirst for eternity.
{4:14} Instead, the water that I will give to him will become in him a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life.”
{4:15} The woman said to him, “Lord, give me this water, so that I may not thirst and may not come here to draw water.”
{4:16} Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and return here.”
{4:17} The woman responded and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her: “You have spoken well, in saying, ‘I have no husband.’
{4:18} For you have had five husbands, but he whom you have now is not your husband. You have spoken this in truth.”
{4:19} The woman said to him: “Lord, I see that you are a Prophet.
{4:20} Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you say that Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.”
{4:21} Jesus said to her: “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you shall worship the Father, neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem.
{4:22} You worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know. For salvation is from the Jews.
{4:23} But the hour is coming, and it is now, when true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father also seeks such persons who may worship him.
{4:24} God is Spirit. And so, those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”
{4:25} The woman said to him: “I know that the Messiah is coming (who is called the Christ). And then, when he will have arrived, he will announce everything to us.”
{4:26} Jesus said to her: “I am he, the one who is speaking with you.”
{4:27} And then his disciples arrived. And they wondered that he was speaking with the woman. Yet no one said: “What are you seeking?” or, “Why are you talking with her?”
{4:28} And so the woman left behind her water jar and went into the city. And she said to the men there:
{4:29} “Come and see a man who has told me all the things that I have done. Is he not the Christ?”
{4:30} Therefore, they went out of the city and came to him.
{4:31} Meanwhile, the disciples petitioned him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.”
{4:32} But he said to them, “I have food to eat which you do not know.”
{4:33} Therefore, the disciples said to one another, “Could someone have brought him something to eat?”
{4:34} Jesus said to them: “My food is to do the will of the One who sent me, so that I may perfect his work.
{4:35} Do you not say, ‘There are still four months, and then the harvest arrives?’ Behold, I say to you: Lift up your eyes and look at the countryside; for it is already ripe for the harvest.
{4:36} For he who reaps, receives wages and gathers fruit unto eternal life, so that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.
{4:37} For in this the word is true: that it is one who sows, and it is another who reaps.
{4:38} I have sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.”
{4:39} Now many of the Samaritans from that city believed in him, because of the word of the woman who was offering testimony: “For he told me all the things that I have done.”
{4:40} Therefore, when the Samaritans had come to him, they petitioned him to lodge there. And he lodged there for two days.
{4:41} And many more believed in him, because of his own word.
{4:42} And they said to the woman: “Now we believe, not because of your speech, but because we ourselves have heard him, and so we know that he is truly the Savior of the world.”
{4:43} Then, after two days, he departed from there, and he traveled into Galilee.