re: Pope Denounces ‘Hypocrisy’ of Those Who Criticize LGBT Blessings

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Catholic priests have long blessed people in a state of mortal sin when they approach the altar at communion.

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I said above that every time a priest offers a blessing he is blessing a sinner since we all fall short of the glory of God.

Indeed, priests already have the discretion to offer pastoral blessings upon sinners so the Fiducia Supplicans was thus an extraneous declaration.

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Never before has this blessing been interpreted as blessing their mortal sins.

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And never before has the Church issued a radical declaration of this nature about those living in a state of mortal sin: the language in Fiducia Supplicans is singularly focused on “irregular” relationships and thus shifts the focus away from the sinner and towards the sinful behavior itself.

Whether you acknowledge it or not, Fiducia Supplicans is a horrifically divisive document that has unnecessarily created tremendous discord and scandal in the Church.

Pope Francis’ vitriolic attempts to address these concerns has only inflamed that situation.

Cardinal Gerhard Müller — who once headed the Vatican’s office of doctrinal affairs — has rightly argued the ambiguous language in Fiducia Supplicans is self-contradictory and raises more questions than it answers:

Efforts To Explain ‘Fiducia Supplicans’ Add To Confusion Over Document….


Q: Your Eminence, at a recent plenary of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Pope reiterated that blessings of irregular relationships should be spontaneous, non-liturgical, and not require moral perfection, that it’s about the blessing of individuals, not the union. But if this is the case, was there a need for such a document, as such individual blessings are already permitted?

A: There was no need for this document, but now the later interpretations are relativizing themselves and they are only deepening, widening the confusion. They cannot explain what the difference is between a liturgical and the private benediction. They are putting forward a nebulous connotation instead of saying what is absolutely clear in the Gospel, the word of Jesus Christ, transmitted to us in the Old and New Testament. How dare we, as the servants of Jesus Christ, make this Divine teaching unclear with mere human sophistry?

Q: Some commentators are saying this document was needed in order to stop the Church in Germany, in particular, from going ahead with full-scale, liturgical same-sex blessings, that this will help prevent such a thing from happening. What do you say to that?

A: We cannot resolve the problems around the German bishops with these diplomatic maneuvers. We must say the truth: That it is blasphemy; that it is a sin. You can betray yourself, you can betray the others, but nobody can betray God. We must say the truth, not because we are saints and the others are sinners. If I preach the Gospel, I am under the judgment of the Gospel. The preacher himself must be a model of all. He must make great efforts to give good examples, to underline the faith with the credibility of the preachers. But he has to say the word of God, which makes us free, and not to present himself as more liberal and open-minded than God, who offered his own Son for the salvation of the world.