How the Vatican Declaration, Fiducia Supplicans, Uses Four Fallacies to Justify Blessing a Sinful Relationship

To understand better the action of the homosexual movement inside the Church, we are publishing excerpts from the recently published book, The Breached Dam: The Fiducia Supplicans Surrender to the Homosexual Movement. Authors José Antonio Ureta and Julio Loredo discuss the terrible process leading up to the release of the Vatican document Fiducia Supplicans, which allows priestly blessings to those in irregular or homosexual relationships. The following text describes the four arguments used to justify blessings for homosexual partnerships.

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The 2023 Vatican document Fiducia supplicans admits “the possibility of blessings for couples in irregular situations and for couples of the same sex, the form of which should not be fixed ritually by ecclesial authorities to avoid producing confusion with the blessing proper to the Sacrament of Marriage” (no. 31).¹

Blessings that Violate the Gospels’ Clear Intent

Moreover, Fiducia supplicans also explicitly recognizes that traditional teaching only allows for blessings of “things, places, or circumstances that do not contradict the law or the spirit of the Gospel.”

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The document even follows an earlier statement that said such blessings were impossible. In March 2021, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then headed by Spanish Cardinal Luis Ladaria, had peremptorily condemned such blessings in response to this dubium from a bishop: “Does the Church have the power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex?” The Responsum emphatically stated, “Negative.” “When a blessing is invoked on particular human relationships, in addition to the right intention of those who participate, it is necessary that what is blessed be objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace, according to the designs of God inscribed in creation, and fully revealed by Christ the Lord.”²

A Shocking Reversal

How is it possible that, just two and a half years later, the prefect of that same dicastery says precisely the opposite, and with Pope Francis’s signature?

While explicitly recognizing that traditional teaching only allows for blessings of “things, places, or circumstances that do not contradict the law or the spirit of the Gospel” (no. 10, citing the Rituale Romanum), in Fiducia supplicans, However, Cardinal Victor Emanuel Fernández uses four fallacious arguments to justify blessing a sinful relationship.

First, he claims that Pope Francis has broadened the theological-pastoral concept of blessing, creating a new category called “pastoral blessing,” which, like “liturgical blessings,” would not require a “prior moral perfection” of the person requesting it.

The fallacy lies in implying that traditional “liturgical blessings” would require such perfection when, in reality, the Church never required it or even the state of grace. For example, at the end of Mass, the priest blesses all those present, some of whom may be in mortal sin. Furthermore, blessings fall into the theological category of sacramentals. All treatises on Moral Theology teach that sacramentals, such as ashes or holy water, can be given even to non-Catholics if they ask for them with a good disposition.

Get the book now! The Breached Dam: The Fiducia Supplicans Surrender to the Homosexual Movement is now available for $10.95.
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Second, Fiducia supplicans claims that blessing premarital, adulterous, and homosexual pairs would not be blessing sinful unions because “there is no intention to legitimize anything” (no. 40). The fallacy lies in trying to distinguish the pair from the union when what makes them a pseudo-couple is what unites them—in this case, community of life. This is even clearer in the third fallacy, where their “relationship” is explicitly mentioned.

Can Objectively Sinful Acts Have Positive Aspects?

Third, the document insinuates that what the premarital, adulterous, or homosexual pair is asking for is only that the “positive” aspects of their union be blessed. It references individuals who “do not claim a legitimation of their own status, but who beg that all that is true, good, and humanly valid in their lives and their relationships be enriched, healed, and elevated by the presence of the Holy Spirit” (no. 31). Here, the fallacy lies in pretending that, in a relationship that claims to be conjugal, the different aspects of the community of life can be separated into watertight compartments, some positive and others negative. In reality, even what some might consider positive elements (e.g., affection, fidelity, and mutual support) contribute to maintaining the sinful relationship, hinder conversion, and the dissolution of the sinful union. The more “positive” such aspects appear to be, the more they constitute near occasions of sin, if not the very foundation for the structure of sin ensnaring these two individuals.

The fourth fallacy is trying to separate the Church’s pastoral action from her doctrine, as if they obeyed two independent and contradictory logics: “The Church, moreover, must shy away from resting its pastoral praxis on the fixed nature of certain doctrinal or disciplinary schemes” (no. 25). “God’s merciful embrace and the Church’s motherhood” (no. 19) should take into account that “we are more important to God than all the sins we can commit” (no. 27). This disregard for the evil of sin and its consequences—which can be the eternal fires of hell!—begs the question: Why did Jesus die on the Cross to redeem us? Why did He say to the adulterous woman: “Go, and now sin no more”? (John 8:11)?

“Blessings” that Violate the Sixth Commandment

The last subterfuge is to pretend that priests from whom such “pastoral blessings” are requested would respect the restrictions imposed in their concrete applications. The most flagrant case of disrespect occurred in the diocese of Maldonado, Uruguay, where two well-known television personalities received the blessing of the diocese’s vicar general during a party with four hundred guests after celebrating their civil “marriage.” This Vatican document’s application was all the more scandalous because the details were agreed between the beneficiaries and the local bishop after the latter obtained the apostolic nuncio’s consent.³

Get the book now! The Breached Dam: The Fiducia Supplicans Surrender to the Homosexual Movement is now available for $10.95.
Click here to get your copy now.

For all these reasons, Fiducia supplicans represents a break with the Church’s traditional teaching on the Sixth Commandment, the intrinsically sinful nature of any use of the sexual faculties outside marriage, and the scandal that premarital, adulterous, and homosexual relationships and unions represent for the faithful and society.

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