The Vatican’s declaration permitting Catholic priests to give non-liturgical blessings to couples in same-sex or other irregular situations, has sparked international reaction, both positive and negative. However, implementing the document’s intended understanding of its contents among Catholics — particularly for those living in an increasingly less religious society — requires intentional catechesis explaining its finer theological and pastoral points.
“Fiducia Supplicans” (“Supplicating Trust”), subtitled “On the pastoral meaning of blessings,” was approved by Pope Francis during a Dec. 18 audience with Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The document was published on the Vatican’s website in Italian, English, Spanish, French and German. Two thirds of its 31 footnotes draw on previous writings and catechesis by Pope Francis, with almost one third drawing from his July 2023 response to questions from Cardinal Raymond L. Burke and Cardinal Walter Brandmüller on the validity of the “widespread practice of blessing same-sex unions.”
Cardinal Fernández said in his introductory note that the dicastery had repeatedly received questions over the past few years about priestly blessings for same-sex and other unmarried couples. The declaration provides “new clarifications” of the February 2021 “Responsum ad dubium” his office had issued on the question under its former prefect, Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer.
The 2021 document ruled such blessings as inadmissible for both same-sex and unmarried couples “that involve sexual activity outside of marriage,” since “they would constitute a certain imitation or analogue” of the sacramental marriage blessing and thereby acknowledge the unions as licit. However, the response did not preclude “blessings given to individual persons with homosexual inclinations, who manifest the will to live in fidelity to the revealed plans of God as proposed by Church teaching.”
Here’s how the new declaration — just over 5,600 words in its English translation — drills down on the pastoral nature of blessings with respect to Pope Francis’ pastoral vision, and reaches its conclusion.
— From the outset, the declaration makes clear that the Catholic Church’s understanding of marriage has not changed.
The text explicitly states in multiple places that “the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage” — defined as the “exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to the generation of children” — remains firm. Such assertions are found in 18 sentences, from the document’s initial section through paragraphs 4-6, 11, 26, 31, 38 and 39.
The document further emphasizes the difference between sacramental marriage and “irregular situations,” including “same-sex couples,” in some 14 places (paragraphs 4-6, 11, 26, 27, 30, 31, 38 and 39).
With respect to blessing such couples, in paragraph 4, the text states that “rites and prayers that could create confusion between what constitutes marriage … and what contradicts it are inadmissible.”
–The text states that the church’s pastoral understanding of blessings has been expanded, offering a means of blessing same-sex and irregular couples without sacramentally validating their relationships.
Most of the document explores the nature of blessings, which it describes as “among the most widespread and evolving sacramentals” (paragraph 8). Through “a broadening and enrichment of the classical understanding of blessings,” the document extends “the pastoral vision of Pope Francis” to offer “a real development from what has been said about blessings in the Magisterium and the official texts of the Church.”
That context, in turn, permits understanding “the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage.”
–Specifically, the document distinguishes between liturgical and non-liturgical blessings, and between their theological and pastoral dimensions.
Blessings are defined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church as “sacramentals,” which unlike sacraments do not confer the grace of the Holy Spirit but rather “prepare us to receive grace and dispose us to cooperate with it” (No. 1670).
The document notes that “when a blessing is invoked on certain human relationships by a special liturgical rite, it is necessary that what is blessed corresponds with God’s designs written in creation and fully revealed by Christ the Lord” (paragraph 11). As a result, the same passage states “the Church does not have the power to confer its liturgical blessing when that would somehow offer a form of moral legitimacy to a union that presumes to be a marriage or to an extra-marital sexual practice.”
At the same time, the document states that “one must also avoid the risk of reducing the meaning of blessings to this point of view alone, for it would lead us to expect the same moral conditions for a simple blessing that are called for in the reception of the sacraments” (paragraph 12).
The text considers blessings in a non-liturgical context, drawing on Scripture to highlight them as “the divine gift that ‘descends,’ the human thanksgiving that ‘ascends,’ and the blessing imparted by man that ‘extends’ toward others” (paragraph 17).
Asking for a blessing shows that one is “in need of God’s saving presence,” and seeking a blessing from the church acknowledges that “the life of the church springs from the womb of God’s mercy,” the document states (paragraph 20).
Quoting a December 2020 catechesis by Pope Francis on blessing, the document states that from a pastoral care perspective, blessings should be centered on an understanding that “it is God who blesses,” and that “we are more important to God than all the sins we can commit because he is father, he is mother, he is pure love, he has blessed us forever. And he will never stop blessing us.”
This provides the context for understanding that “when people ask for a blessing, an exhaustive moral analysis should not be placed as a precondition for conferring it. … Those seeking a blessing should not be required to have prior moral perfection” (paragraph 25).
— The text makes clear that any blessings given to couples in irregular situations, including those of the same-sex, should not be ritualized or stylized to invoke the sacrament of matrimony.
The document rules out any type of fixed, official blessing rite (paragraph 31), and it also states that such blessings “should never be imparted in concurrence with the ceremonies of a civil union, and not even in connection with them” (paragraph 39).
In addition, the same passage says, the blessing of irregular unions cannot “be performed with any clothing, gestures, or words that are proper to a wedding.”
Instead, the blessing should be sought by those who “do not claim a legitimation of their own status” but “beg that all that is true, good and humanly valid in their lives and their relationships be enriched, healed, and elevated by the presence of the Holy Spirit” (paragraph 31).
While “Fiducia Supplicans” is intended to offer “a specific and innovative contribution to the pastoral meaning of blessings,” the question of whether that contribution will be grasped by Catholics without a thoroughgoing catechesis is another matter, especially where religious belief and practice continue to contract.
Several Pew Research studies in recent years have indicated an overall decline in religious affiliation among U.S. residents, and a significant decline among U.S. Catholics’ belief in the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.
A 2016 Pew study found that conscience, rather than church teaching, Scripture or papal instruction, was cited by almost 75% of U.S. Catholics as the main resource for their moral decision-making.
