By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
The sad scandal and resulting confusion broke upon us immediately following the great joy of Gaudete Sunday and just before Christmas. Point, counterpoint. Fr. James Martin found a Santa Claus in Pope Francis and his lapdog Tucho Fernandez just in time for the gift-giving holiday: a social media photo op catching him in the act of blessing two men who have made it known that they commit unnatural sex acts with each other.
The New York Times exulted: “BREAKING NEWS — POPE FRANCIS IS LETTING PRIESTS BLESS SAME-SEX COUPLES, A MAJOR STEP IN HIS EFFORTS TO MAKE THE CHURCH MORE WELCOMING TO L.G.B.T.Q. CATHOLICS” on the morning of Monday, December 18. The short news flash elaborated: “The Vatican announced the new rule on Monday. A church official said the blessings amounted to ‘a real development’ that nevertheless did not amend ‘the traditional doctrine of the Church about marriage’.”
The new document landed like a bomb on the ecclesial landscape already shellshocked by Amoris Laetitia, abusing those many already weak in faith with more of the same weaponized ambiguity. The innovation, as the document itself describes this pastoral practice of blessing sin, is once again couched in just enough anodyne language to allow the compliant comfort addicts among the episcopal college to wiggle their way out of possibly defenestration-begging opposition.
The letter speaks unctuously and at length of obvious matters about which we are already well aware, such as the fact that any person may approach any priest at any time to ask for a blessing without previous exhaustive moral examination. No-brainer. I have gladly responded to many such requests many times over the course of more than thirty years of priesthood. I would suspect that the experience of most priests mirrors my own. One of the great joys of ordained ministry is giving generously and consistently whatever graces are in our power to confer. The most difficult burden of the priesthood, on the other hand, are those rare occasions when we must respond in the negative and do so for the salvation of the soul concerned, above every other consideration.
Truth is for everyone. Even also for the priest who would prefer a friction free coexistence with others. The priest, however, must put the needs of souls before his own. This is the great truth which the new document, Fiducia supplicans, betrays. Church officeholders in Rome are choosing a comfortable coexistence with the world which amounts to a betrayal of Christ and souls.
Bishop Strickland did not hesitate to speak out and to reiterate the truth already enunciated by the Church’s doctrinal office in 2021: The Church cannot bless sin. Thank goodness for Pope Francis that he has already deplatformed this one American bishop who cannot be counted on for compliant silence. The strategy all along, beginning with the time-bomb of a footnote in Amoris Laetitia calling for Communion for adulterers, has been to gradually ratchet up the so-called “innovations” which contradict previous teaching and count on the silent compliance of a majority of comfortable clerics while picking off the few who speak out in protest, as a warning to the others that they could be next if they don’t twist themselves into a doctrinal pretzel in order to conform to the Francis program.
Who is fooling whom here? The Germans and others have been committing sacrilege and blasphemy on their altars and calling it “Mass” or “liturgy” for some time now. So-called “same-sex marriages” are already taking place. Fr. Martin, who has been greatly enriched by book sales, speaking engagements, social media popularity and the fawning of numerous enemies of Christ, was the first to get a photo out on Twitter/X with his hands raised in the presence of two men who clearly do not want people to think they are “just friends.” Two guys who are “just friends” never ask for a blessing in tandem unless they want to suggest very unsavory thoughts about their relationship.
Pope Francis will, in effect, force the bishops’ hands with this, so he can mete out more Burke and Strickland treatments and cause more schism and division in the church. This is absolutely diabolic. Every bishop is now forced to ask himself this question: Will I remain silent this time also? National bishops’ conferences, an innovation of Vatican II, have served for many years as a yoke on individual bishops, muzzling them with the expectation that they must wait until some mole at the USCCB issues a statement in the name of all the bishops.
Such press releases are rushed out so quickly that it is highly improbable that all the bishops have been asked to weigh in beforehand. More rule by committee results, another source of ecclesial confusion and error ever since the postconciliar period.
And so, the USCCB, with the ball in their court, was forced to lob a return. They entered the dance with a mollifying verbal placebo that avoids the pink elephant in the room, while repeating the misleading verbiage of the document that nothing has changed in Church teaching. You can find the statement here: https://www.usccb.org/news/2023/statement-usccb-vaticans-document-addressing-pastoral-blessings
But the problem remains as it has for a long time, that the tactic of advancing error and contradiction of the faith has never involved changing doctrine, an impossibility. The revolution all along has been about changing practice. Change the practice, change the behavior, and you get the same result as changing doctrine: denial of the Faith in practice if not in speech.
For many years now, people who may have been baptized Catholic but who are now practical Protestants, or even heretics, describe themselves willingly as Catholics while marching up without a qualm of conscience to receive Communion at weddings and funerals. See Biden and Pelosi for two examples of such, both of whom have received a hero’s welcome in the form of a private audience with Pope Francis, reinforced for those who may have missed it with published photos.
Edward Pentin reported on Twitter/X: “With the Declaration Fiducia supplicans published today by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and approved by Pope Francis, ‘it will be possible to bless same-sex couples but without any type of ritualization or offering the impression of marriage.’ The Vatican insists that ‘doctrine does not change, and the blessing does not signify approval of the union.’ What does a blessing signify if not approval? Are we supposed to pretend we’re all down the rabbit hole now?”
Carl Olson commented, also on Twitter/X, “If it takes 5,000 words to say: Blessings can be given to individuals who ask for them with apparent sincerity and right intention. Blessings cannot be given to couples/ ‘unions’ that are not sacramentally married husband/wife. Then we have reason to suspect the worst.”
Why publish a document telling us what we already know about blessings if not to initiate an innovation that contradicts the Magisterium, which is the way Fiducia supplicans actually describes the act of blessing two individuals who present themselves precisely as unrepentant for the sin of sodomy?
Again, anyone at all can request blessings as individuals. Not rocket science. Exhaustive moral examination is not necessary, however, when it comes knowing the state of will and intention of two men who are presenting themselves for a blessing for the reason that they know their relationship cannot be the subject of the Sacrament of Marriage in the Church. Any priest who betrays himself, Christ, and the two souls in front of him, by positively affirming the precise reason why they consider themselves a twosome, should be disciplined as a moral danger to souls and a source of scandal to an already confused society.
The bishops of Malawi and the ordinary of Astana in Kazakhstan have forbidden their priests from conferring blessings on same-sex couples to avoid confusion which would scatter the flock. An archbishop in Austria has demanded his priests give such blessings to any and all who request them. Francis, the source of division, has a war on his hands whether he acknowledges it or not. It’s completely his doing and no one else’s.
Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
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