The Catholic world is atwitter this week with the news that, in July, Pope Francis responded to five dubia (official questions seeking clarification on matters of faith or morals) posed by several cardinals. Shortly after word of this transpired at the beginning of October, Cardinal Victor Fernandez—prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) and widely presumed main author of the pope’s responses—published the whole thing.
The dubia concerned topics familiar to anyone following debates within the Church: doctrinal change, the Synod on Synodality, women’s ordination, etc. But the one regarding official Church blessings for same-sex couples (to which question the DDF just two years ago delivered a “negative” response that has since been flouted in Germany and elsewhere) is getting most of the press, with news outlets around the world teasing that a major change may be close.
After outlining Catholic teaching on marriage and confirming that only a union between a man and a woman can fulfill that definition, the response says that “the Church avoids any type of rite . . . that might contradict this conviction and suggest that something that is not marriage is recognized as marriage.” It then adds that we must “discern” whether there could be a kind of blessing for same-sex couples that “does not convey a mistaken concept of marriage.”
This kind of language, though perhaps perfectly fine in a vacuum, continues a trend I’ve been noticing in Catholic commentary on same-sex unions: an emphasis on bracketing off marriage—or even more narrowly, “the sacrament of matrimony”—from such unions, whatever else we may call them.* As if the main or even the only important thing we have to do is keep the word or concept of man-woman Christian marriage separate from same-sex couplehood.
As if to say: There’s a raging debate over homosexuality and same-sex unions? As long as we don’t call them “marriages,” mission accomplished.
Why do we keep hearing variations of this line from Catholic leaders? Maybe because they find it a strategically safe place to retreat to? It keeps us on the secure home turf of religious freedom and distinctive Catholic dogma. This is just a special thing that Catholics believe, see? Please let us keep it.
But it’s such an inadequate response, from a pastoral perspective and even the strategic perspective.
From a pastoral perspective, I think, because by refusing to come out from behind the ramparts of religious doctrine, this response fails to meet people on the front lines. It is there we face the question: do same-sex relationships of the pseudo-conjugal kind (that is, marriage-like relationships: with sexual intimacy, common living, unity, fidelity, even parenting) represent morally and spiritually healthy paths to human flourishing, according to God’s commandments and the natural law? Or to put it more crisply, are they ordered to happiness?
If they are not, if same-sex mimicry of marriage (we just won’t call it marriage) doesn’t lead to flourishing, even where it may exhibit certain laudable qualities of friendship or charity, then our main concern shouldn’t be whether blessing such relationships sows confusion about marriage. Our concern should be whether those blessings harm the people who receive them. For, although the dubia response claims that the purpose of such blessings would be to ask God for help “to live better,” everybody and his cat knows that their effect, both for the persons blessed and for the watching world, would be to affirm both the union and the (ultimately unhappy) lifestyle. No doubt, for some proponents of such blessings, this is the goal.
No middle ground here. Bestowing the sacramental of ritual blessing upon same-sex couples as couples, however much you want to nuance it, will be taken as a sign of Catholic approval of their pseudo-conjugal union, and of homosexuality itself. In no universe can we reasonably say that this is actually a form of pastoral accompaniment, part of a long-term plan to lead them out of that union and toward fidelity to Catholic teaching and the correct, healthy, happy ordering of their sexuality.
From the strategic perspective, retreating to the borders of “marriage” while conceding the field of same-sex blessings might buy time and temporarily make the world like us more, but longer-term, it will only encourage those who want nothing less than full surrender from the Church.
What person in a same-sex relationship would be satisfied with the half-a-loaf solution of blessings?
How cruel and schizophrenic would it seem to persons in same-sex unions to bless those unions with one hand while withholding marriage, which alone justifies sexual activity, with the other?
What outside observer with any powers of reason would not ask why, if the Church can bless (affirm as good) same-sex relationships as seemingly marriage-like in every way, it cannot take the final step and just call them marriages?
The cognitive dissonance would be stark, people would notice, and something would have to break.
Conjugal love, which has its sole expression in marriage (CCC 2360), requires sexual complementarity. Same-sex unions aren’t parallel versions of marriage (except for the name!) or necessary accommodations for sexual minorities who are just made differently. For natural reasons stemming from our human design and revealed reasons that stretch from Eden to Calvary, the conjugal relationship—that exclusive, intimate thing that is different from friendship, different from family ties, different from universal charity—is achievable only between one man and one woman.
With all necessary gentleness and care, our defense of traditional marriage and Christian sexuality must affirm this reality. Otherwise, we will embolden the Church’s enemies and fail those who have a right to the truth with love.
*We use the expression “same-sex union“ because it is commonly heard and gets close to the point. But even that word union falsely suggests a parallel to marriage, which, unlike same-sex couplings or any other kind of human relationship, is properly and uniquely a union. The inherent spiritual complementarity of male and female persons is symbolized by and communicated through the sexual complementarity of our bodies, which in the marital act, following the vows, expresses and seals a real, indissoluble oneness.