The Vatican this week made public a 2024 letter it sent to a German bishop rejecting the German bishops’ proposal recommending that same-sex couples receive pre-set blessings, saying it contradicts the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF)-issued declaration Fiducia supplicans.
DDF prefect Cardinal Victor Fernández sent the letter to Bishop Stephan Ackermann of Trier on Nov. 18, 2024, in Italian. Fiducia supplicans, “On the pastoral meaning of blessings,” was issued in December 2023.
According to an English translation of the letter by Rorate Caeli, the cardinal explained that Bishop Ackermann had submitted, on behalf of Bishop Georg Bätzing, the then-president of the German Bishops’ Conference, a copy of a proposed handbook related to blessings. The handbook, called a Vademecum, would serve as a supplement to “Benedictions for Couples Who Love Each Other,” according to Cardinal Fernández’s letter. He noted that the bishop indicated that the Vademecum would soon be presented to the German bishops to offer them a practical application of Fiducia supplicans.
However, Cardinal Fernández continued by offering several critiques of the Vademecum and how it contradicts Fiducia supplicans.
In the Fiducia supplicans, it states that the Church cannot give a liturgical blessing when this “could offer a form of moral legitimization to a union that presumes to be a marriage or to an extra-marital sexual practice,” he explained. Further, the declaration states that in a spontaneous blessing “one does not intend to legitimize anything, but simply to open one's life to God” nor to “sanction” anything but “only to ask for God's help ‘to live better’” and to ask for the Holy Spirit’s intercession to live out the Gospel more fully.
“In the text of the Vademecum, however, there is mention of a union and an ‘official regulation,’ on the part of pastors, of couples who are outside of marriage, with those pastors also becoming the object of a genuine ‘acclamation,’ a gesture that is normally part of the marriage ritual,” Cardinal Fernández continued. “In this sense, the Vademecum effectively legitimizes the status of such couples, in a manner contrary to what is affirmed in Fiducia supplicans.”
>> Pope Leo rejects German cardinal’s formalized blessings for people in same-sex unions <<
Cardinal Fernández then observed that the declaration outlines that blessings for non-married couples must be distinct from the form of sacramental blessings, a point the Vademecum appears to contradict by offering a recommended pre-set blessing.
“The Declaration Fiducia supplicans, insofar as it concerns the possibility of blessing extra-marital couples, does not allow for any type of liturgical rite or forms of blessings similar to sacramentals that could create confusion, affirming that ‘the form must not find any ritual fixation on the part of ecclesial authorities’, and avoiding that such rites ‘become a liturgical or semi-liturgical act, similar to a sacrament,’” he wrote, quoting the document. “‘For this reason, a ritual for the blessing of couples in an irregular situation should neither be promoted nor provided.’”
“Instead,” he continued, “in the text of the Vademecum, even though there is initially mention of ‘spontaneity and freedom’ regarding blessings conferred on same-sex couples — suggesting that these should not be institutionalized through ritual forms — a pre-set form is then offered for their implementation, contradicting what was stated earlier.”
He provided an example from the text of the Vademecum, citing the document’s final section, titled “Form.”
In this section, he wrote, “after affirming that ‘the manner in which the blessing is carried out, the location, the aesthetics of the whole, including the music and the singing, must bear witness to the appreciation of the persons requesting the blessing,’ a kind of liturgy or para-liturgy is prescribed for the blessing of same-sex couples.”
The cardinal concluded by writing: “All of this is communicated for every good purpose.”
The letter’s publication comes weeks after German Cardinal Reinhard Marx shared his plan to implement formal blessing guidelines in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. Zeale News reported that “the guide outlines structured approaches for blessing divorced and remarried individuals, people in same-sex relationships, and others who have not entered sacramental marriage.”
When asked April 23 by a journalist about Cardinal Marx’s guideline, Pope Leo reiterated the Vatican’s stance on such blessings.
The Holy See “has made it clear that we do not agree with the formalized blessing of couples, in this case, ‘homosexual couples,’ as you asked,” Pope Leo said, “or couples in irregular situations, beyond what was specifically, if you will, allowed for by Pope Francis in saying all people receive blessings.”