Rome Newsroom, Jan 3, 2024 / 18:20 pm (CNA).
Amid significant confusion about the Vatican’s recent guidance on same-sex blessings, the document’s architect has lashed out at those advancing the most liberal interpretation: Catholic leadership in Germany.
Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) and longtime theological adviser to Pope Francis, described Fiducia Supplicans as a “clear answer” to German plans to formalize liturgical blessings for same-sex couples, a move that is explicitly forbidden by the Dec. 18 guidance.
“It is not the answer that people in two or three countries would like to have,” Fernández said of Fiducia Supplicans in a Jan. 3 interview with the German Catholic newspaper Die Tagespost. “Rather, it is a pastoral response that everyone could accept, albeit with difficulty.”
The Vatican’s guidance proposes the possibility of “spontaneous blessings” for same-sex couples and those in “irregular relations” but “without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage.” To avoid confusion, Fiducia Supplicans prohibits the promotion of formalized blessings and the use of any clothing or symbols that could give the impression of a marital blessing.
Members of the controversial German Synodal Way, a collaboration between the German Bishops’ Conference (DBK) and a powerful lay lobby (ZdK), overwhelmingly approved developing formalized ritual texts for same-sex blessings at a March 2023 assembly in Frankfurt.
Since then, several German bishops have greenlighted public blessings of same-sex couples in their dioceses. And following the publication of Fiducia Supplicans, ZdK vice president Birgit Mock said the Church in Germany would not scrap its plans to develop a formal text of same-sex blessings, despite the guidance’s prohibitions.
Fernández suggested that some German Catholics may fail to appreciate the perspectives of Catholics in other parts of the world on questions related to sexuality.
“Listening to some reflections made in the context of the German Synodal Path, it sometimes seems that a part of the world feels particularly ‘enlightened’ to understand what the other poor wretches are unable to grasp because they are closed or medieval, and then this ‘enlightened’ part naively believes that thanks to it, the whole universal Church is reformed and freed from the old schemes,” Fernández told Die Tagespost.
Similarly, the DDF head suggested that some German Catholic leaders don’t appreciate Pope Francis’ effort to maintain Church unity.
“Some German bishops do not seem to understand that a liberal or enlightened pope could not guarantee this communion among Germans, Africans, Asians, Latin Americans, Russians, and so on,” Fernández said. “A ‘pastoral’ pope, on the other hand, is able to do this,” because he preserves Church teaching while allowing it “to enter into dialogue with the concrete, often so wounded lives of the faithful.”
Fernández also directly challenged the Synodal Way’s basis for trying to radically change Church teaching and practice related to sexuality and governance, namely, the need to address the systemic causes of the sexual abuse crisis.
“To believe that in one part of the world the crisis caused by sexual abuse can be solved by decisions that are contrary to the teaching of the universal Church is, in my opinion, not even reasonably justified,” Fernández said, noting that “some non-Catholic Christian communities” with differing understandings of sexuality and authority are also plagued by problems related to sex abuse.
The publication of Fiducia Supplicans has been marked by widespread confusion and conflicting interpretations, with bishops in countries throughout Africa and Eastern Europe banning the proposed blessings in their jurisdictions, while prelates in countries like Germany have characterized the document as an affirmation of their push for change.
Wednesday’s interview was not the first time Fernández has addressed the impact of Fiducia Supplicans, including its significance for the Catholic Church in Germany.
In a Dec. 23 interview, he told The Pillar that some episcopates’ advancement of ritualized blessings of irregular couples is “inadmissible” and that “they should reformulate their proposal in that regard.”
The Argentinian also said that he is “planning a trip to Germany to have some conversations that I believe are important.”
In the Die Tagespost interview, the cardinal also discussed the Vatican’s ongoing dialogues with DBK representatives. Two have occurred already, with the next set to take place in Rome this month.
Fernández reaffirmed that discussion of changes to Church teaching on sexuality and male-only holy orders will not be on the table in further meetings, something already expressed to the DBK in an October letter from Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin. However, the DDF head suggested that “the door remains open” to discuss how reformable aspects of the issues involved “can be deepened” and possibly lead to “a pastoral development” similar to Fiducia Supplicans.
The cardinal also addressed the German Church leadership’s ongoing preparations to establish a governing “synodal council” of bishops and laity — which was forbidden by senior Vatican leadership in a January 2023 letter explicitly approved by Pope Francis.
The synodal committee laying the groundwork for the synodal council held its first meeting Nov. 10–11, though it was boycotted by four German ordinaries, while an additional four were not able to attend, citing scheduling conflicts. The DBK is set to vote on adopting the committee’s statutes at its February plenary session in Augsburg. Fernández emphasized patience in his Die Tagespost interview.
The condition of continuing dialogue between the Vatican and the DBK, he said, is that “we do not continue to make decisions that will only be discussed at further meetings.”
“We must remember that ‘time is worth more than space,’” he said, citing Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis’ 2013 apostolic exhortation that Fernández is believed to have ghostwritten. “So let’s stay calm and think about the bigger picture.”
