Catholics of goodwill, Catholics who love your faith, Catholics who love the Church and want to see the Church flourish, this article is for you because there has been a lot of confusion out there in the world today regarding Pope Francis, “same-sex blessings,” and a lot of things that just are not true.
All the critics of the Church, including the regulars – Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Protestants, and Atheists, are all saying, “The Catholic Church endorses gay marriage now,” which is not true. They are saying, “The Catholic Church has changed its stance on homosexuality,” which is not true. They claim that the Catholic Church has changed its teachings and is going against the Bible. The Bible clearly speaks against homosexuality. But now, the Pope has said, “It is okay, and you can bless marriages and unions.” All of that is just false. In this article, I am going to give you actual proof of this. I think a lot of the problems are caused by misinformation and misunderstandings.
This is an outright lie. It is slander! It is wrong! There are several problems, but I just want to reiterate that the Catholic Church has not changed its teaching on marriage. Sincere Catholics, who have eyes to see and ears to hear, need to know that. I want to reiterate that the Catholic Church has not changed anything. She has upheld the perennial teaching. And again, we are going to prove that. There is actual proof in this document. We are not just explaining things away, but we actually want to dive deep in and show you actual evidence because there are a lot of people on both sides – even some priests that I respect and love! Even Cardinal Sarah and some others are confused right now, and I think there are a few different reasons for it.
People are just going to paragraph 31 from a document that was issued, Fiducia Supplicans, and saying, “See, the couples are blessed. You can bless same sex-couples now.” Now, there are many honest people who want to believe that Pope Francis and the Church are on the right track, but they have a hard time understanding the document, or they misunderstand it, or it seems to imply something different. I think there are three big reasons for why so many people are confused.
- One, because right after it came out, we had the hysteria from the worldwide media saying, “The Catholic Church has changed forever.” Now, what did that do to every person? What did that do to good Catholics? What did that do to me when I read the headlines? What did that do to most people? What the heck is going on?
Oh my God! Crisis! Damage control! Suddenly, we are listening to and believing the media. But, of course, I learned my lesson a long time ago. So, I immediately went to the original sources to look for the truth and found that the Church had not changed her teaching.
What the media says (what they want to be true) and what is actually true are often two different things. But, like tentacles coming off of a species or branches coming off of a tree, the media influences so many people. The ideas that “the Catholic Church has changed her teaching, the Catholic Church has been undermined, big news – the Catholic Church has changed everything,” became firmly fixed in the minds of people in moments. As a result, people were often reading the documents with this suspicion coloring their understanding.
This is called the hermeneutic of suspicion, or rupture. Instead of reading it through the eyes of the Church in the way they want us to understand it, we are trying to figure it out ourselves. This leads us to problem number two, which I think has contributed to this huge confusion.
- Dishonest people, but also honest people, have read the document, and they all get hung up on one paragraph, maybe two. Mainly, there is confusion about Paragraph 31. It talks about “the blessing of same-sex couples.”
Many honest people come away thinking, “Well, couples can be blessed.” I mean, that is what they have been saying. That is what the media says. That is also what some Catholic sensationalists and gas lighters, who are just like the media, have been saying. There are so many who think, “It says couples, therefore it is.”
However, they are not understanding the whole document or its context, which is absolutely imperative. Honestly, a lot of what we are doing is exactly like scripture interpretation for Protestants. I am reading the document the way I understand it. I am putting my own interpretation on it. This is the way I read it. It says couples. So, that is what it is.
However, we are not reading it from the mind of the Church and the way they want us to understand it. This is going to be so obvious in this article when we bring up the text, the other texts, the clarifications and everything Pope Francis has said recently. It just clarifies and justifies everything we have been saying here at Catholic Truth.
- The third reason for so much confusion is context. Context is key. People are not reading the context. They are reading paragraph 31 out of context – not only out of context of the document, but out of everything else as well.
It is similar to what people do to Vatican II. Those who hate it, say “Oh! the Catholic Church, it says Vatican II allows everyone to go to heaven now. Pretty much all religions are the same!” But either they have not read the documents or they are not being honest about them or they are approaching them with a hermeneutic of rupture or suspicion. This means they are reading it and already thinking that it is wrong or problematic. They are just going to find the problem, and anything that seems like a problem becomes the problem, rather than trying to understand it with the hermeneutics of continuity – the way it was meant to be understood.
