CV NEWS FEED // A senior Russian Orthodox bishop expressed his concerns about the Catholic Church offering blessings to same-sex couples in a recent interview, calling the blessings “misleading” and “dangerous.”
In an interview with Catholic-turned-Orthodox writer Rod Dreher, Metropolitan Hilarion of Budapest and Hungary said that he was shocked when Fiducia Supplicans first came out on December 18.
Until recently, Metropolitan Hilarion was responsible for ecumenical relations of the Russian Orthodox church, the largest among the Orthodox churches.
“We always cite the Catholic Church as a beacon of traditional Christianity—the Church which always supports the traditional Christian values and moral teaching in spite of the fact that from many different angles it is attacked for this traditionalism and stubbornness,” Hilarion told Dreher.
Hilarion said he understands that the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith did not change any teaching on marriage and human sexuality, but added that there are several implications to blessing same-sex couples.
“This is indeed a revolution, a big change, and I personally think it is a very unfortunate change because it is a trap and loophole. It gives the opportunity to those priests who want to bless homosexual couples to do [it],” Hilarion said. “Very soon it will become a big industry in the Catholic Church because it will be on demand. Such priests will be very popular in certain circles and they will practice these blessings with permission from the Vatican.”
Hilarion added that the document is “deceitful but also dangerous” because it leads many to believe that the Church condones immoral sexual behavior.
“Here the question is not about this type of blessing,” he said. “The question is about some sort of blessing which will mislead many people. It will mislead those who receive this blessing and it will also mislead those who will become—willingly or unwillingly—witnesses of that blessing because everyone will believe that now the Church blesses homosexual couples.”
Dreher said that Fiducia Supplicans will affect several other aspects of the Church, especially in the West. According to him, “Catholic” LGBTQ activists in the United States will begin targeting priests who refuse to perform same-sex blessings.
“[These priests] will become mocked, persecuted, in [their] local area for not bowing to this new theology,” Dreher said. “It’s a terrible thing the pope has done to these traditional priests.”
