Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 19, 2023 / 15:30 pm
Several American Catholic dioceses have already issued statements on how they intend to implement new Vatican guidelines that permit nonliturgical pastoral blessings of homosexual couples, but it’s still unclear what this will look like in most of the country.
The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a declaration on Monday titled Fiducia Supplicans, which allows “spontaneous” pastoral blessings for “same-sex couples” and other couples in “irregular situations.”
According to the document, nonliturgical blessings are “meant for everyone” and are available for those who “do not claim a legitimation of their own status but who beg that all that is true, good, and humanly valid in their lives and their relationships be enriched, healed, and elevated by the presence of the Holy Spirit.”
The document still prohibits any sort of liturgical blessing of homosexual couples because such a blessing would “offer a form of moral legitimacy to a union that presumes to be a marriage or to an extra-marital sexual practice.” It adds that pastoral, nonliturgical blessings “should never be imparted in concurrence with the ceremonies of a civil union, and not even in connection with them” and cannot “be performed with any clothing, gestures, or words that are proper to a wedding.”