The
Vatican decreed Monday that the Catholic Church cannot bless same-sex unions
since God “cannot bless sin.”
The
Vatican’s orthodoxy office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,
issued a formal response Monday to a question about whether Catholic clergy can
bless gay unions.
The
answer, contained in a two-page explanation published in seven languages and
approved by Pope Francis, was “negative.”
The
decree distinguished between the church’s welcoming and blessing of gay people,
which it upheld, but not their unions since any such sacramental recognition
could be confused with marriage.
The
Vatican holds that gays must be treated with dignity and respect, but that gay
sex is “intrinsically disordered.” Catholic teaching holds that marriage, a
lifelong union between a man and woman, is part of God’s plan and is intended
for the sake of creating new life.
Since
gay unions are not intended to be part of that plan, they cannot be blessed by
the church, the document said.
“The presence in such relationships of positive
elements, which are in themselves to be valued and appreciated, cannot justify
these relationships and render them legitimate objects of an ecclesial
blessing, since the positive elements exist within the context of a union not
ordered to the Creator’s plan,” the response said.
God
“does not and cannot bless sin: He blesses sinful man, so that he may recognize
that he is part of his plan of love and allow himself to be changed by him,” it
said.
Francis
has endorsed providing gay couples with legal protections in same-sex unions,
but that is in reference to the civil sphere, not within the church. Those
comments were made during an interview with a Mexican broadcaster, Televisa, in
2019, but were cut by the Vatican until they appeared in a documentary last
year.
While
the documentary fudged the context, Francis was referring to the position he
took when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires and the country’s lawmakers were
considering approving gay marriage, which he and the Catholic Church opposed.
Then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio instead supported providing legal
protections for gays in stable unions through a so-called “law of civil
cohabitation.”
Francis
told Televisa: “Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children
of God.” Speaking of families with gay children, he said: “You can’t kick
someone out of a family, nor make their life miserable for this. What we have
to have is a civil union law; that way they are legally covered.
In
the new document and an accompanying unsigned article, the Vatican said
questions had been raised about whether the church should bless same-sex unions
in a sacramental way in recent years, and after Francis had insisted on the
need to better welcome and accompany gays in the church.
In
the article, the Vatican stressed the “fundamental and decisive distinction”
between gay individuals and gay unions, noting that “the negative judgment on
the blessing of unions of persons of the same sex does not imply a judgment on
persons.”
But
it explained the rationale for forbidding a blessing of such unions, noting
that any union that involves sexual activity outside of marriage cannot be
blessed because it is not in a state of grace, or “ordered to both receive and
express the good that is pronounced and given by the blessing.”
And
it added that blessing a same-sex union could give the impression of a sort of
sacramental equivalence to marriage. “This would be erroneous and misleading,”
the article said.
In
2003, the same Vatican office issued a similar decree saying that the church’s
respect for gay people “cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual
behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.”
Doing
so, the Vatican reasoned then, would not only condone “deviant behavior,” but
create an equivalence to marriage, which the church holds is an indissoluble
union between man and woman.