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Tuesday, December 19, 2023

Francis teaches that a Catholic blessing need not be and is not now set as liturgical in formality, but is open to the priest to express hope and blessing for the persons, not the union.

 The Pope's formal statement of blessing being a kindness and charity open and available to all out of goodwill toward those seeking and in need is online in several languages. Blessing is of such a kind of recognized action of the Church through pastoral means generally available out of abundant kindness to those honestly seeking blessing while trying to live a good and faithful life.

Roughly that. The document  explains and expands the concept of blessing being open to all of the faith.

The document also clearly distinguishes blessings and rites of "marriage" as two things expressly different within the faith and  having - 

[...] pastoral implications. It is a matter of avoiding that “something that is not marriage is being recognized as marriage.” Therefore, rites and prayers that could create confusion between what constitutes marriage—which is the “exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to the generation of children”—and what contradicts it are inadmissible. This conviction is grounded in the perennial Catholic doctrine of marriage; it is only in this context that sexual relations find their natural, proper, and fully human meaning. The Church’s doctrine on this point remains firm.

So, contraception within a man-woman indissoluble union makes it not a marriage, something less and problematic, still, (contraception being not "naturally open to the generation of children). Doctrine is unchanged in that dimension. And divorced persons under civil law in a new civil law recognized marriage remain and are within the document's term, in "irregular situations" as are Catholics practicing contraception, same sex unions, all that - i.e., in the Papal view not "married" yet if of the faith and seeking blessing, the pastoral kindness of giving blessing - with no code wording - exists in a large and generous sense.

It is not easy to write of the document, which speaks for itself, when not of the Catholic faith (nor any other beyond belief in science and a moral sense of live and let live while avoiding malicious behavior).

But the public media reaction is to note only a breakthrough of major importance to the LGBTQ+ community. In doing so, that ignores a breakthrough on contraception and second marriages in a civil sense but not recognized by the Church, where now blessing is expressly permitted. There is still the distance of "irregular situation" status, but that now is not a roadblock to "blessing."

Again, the English part of the multilingual Papal item is at this link. Effort in writing this post has been aimed at fair analysis and conclusions of things perhaps assumed within but not obviously explicit where the document is speaking for itself. Nothing disrespectful toward the Catholic faith nor toward Francis should be read into what is stated here - that is not at all the intent.

The question of the bounds set for the breakthrough is one of major importance. Yet as a breakthrough nobody should view it as lessened in significance because doctrine is not changed as much as some might wish. It is a breakthrough, and hopefully none within that faith dislike or feel scornful toward the newly reduced-to-writing teaching or have hostile feelings toward Francis for teaching in a direction he, from his position in the Church, feels an inspiration to state and clarify things to the hierarchy shepherding the faithful. (BOTTOM LINE: Don't second guess the Pope if you are Catholic. It is disrespectful.)

____________UPDATE___________

There is not only the one restatement of Catholic "marriage" doctrine early in the document. There is:

11. Basing itself on these considerations, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Explanatory Note to its 2021 Responsum recalls 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. For this reason, since the Church has always considered only those sexual relations that are lived out within marriage to be morally licit, 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. The Holy Father reiterated the substance of this Declaration in his Respuestas to the Dubia of two Cardinals.

12. 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. Such a risk requires that we broaden this perspective further. Indeed, there is the danger that a pastoral gesture that is so beloved and widespread will be subjected to too many moral prerequisites, which, under the claim of control, could overshadow the unconditional power of God’s love that forms the basis for the gesture of blessing.

 Liturgical rites and receiving the sacraments stand on established norms, left in this document unchanged, while blessings are taught as open and merciful. That seems to be the message. The degree of movement.

This update cannot avoid that contraception related Church doctrinal loosening is not a part of the document.

With six Catholic Supreme Court Justices, and no laxness upon Church doctrine regarding contraception, but rather a re-enunciation, a clear secular consideration that should concern us all is how an attack against contraception availability, morning after pill and all, may fare when civil law standards meet faith beliefs between the ears of those six who Leonard Leo got elevated to that court. 

Leave it there. But be aware. Forces may be poised to move. Yet that question is apart from the gist of what Francis has enunciated most recently. Which is a liberalizing of outlook.