(LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Athanasius Schneider firmly condemned Pope Francis’ document endorsing “blessings” for same-sex couples in a statement addressed to the Polish faithful, exhorting them to “never accept such deception.”
In a written statement and video address, the Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana, Kazakhstan, encouraged Polish Catholics to “always remain faithful to the Holy Catholic faith” in the face of the heterodox document Fiducia Supplicans, which promotes the lie that same-sex couples may receive a blessing.
The bishop noted that “Even if the document says that the doctrine of the Church has not changed,” including regarding “marriage, family and sexuality,” the document nevertheless “undermines this doctrine, and in practice even denies it,” by allowing Catholic priests to bless not merely “homosexuals” but “homosexual couples.”
“This is the crux of the problem,” he argued, because for those who “still us[e] reason and logic,” “the name, meaning and gesture of blessing… means a kind of approval — if not in theory, then in practice, because the word ‘blessing’ means to ‘speak well’ about a given reality.”
Schneider said that claims that such blessings don’t “bless the relationship itself,” but only “a couple of people,” are “verbal games” that “contradict elementary logic.”
“It is not worthy of bishops and cardinals to… deceive the whole world, saying that ‘the Church has not changed its doctrine, but the priest can give in such a situation a kind of blessing,’” the bishop wrote.
He also denounced the “falsehood” and “deception” that the blessings endorsed by Fiducia Supplicans are merely “spontaneous” and “non-liturgical.”
The bishop called upon Polish Catholics to firmly reject such “lies” that contradict the Catholic doctrine that homosexual acts are always intrinsically wrong and that “homosexual relationships are in themselves a serious scandal,” since they are “contrary to the divine order of creation” and therefore a “great evil.”
“Even if someone pretends that such homosexual couples do not commit homosexual acts, it is soaping people’s eyes, no one will believe it,” Schneider wrote.
Moreover, the members of such a couple “expose themselves to a direct and permanent opportunity to commit a grave sin,” which is “already a sin” and cannot be “supported” or “blessed” even in an “ambiguous or implied” way.
Schneider concluded that Fiducia Supplicans “signals” that the Catholic Church “accept[s] homosexual couples” at least “in practice, even if not in theory.”
“We must tell our priests and bishops that we cannot accept this document” and pray that Francis will “revoke” it “as soon as possible,” implored the prelate, adding that this “will be our sign of… true love for the Pope.”
He reminded Catholics that St. Paul, in a Letter to the Galatians, exhorted Christians to reject any alternative Gospels, even if preached by an “angel from heaven.”
Therefore, when “documents come from Rome that clearly undermine… the Gospel, we will not accept it,” Schneider wrote.
He stressed that while the Church’s “enemies have penetrated very deeply… [into] the highest positions” in the Vatican, neither the Church nor the Holy See can be defeated, because they were “established by God, who sometimes allows for temporary confusion and confusion even in the See of Peter.”
The bishop urged Catholics not to “look for” their “own ways” or establish their own “church” or “sect.”
“Even if you are persecuted [because of] the Traditional Latin Mass… look for good bishops who will accept you, even if they are retired bishops,” he wrote.
“Offer your prayers to the Lord, make acts of penance, atonement for all sins in the Church against the Catholic faith; sins that cardinals, bishops, priests and even the Holy See commit in these times,” the faithful prelate exhorted.
“I also ask you to start praying every day right now, with humility and confidence, that God will bestow on us the era of many holy popes and repeat every day: ‘I believe in one Catholic Apostolic Faith.’ For this task I give you a blessing:
Et benedíctio Dei omnipoténtis, Patris, et Fílii, et Spíritus Sancti, descéndat super vos et máneat semper. Amen.”
After the release of Fiducia Supplicans, Bishop Schneider, together with the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana, Kazakhstan, banned priests in the archdiocese from allowing any forms of “blessings” for “irregular” or homosexual couples.
“To bless couples in an irregular situation and same-sex couples is a serious abuse of the most Holy Name of God,” they explained, “since this name is invoked upon an objectively sinful union of adultery or of homosexual activity.”
“None, not even the most beautiful, of the statements contained in this Declaration of the Holy See can minimize the far-reaching and destructive consequences resulting from this effort to legitimize such blessings,” they declared.
Only a “sincerely repentant sinner with the firm intention to no longer sin and to put an end to his public sinful situation (such as, e.g., cohabitation outside of a canonically valid marriage, union between people of the same sex) can receive a blessing,” the prelates wrote.