(LifeSiteNews) — Controversy is now swirling worldwide due to the recent Vatican declaration Fiducia Supplicans, which seeks to provide an “innovative” pastoral “blessing” for “couples” of the same sex. As always, we need to seek the mind of the Church for clarity and, most crucially, for continuity of Church teaching.
Fortunately, the Church has authoritative guidance from Pope St. John Paul II that dispels confusion and directly defines the meaning of the term “couple.”
With the utmost clarity, Pope St. John Paul II carefully instructs that “difference of sex” is “essential” to the very “definition” of couple. [1]
In his post-synodal apostolic exhortation of June 28, 2003, Pope St. John Paul II warns of this attempt to manipulate the meaning of the word “couple.” He writes, in Ecclesia in Europa, that “attempts are made to accept a definition of the couple in which difference of sex is not considered essential.” [2]
The Church teaches that “difference of sex” is necessary for a couple to be a couple.
With St. John Paul II, we understand the straightforward and natural meaning of the word couple. For example, two train cars that are not “different of sex” cannot “couple,” and one will not pull another without the differences that make them complementary. For theological truth to be properly expressed, using the correct meaning of words is not optional but necessary.
Why? As St. John Paul II wrote in Ecclesia in Europa, many cultural, political, and social factors that are in direct opposition to the Church are working to misrepresent truth. He noted the “increasingly evident crisis of the family,” which is, in fact, caused by such dangerous distortions of the faithful’s perception of reality. [3]
Amazingly, however, this very “attempt” to distort truth that Pope St. John Paul II forbade has now just been promulgated in an official document of the Vatican by Pope Francis.
If we take Pope Francis at his word, his new document intends to bring “innovation” and “real development” of doctrine. [4] Not surprisingly, Fiducia Supplicans has sent a shock wave through the Church and has been described by bishops and theologians as “scandalous” and “blasphemous” but also as being “self-contradictory.”
READ: Cardinal Müller tells Pope Francis: Blessing homosexual couples is ‘impossible’ and ‘blasphemy’
As Pope St. John Paul II explained it would, Pope Francis’s “innovation” is causing mass confusion both for the Church and the world.
And yet we look to the Vatican to provide truth and clarity and context that is at least consistent with her own teachings.
Therefore, we must ask, how could it be possible for Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, who wrote the new document that Francis approved, to be simply unaware of the essential and theological definition of “couples” that the Church teaches and Saint John Paul II explained? Was Cardinal Fernández not rather purposely “developing” and “innovating” doctrine as he claimed?
But no matter how you look at it, Cardinal Fernández did exactly what Pope St. John Paul II expressly said cannot be done. This is the problem.
Manipulating the word “couple” to mean the opposite of the Church’s existing teaching can’t represent an authentic development of doctrine!
Surprisingly, defenders of Cardinal Fernández’s attempt to characterize this contradiction as mere “sloppiness” or else try to claim he merely adopts a colloquial use of the word couple. But marriage is a divine institution that was raised to a sacrament by Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Catholic teaching has always been precise and provided due care and never recognized the ontological existence of such homosexual “couples” because it violates the “essential” meaning of the term which is “difference of sex.”
To the contrary, while Fiducia Supplicans is alleged to use language imprecisely, it rather precisely employs the specific definition of the word “couples” that Pope St. John Paul II tells us is incompatible with the Church’s moral teaching and reality.
Here is one direct quote from Fiducia Supplicans that purports to allow priests to bless so-called “same-sex couples”: “Within the horizon outlined here appears the possibility of blessings for couples in irregular situations and for couples of the same sex [.]” [5]
Herein, Cardinal Fernández contradicts Pope St. John Paul II. What remains important is that Cardinal Fernández cannot legitimately change the definition of the word “couple” away from its meaning.
The Church recently clearly declared only in 2021 that it cannot bless such illicit relationships and has been under renewed assault for upholding this teaching. Now, those opposed to the Church’s teachings on marriage and sexuality will certainly exploit Fiducia Supplicans.
Pope Francis furnishes his own example to activists as he aggressively promotes heretical bishops and priests such as Fr. James Martin who publicly state that they disbelieve the Church’s teachings on sexuality and marriage. Clergy are now defenseless, and parishes will certainly be disrupted. The crisis in the Church will dramatically worsen unless something is done to correct this error of using the word “couple” in a sense contrary to Church teaching and thereby remove the scandal of Fiducia Supplicans.
READ: Priest to Pope Francis: ‘You are hurting my parish’ by promoting homosexuality
Those who remain faithful to the teachings of Christ and His Church must resist. We need to stand our ground and valiantly defend Church teaching, knowing, as Pope St. John Paul II taught, that only truth will stand firm.
[1] Pope St. John Paul II, Ecclesia in Europa §90.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Víctor Manuel Fernández, Fiducia Supplicans §3.
[5] Ibid, §31.