The Challenge of Fiducia Supplicans

[Stella]

27. In the catechesis cited at the beginning of this Declaration, Pope Francis proposed a description of this kind of blessing that is offered to all without requiring anything. It is worth reading these words with an open heart, for they help us grasp the pastoral meaning of blessings offered without preconditions: “It is God who blesses. In the first pages of the Bible, there is a continual repetition of blessings. God blesses, but humans also give blessings, and soon it turns out that the blessing possesses a special power, which accompanies those who receive it throughout their lives, and disposes man’s heart to be changed by God. [...] So we are more important to God than all the sins we can commit because he is father, he is mother, he is pure love, he has blessed us forever. And he will never stop blessing us. It is a powerful experience to read these biblical texts of blessing in a prison or in a rehabilitation group. To make those people feel that they are still blessed, notwithstanding their serious mistakes, that their heavenly Father continues to will their good and to hope that they will ultimately open themselves to the good. Even if their closest relatives have abandoned them, because they now judge them to be irredeemable, God always sees them as his children.”[19]

So ever since the Divine Mercy dictations have been part of todays Catholic formation, it's been evident that people have been wary of believing in such a merciful God and I've had to overcome that waryiness myself as an ongoing process.

Fiducia Supplicans and the explication of non liturgical blessings of those in invalid unions, actually makes it easier to accept Gods unconditional mercy.

Would others agree with this statement?

https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/cong ... ns_en.html

[Tired]

I have a hard time buying it. I mean, in other examples where people are perhaps questioning whether there is a merciful God or whether His mercy extends to them, they are likely doing all they can to get past their sin that make them question it to begin with. This can obviously happen to people living in irregular 'unions' whether they are heterosexual or not. But often, people living in these irregular unions are actively NOT doing anything to get past their sin but continue with that sin.

[Doom]

I have a hard time buying it. I mean, in other examples where people are perhaps questioning whether there is a merciful God or whether His mercy extends to them, they are likely doing all they can to get past their sin that make them question it to begin with. This can obviously happen to people living in irregular 'unions' whether they are heterosexual or not. But often, people living in these irregular unions are actively NOT doing anything to get past their sin but continue with that sin.

Do you even understand why this document was published?

It was published as a response to the German proposal in the synodal way for a formal, liturgical blessing of gay unions, a proposal which seems to be intended to be a temporary halfway house to offering the sacrament of marriage to gay unions. Because of this, some kind of statement on the issue was necessary.

The traditional Catholic approach to pretty much ANY issue is "never deny, rarely affirm, always distinguish", and that is what this document does. It would not do to simply say that gays can never be blessed under any circumstances ever. You can't just ask priests to say to anyone asking for a blessing "you're not gay are you, if you're gay I can't bless you." Everyone can be blessed. So the question is "In what way?", and the answer is "NOT in the way the Germans are proposing, but in this more orthodox way."

There is really no other statement the Holy See could have made on this issue.

[Tired]

Do you even understand why this document was published?

I imagine you haven't seen any of my other responses to threads on this topic...

[Doom]

Is that a "yes" or a "no"? It's a simple question. I'm not really interested in debating with people who have Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome. That is why I asked the simple question.

[Stella]

I have a hard time buying it. I mean, in other examples where people are perhaps questioning whether there is a merciful God or whether His mercy extends to them, they are likely doing all they can to get past their sin that make them question it to begin with. This can obviously happen to people living in irregular 'unions' whether they are heterosexual or not. But often, people living in these irregular unions are actively NOT doing anything to get past their sin but continue with that sin.

It's not as black and white in real life and I know this conversation has been going on since at least the 80's among Priests in parishes. A person who was previously divorced and had remarried without benefit of an annulment (and there are lots of reasons for that) often having come back to Church upon having children... just can't realistically try to separate. They know the rules but are stuck wanting to be closer to God but having created a situation that would wreck lives by 'fixing' it.

Back in the day even though gay couples had to live in secret, it was also the case. A lot of gay men became Priests as a way of trying to have an alternative to marriage and that hasn't worked out well as wed now know.

Real life situations are not as black and white as you might think.