ROME — The Flemish Catholic bishops have published a guide for the accompaniment of homosexual persons including a blessing for gay couples, in apparent defiance of a Vatican directive to the contrary.
In the text, the bishops note they often receive requests for prayers for homosexual couples “to ask God to bless and perpetuate their commitment of love and faithfulness.” In response, the bishops offer a sample ritual service including a prayer of commitment by the parties themselves and another to be prayed by the community, followed by a “blessing.”
While the difference between a homosexual union and what the Church understands by sacramental marriage “must remain clear,” the bishops state, such couples deserve the total support of the faith community in their unions.
“We pray, give us strength to be faithful to each other and to deepen our commitment,” the couple is encouraged to pray. “We trust in your closeness, from your Word we want to live, given to each other forever.”
During this service, the parish community similarly asks God to make the couple’s “commitment to each other strong and loyal. Let their home be filled with understanding, tolerance, and care.”
“Let the love they share delight them and serve them in our community,” the prayer continues.
In the guide, the bishops insist on the need to stay close to gay couples “along the sometimes complex path of acknowledging, accepting, and positively experiencing their sexuality.”
“Some remain celibate. They deserve our appreciation and support,” the text states. “Others prefer to live as a couple, in lasting and faithful connection with a partner. They also deserve support in this way.”
“For this relationship, although not a church marriage, can also be a source of peace and shared happiness for those involved,” the bishops assert.
In March 2021, the Vatican’s doctrinal office (CDF) released a document declaring that the Church has no authority to bless homosexual unions, adding that God Himself “does not and cannot bless sin.”
The 2022 edition of the ‘Antwerp Pride’ Parade, part of the Antwerp Pride 2022 festivities that celebrate and support the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender oriented people and their allies, Saturday 13 August 2022 in Antwerpen, Belgium. (NICOLAS MAETERLINCK/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty)
Blessings require both “the right intention of those who participate” and “that what is blessed be objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace, according to the designs of God inscribed in creation,” declared the text, which was published with the express approval of Pope Francis.
For this reason, it is not licit to impart a blessing on relationships that involve “sexual activity outside of marriage,” it read, “as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex.”
Blessing such a union would be “to approve and encourage a choice and a way of life that cannot be recognized as objectively ordered to the revealed plans of God,” it said.
Shortly after the publication of the Vatican document, a Flemish bishop said he was “ashamed” of the Vatican’s ruling, for which he also apologized.
“I feel ashamed for my Church. I mainly feel intellectual and moral incomprehension,” wrote Antwerp Bishop Johan Bonny. “I would like to apologize to all for whom this responsum is painful and incomprehensible. Their pain for the Church is mine today.”
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, homosexual persons “are called to chastity.”
“By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection,” it states.