What a fascinating development from the DDF, the former CDF, always known for its precision and clarity! On December 18, the DDF said, regarding its release that day of Fiducia supplicans, that “no further responses should be expected about possible ways to regulate details or practicalities regarding blessings of this type.” But that’s just what we got today! Five pages!
DICASTERY ISSUES CLARIFICATION OF FIDUCIA SUPPLICANS
Para 41 from the original release of Fiducia supplicans on December 18, 2023:
- 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.[26]
Yet today the DDF – Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith – released this “further response” signed by Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, prefect and Mons. Armando Matteo, Secretary for the Doctrinal Section:
DICASTERY FOR DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH CLARIFIES APPLICATION OF ‘FIDUCIA SUPPLICANS’
In a statement signed by the Cardinal prefect and the secretary, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith clarifies that ‘Fiducia supplicans’ does not change the doctrine on marriage; that bishops are able to discern the application of the document according to context; and that pastoral blessings are not comparable to liturgical and ritualized blessings. The full text of the statement is presented below.
Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith
Press release concerning the reception of Fiducia supplicans
4 January 2024
We are writing this Press Release to help clarify the reception of Fiducia supplicans, while recommending at the same time a full and calm reading of the Declaration so as to better understand its meaning and purpose.
- Doctrine
The understandable statements of some Episcopal Conferences regarding the document Fiducia supplicans have the value of highlighting the need for a more extended period of pastoral reflection. What is expressed by these Episcopal Conferences cannot be interpreted as doctrinal opposition, because the document is clear and definitive about marriage and sexuality. There are several indisputable phrases in the Declaration that leave this in no doubt:
«This Declaration remains firm on the traditional doctrine of the Church about marriage, not allowing any type of liturgical rite or blessing similar to a liturgical rite that can create confusion». One acts in these situations of couples in irregular situations «without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage» (Presentation).
«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” – 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» (4).
«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» (5).
«For this reason, since 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» (11).
Evidently, there is no room to distance ourselves doctrinally from this Declaration or to consider it heretical, contrary to the Tradition of the Church or blasphemous.
TO CONTINUE WITH FULL TEXT: Dicastery for Doctrine of the Faith clarifies application of ‘Fiducia supplicans’ – Vatican News
Joan's Rome 