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Germany’s Catholic bishops have issued new national guidelines encouraging the blessing of same-sex couples and others in non-marital relationships — a move that appears to stretch, and in some ways contradict, the Vatican’s recent teachings on the matter.
Titled “Blessings for Couples Who Love Each Other,” the document was jointly released by the German Bishops’ Conference and the Central Committee of German Catholics, a lay body officially affiliated with the Church in Germany.
According to New Ways Ministry (NWM), a Maryland-based LGBT activist organization often at odds with Catholic ethics, the document offers “practical advice” to pastors on how to bless not only same-sex couples but also “divorced and remarried couples, couples of all gender identities and sexual orientations, as well as couples who, for other reasons, do not want or cannot receive the sacrament of marriage.”
Even though the Vatican’s controversial Fiducia Supplicans declaration, released in December 2023, directed that such blessings should be spontaneous, brief, and non-liturgical, the new German guidelines encourage a structured approach.
“Appropriate Bible passages should be recited and, if necessary, interpreted, and those participating should pray and sing together with the leader,” the document advises.
It adds, “The greater spontaneity and freedom of these blessings should be combined with careful preparation.”
According to NWM, the German document stops short of establishing a liturgical rite for such blessings, which Fiducia Supplicans explicitly forbade. It instead offers a set of “valid options” for how such blessings might be carried out pastorally.
However, the emphasis on “careful preparation” stands in tension with guidance from Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, who said the blessings envisioned by Fiducia Supplicans should be “very short,” lasting only a few seconds, and should be “neither liturgical nor ritualized,” CatholicVote reported. He emphasized that such blessings are meant to be informal and pastoral, not structured or ceremonial.
Pope Francis, in a 2024 audience, offered a clarification of the document’s purpose.
“The intent of the ‘pastoral and spontaneous blessings’ is to concretely show the closeness of the Lord and the Church to all those who, finding themselves in different situations, ask for help to carry forward — sometimes to begin — a journey of faith,” the pope said.
He also said that such blessings, given outside any liturgical framework, “do not require moral perfection to be received.” According to Pope Francis, when couples in these situations request a blessing together, it is not their relationship that is being blessed, but each individual person.
