CV NEWS FEED // Bishop Robert Barron issued his response to mass confusion and debate over the Vatican’s approval of blessings for same-sex couples this week.
“The document released this week by the Vatican on the pastoral meaning of blessings insists that marriage is a union of one man and one woman in lifelong fidelity and openness to children,” Barron said in an official USCCB statement regarding Fiducia Supplicans.
Barron, who currently serves as chairman of the Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth for the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops (USCCB), responded to the backlash surrounding the document, saying:
The statement in no way calls for a change in the Church’s teaching regarding marriage and sexuality. In fact, it goes to great lengths to insist that, in accord with unchanging doctrine, marriage is a union of one man and one woman in lifelong fidelity and openness to children.
Since the blessings “are not liturgical in nature,” he reasoned, “they do not imply any approbation of such relationships.”
“Rather, these benedictions are informal and spontaneous, designed to call upon God’s mercy to heal, guide, and strengthen,” he continued:
Despite some misleading coverage in the press, the declaration does not constitute a ‘step’ toward ratification of same-sex marriage nor a compromising of the Church’s teaching regarding those in irregular relationships.
The bishop also noted that approval of such blessings are “very much congruent” with the character of Pope Francis’ pontificate:
Fiducia Supplicans is very much congruent with Pope Francis’s long-held conviction that those who do not live up to the full demand of the Church’s moral teaching are nevertheless loved and cherished by God and invited to accept the Lord’s offer of forgiveness.
Since the Vatican released the document on Monday, Bishops, priests, and deacons from all over the world, have rushed to further clarify the reach of the official Vatican document or, in some instances, reject blessings altogether to avoid scandal or confusion.