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We read: “We must remember that ‘time is worth more than space,’” [Cardinal Fernandez] said, citing Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis’ 2013 apostolic exhortation that Fernández is believed to have ghostwritten. “So let’s stay calm and think about the bigger picture.”
And therein lies the problem…
The little Dutch boy did get the big picture, and had the sense to NOT pull his thumb out of the dike. And, the propositioned adolescent girl is smart enough to know it’s not possible to be only half pregnant. And, likewise, to offer a blessing to a pair as a “couple” (rather than individually to struggling individuals?), is already (!) to total cross the Rubicon—victimizing the universal Church to the German proposition.
As often as not, the so-called “bigger picture” is that “space is greater than time!” Meaning that word games are not enough. Yes, why not “think about THIS bigger picture?”
“Listening to some reflections made in the context of the German Synodal Path, it sometimes seems that a part of the world feels particularly ‘enlightened’ to understand what the other poor wretches are unable to grasp because they are closed or medieval, and then this ‘enlightened’ part naively believes that thanks to it, the whole universal Church is reformed and freed from the old schemes.”
Ah, yes. This is the kind of incisive, crystal-clear insight you hope always to hear from the critically important prefect of the DDF.
(Sigh.)
(Emoji face palms.)
Brineyman, count your blessings in the new year. We are being “accompanied” with the “closeness” of Cardinal 💋
You know, the way Cardinal Burke, the poor man, was recently “accompanied” by the Pope.
There is a petition originating with some five priests in Spain requesting the Holy Father, Pope Francis, to withdraw the document Fiducia supplicans. Here is the link in case anyone want to sign it:
https://chng.it/M49QzY7QTB
Well, the part about the “enlightened” self-concept of the German Church (and some others) rings true.
There is nothing clear about this except for the scandal it has created.
I have yet to determine anything in this gentleman’s work as “clear.” He is characteristically ambiguous and incoherent, except when he is clearly in contradiction to authentic Catholicism. The DDF and the faithful are poorly served by his appointment. Could anyone honestly even place him in conscience in a parish setting?
Well I’m shocked. Shocked I tell you. Who could have ever guessed that the German bishops would react that way.I hope none of them lose their apartments in Rome. %
It is interesting to highlight a connection, similar mindset and frame of heart among the adherents of the German “Synodal Way” and the so-called “Traditional Latin Mass” Movement. Both are defiant and dissenting against Pope Francis’ papal teaching and pastoral direction. It is notable that both display an implicit sense of Eurocentric colonialist white spiritual and theological entitlement of superiority (what Cardinal Fernandez called the “enlightened”) over the rest of the global Church. In the scheme of the three stage Church history (Mediterranean, European, Global), both are sort of the last vestiges of the second Church resisting the ascendancy and realization of the third Church. This second Church racist perspective of the West tends to look down on the Rest of the Catholic world as spiritually and theologically inferior that need to be dominated and taught about both the ironic erroneously conceived “Synodal Way” and the “Mass of the Ages.”
And just what “direction” would that be? To remake Our Lord’s Church into something of the world perhaps? All these things being promoted can be found in the Lutheran other Protestant communities.
Isn’t it interesting to note that the extremes meet and are alike in so many ways in both religion and politics. The continuum in reality is a circle rather than a line, much like in physics there is no such thing as a straight line.
Now that the feathers have been let out of the bag, we must scurry around trying to recover them which will prove to be impossible. What next?
Card Fernández’ sentimental appeal to make exception for the wounded diminishes appreciation of the wounds Christ suffered for us. His wounds, shedding of his precious blood are what achieved a pouring out of the Holy Spirit and grace upon Mankind. He came to us to heal our afflictions not ameliorate them.
‘Staying calm and thinking about the bigger’ picture makes no sense if that transformative healing by conversion doesn’t occur, specifically in Germany. Vatican insouciance toward the German church instead speaks to a cryptic template for the universal. It’s this that concerns the African, Hungarian, Polish, some US et al bishops.
Yadda Yadda Yadda, Tucho! The German bishops understand the ‘clear answer’ alright – as do us all!
The words of Christ on marriage, divorce, adultery are quite clear, but with Amoris, the Vatican brushed them aside. For years, German priests have been giving blessings to same sex couples, with no Vatican correction. I see no evidence that the Vatican, despite its assurances, will uphold traditional marriage with the vigor and determination it has brought to the suppression of the Latin Mass. Rest easy, Germans, nothing will happen to you as you do as you please.
Today Tucho urges us to stay calm.
Tucho may believe in J. Gil de Bidema’s method since it’s quoted in Heal Me With Your Mouth:
“On the bed,
then, I will calm you
with kisses,
which I’m sad to give you.
And thus will you sleep
pressed against me
like a sick bitch.”
In the same book, Tucho tells how two persons in (one couple) may “use each other to relieve their primary needs and to calm their nerves.”
Jesus says: “For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.”
—Luke 6:45
This “journalist” borders on a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Exposed to his reactionary “fact” reporting after Jan 6, I cancelled my NCR subscription. If he wants to write opinion, as his slippery way of authoring suggests, it would protect his soul to be open about it.