CV NEWS FEED // The bishop prelate of Moyobamba, Peru recently wrote in a letter to his diocese that Fiducia Supplicans “damages the communion of the Church” and that “blessing couples in an irregular situation and couples of the same sex is a grave abuse of the Most Holy Name of God.”
Bishop Rafael Escudero on January 2 wrote and published a letter addressing what he called “the unprecedented confusion” caused by Fiducia Supplicans, the Vatican pastoral declaration that opened the door for priests to potentially bless same-sex couples.
“This document damages the communion of the Church,” Escudero wrote:
as such blessings directly and seriously contradict Divine Revelation and the unbroken doctrine and practice of the Catholic Church, including the recent magisterium of Pope Francis, which is why there are no quotations in the entire Declaration that rely on the previous magisterium.
Escudero added that there is an underlying problem with Fiducia Supplicans which “is much more serious.” The underlying problem
is that not a few brothers in the episcopate and priests, contravening the objective morality of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, have for a long time been confusing the people of God with the indiscriminate blessing of these objectively disordered and therefore sinful unions, incurring horrendous sacrilege.
“Blessing couples in an irregular situation and couples of the same sex is a grave abuse of the Most Holy Name of God, which is invoked over an objectively sinful union of fornication, adultery, or even worse homosexual activity,” he wrote.
“The present Declaration distinguishes between liturgical blessings and pastoral blessings and allows couples, but not unions, ‘to be blessed with pastoral blessings.’ This distinction leaves us perplexed and confused,” Escudero continued:
for the act of blessing, whether performed in a liturgical assembly or privately by a minister, is still a blessing of the same nature. To bless a couple is to bless the union that exists between them; there is no logical, real way of separating one from the other. Why else would they ask for a blessing together and not separately?
Escudero also advised his congregation to “not minimize the destructive and short-sighted consequences resulting from this effort by some Church hierarchs to legitimize such blessings, in some cases with good intentions and in others, as not a few have been manifesting, with the intention of destroying the Sacred Deposit of the Church’s Tradition.”
“In view of the lack of clarity in the document, we must follow the unbroken practice of the Church to date, which is to bless all who ask for a blessing, and not couples of the same sex or couples in irregular situations,” he stated.
He explained that while in his diocese blessings for same-sex couples will not be offered as to “avoid scandal, confusion, [and] inducement to sin,” the diocese “will continue to show the mercy that the Church has always shown to every sinner who approaches her, above all, offering him conversion, forgiveness, the life of Grace and Eternal Life.”
“The Church blesses sinners, but never their sin or their sinful relationship. Our pastoral charity towards those in sinful situations obliges us to call them to conversion,” Escudero wrote:
Every sincerely repentant sinner with the firm intention to stop sinning and to put an end to his or her public sinful situation (such as, for example, living together outside a canonically valid marriage or same-sex union), can receive a blessing and even better, sacramental absolution and Holy Communion.
The bishop also encouraged for those who struggle with same-sex attraction or those living in homosexual or irregular unions
to come closer to Christ through prayer, listening to His Word, fasting, penance and the help of the Virgin Mary with a view to their conversion and to take advantage of the opportunity of conversion that God offers them for a happier life and the attainment of eternal life.
Escudero continued,
On the day of my episcopal ordination, I solemnly swore to “preserve the deposit of faith in purity and integrity, in accordance with the Tradition always and everywhere observed in the Church since the time of the Apostles”.
Therefore, I admonish the priests of the Prelature of Moyobamba not to perform any form of blessing of couples in an irregular situation or of couples of the same sex.
He concluded with an exhortation for “the priests and faithful of the Prelature to continue to cultivate their filial union with the present Pontiff of the Holy Church of God, Pope Francis, those who preceded him and those who will come. It is this communion that moves me to write these letters.”
Escudero is a Spanish bishop who arrived to the Amazonian Prelature of Moyobamba as a missionary “Fidei Donum.” His episcopal motto is “Deus Caritas Est,” which means “God is Love.”
