Is Pope Francis’s halfhearted approval of same-sex couples a blessing or a curse?

Pope Francis has approved blessings of same-sex unions. The new stance of the Catholic Church was issued December 18, 2023, by the Vatican’s office of the Doctrine of the Faith and signed by Pope Francis (the Church also blesses animals and battleships).

While some Catholics see this move as a “radical” advancement in Church policy, the declaration does not change “the traditional doctrine of the church about marriage,” stated Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the office of the Doctrine of the Faith. He explained that there is no alteration in the liturgy that relates to the marriage sacrament, which bestows marriage only between a man and a woman.

Related:

This LGBTQ+ Catholic leader met Pope Francis & believes there is hope for full acceptance

“Many church leaders have realized that our Church must change to survive in today’s world,” said Marianne Duddy-Burke after meeting with Pope Francis.

Referring to the declaration, “Fiducia Supplicans, On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings,” Cardinal Fernández stated: “It is precisely in this context that one can understand the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage.”

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Seen in the larger context of Pope Francis and the Catholic Church’s stance on same-sex couples and trans people, how much of a “radical” change is this “blessing”?

Pope Francis opined in an October 2020 documentary that same-sex couples should have the right to civil unions: “Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family,” said the Pope in the film. “They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it.”

“What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered,” he added. “I stood up for that.”

Many LGBTQ+ activists like myself find civil unions, which we refer to as “marriage light,” as a form of second-class status.

The Pope has previously made himself quite clear where he stands on “real” and “true” marriage. In a 2017 book, he stated: “Marriage between people of the same sex? ‘Marriage’ is a historical word. Always in humanity, and not only within the Church, it’s between a man and a woman… we cannot change that. This is the nature of things. This is how they are. Let’s call them ‘civil unions.’”

In a 2014 interview published in Corriere della Sera, an Italian daily, the pontiff suggested the Catholic Church could tolerate some types of same-sex civil unions as a practical measure to guarantee property rights and health care.

Speaking at an impromptu news conference as a relatively new Pope aboard his papal jet on July 29, 2013, he responded to a question about gay priests: “If someone is gay, and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”

Who indeed! Either he lied at the time, or he was being ironic. Because he has negatively judged LGBTQ+ people throughout his tenure.

“The Gift of the Priestly Vocation,” a 2016 Vatican statement on the ordination of priests, states: “[T]he Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to seminary or holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies, or support the so-called ‘gay culture.’ Such persons, in fact, find themselves in a situation that gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women. One must in no way overlook the negative consequences that can derive from the ordination of persons with deep-seated homosexual tendencies.”

Is this really his impression of “profound respect”? Is that anything but a toxic judgment? Is it not a fortification of an already existing condemnation?

The Pope also changed his mind on civil unions. The Vatican’s doctrine-enforcing agency, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in March of 2021 stated emphatically that Catholic clergy do not have the authority to bless same-sex unions.

Previously, the Vatican hierarchy locked out Alex Salinas, a 21-year-old transman from Cadiz, Spain, by informing him that it had denied his request to become the godparent of his nephew because being transgender is incongruent with Catholic teaching.

According to the Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Transgender status “reveals in a public way an attitude opposite to the moral imperative of solving the problem of sexual identity according to the truth of one’s own sexuality. Therefore, it is evident that this person does not possess the requirement of leading a life according to the faith and in the position of godfather and is therefore unable to be admitted to the position of godfather or godmother.”

The Vatican asserted that there is “no discrimination toward [Salinas], but only the recognition of an objective lack of the requirements, which by their nature are necessary to assume the ecclesial responsibility of being a godfather.”

The Church’s doctrinal office somewhat altered its previous stances on transgender Catholics in November 2023, stating that under particular circumstances, they may receive baptism and serve as godparents “even if they have undergone hormone therapy and sex-reassignment surgery…”

This decision comes with a condition, which is not fully explained or defined and seems only to relate to trans Catholics: Trans people can be godparents “if there are no situations in which there is a risk of generating a public scandal or confusion among the faithful.”

Regarding same-sex sexuality, Pope Francis doesn’t merely support but publicly buttresses a wall of separation.

The Roman Catholic Church Catechism 2357 states: “Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are gravely disordered. They are contrary to natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of love [i.e., children]. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

“Gravely disordered” in this passage refers to the act of same-sex intimacy while not necessarily referring to the person or people involved, the old “we hate the sin but love the sinner” sleight-of-hand.

Individuals within the Church who cannot or will not suppress their true sexuality are tolerated if they are able and willing to scale the unreasonable and inhumane heights of the Catholic ramparts by following Roman Catholic Church Catechism 2359: “Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.”

At a 2014 Vatican conference on so-called “traditional marriage,” Pope Francis argued that marriage is between a man and a woman and that “[t]his complementarity is at the root of marriage and family.”

He added that this union between a man and a woman is “an anthropological fact…that cannot be qualified based on ideological notions or concepts important only at one time in history.”

He also asserted in 2014: “Children have the right to grow up in a family with a father and mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child’s development and emotional maturity.”

Francis reinforced his Church-imposed wall in front of more than 1,000 families in the Philippines during a 2015 trip when he warned: “The family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life.”

These forces, he said, are attempting the “ideological colonization of the family.” Among other forces, this was also a reference to marriage for same-sex couples.

In 2015, the Pope demeaned LGBTQ+ people at another weekly Vatican audience when he gave his unqualified blessing to a Slovakian referendum outlawing same-sex unions and adoption rights for same-sex couples.

He proclaimed: “I greet the pilgrims from Slovakia and, through them, I wish to express my appreciation to the entire Slovak church, encouraging everyone to continue their efforts in defense of the family, the vital cell of society.”

So the Pope has hardened and extended the already unfathomable Catholic walls by denying LGBTQ+ people (his “children”) the rights of full marriage, civil unions, and adoption, as well as denying them the right to their sexualities and gender identities. He has denied them the benefits, privileges, and responsibilities of legalized partnerships and families; has denied them the right to be godparents; and continues to prohibit them from the priesthood.

Does his recent Church “blessing” of same-sex couples send a positive message, a statement about the intransigence of Church dogma, or can it be seen as something more cynical?

Can it be merely Pope Francis’ attempt to attract more Catholic conservatives into increasingly emptied pews and to donate desperately needed funds into dwindling Church coffers after paying out millions – including public tax dollars from the recent U.S. Covid stimulus payments – to victims of priestly sexual abuse?

While some may call the Pope’s denial of marriage and civil unions as reinscribing “traditional” Church teaching, its meaning is clearly to keep the institution entrenched in the 15th century, where it has remained frozen.  

Francis and his Church have restrained the human and civil rights of LGBTQ+ people. The Catholic Church constructs barriers while using doublespeak, saying “We love you, we welcome you, we offer you ‘Christian love,” and “We are here to help you change your unwanted attractions and gender identities and expressions,” which by the way, we believe are “gravely and intrinsically disordered” and incongruent with Catholic teaching.

Is denying any individual their subjectivity and agency true love? Or is it, rather, cruelty, discrimination, and, yes, abuse and oppression?

All we have to look forward to from the Catholic Church is the same ol’ barriers –probably for the next millennium or so. But by then, humanity will overpopulate itself into extinction through the Church’s ban on contraceptives and denial of women’s reproductive freedoms.