This approach ignores the rest of the context which Vatican II talks about. There is only one true religion: the Catholic Church. There is only one true banquet: the Eucharistic sacrifice of the Mass. So, it contradicts what they say, but they ignore the context. People do this with the Bible too all the time. We do not understand that we not only have to read a Bible verse, but also the verses around it. And not only the verses around it, but we must read the whole chapter to gain full understanding of what that one verse is saying. This is known as the difference between the remote and immediate context. And these two are different: the proximate context and the remote context. This is the proper way of reading scripture. It is proper hermeneutics, okay? You not only read the chapter, but you have to read the entire book, because the whole theme of the book summarizes it. For instance, you also have to understand the New Testament and the Bible itself. So you cannot just take one verse. You have to take it all together to understand properly how to interpret Scripture.
The same thing goes with magisterial documents. If you are not going to bother to read Vatican II and just take a few verses out of context, then you are being dishonest. You are no better than Protestants who say, “Catholics worship Mary; Catholics worship the pope; Catholics treat Mary as a goddess.” They do not care what the documents say. They disregard what our teaching says. They read one little thing that seems suspicious, and it becomes fact. That is a huge lie and a big problem! As Catholics, we need to do better. That is of Satan. We need to be honest and open. I beg Catholics to be convicted if necessary. Sometimes, I need to be.
Moreover, words have meaning, and we cannot just ignore what the Church means by the words she chooses. We cannot just read paragraph 31 and ignore paragraph 11, paragraph 5, or the rest of the document. We cannot ignore the Responsum from 2021, the clarifications from Cardinal Fernandez, or everything else because we just want Pope Francis to be wrong. That is evil! That is pope-splaining in reverse.
If you just assume it is wrong, then you are going to find every explanation for why it is wrong. This shows you do not care about the facts. We need to do better. Thankfully, many Catholics are reading and studying the documents and the clarifications, and they are doing good. They are seeing it for what it is.
And again, we are about to give proof in this series. But first, let me just clarify that the current document, Fiducia Supplicans, builds off and is an extension of the 2021 Responsum from Pope Francis regarding the same subject and blessings.
That was a very clear document. I am going to expose some explicit statements from it. Those are the necessary conditions and textual foundations for understanding this document. Without knowledge of that document, you are not going to understand this one. And if you do not understand the other things Pope Francis has said and his mindset on all of this, if you think he supports homosexuality, if you perceive him as a modern liberal, if you believe he is changing the teachings of the Church, if you have not read his writings on homosexuality and how he has called it a sin and unnatural and many other things, then you are going to read it in the context of your bias rather than in the appropriate context of his own truth. By his own truth, I mean the way he is intending to mean these things. Several times throughout Fiducia Supplicans, Pope Francis quotes the Responsum from 2021. Some people say, “That was a good document, but this one changed that.” No, it did not because it is literally quoting it and constantly going back to it showing continuity between the two.
Read what it says in Fiducia Supplicans. In paragraph five, it quotes the Responsum of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which states, “The Church does not have the power to impart blessings on unions of persons of the same-sex.” Now, let me ask you a question. How many news sources, Catholic sensationalists, and gas lighting influencers have said, “The Catholic Church now blesses these unions?”
Everybody can bless homosexual unions. The Catholic Church blesses unions. Right? All over the news it said, “Catholics can bless unions.” All over Catholic, sensational, rad trad media, it said, “Pope Francis is okay with blessing unions.” Now, guess what? He is not. It actually says: “The Church does not have the power to bless unions.” Of what? Of same-sex couples.
That is a huge thing right there. This statement is at the beginning of the document. It is foundational for the rest of the document and is necessary to understand. It says, “The Church does not have the power to impart blessings on unions of persons of the same-sex.” In other words: we cannot bless unions. How many thousands of people are saying that we can bless same-sex unions now when it actually says we “cannot impart blessings on unions.” I wish I could scream it, but I do not think it would make a difference. And the unions of what? Same-sex couples. We have been saying this from the beginning. As we go on and read both of these documents, in parts, I am going to be giving you specific quotes. It is going to become even more obvious.
But let us back up and look at the response from 2021. I want to bring out a couple of interesting parts that need to be known. “People either do not know, have ignored, or are reading it from a dishonest point,” as Pope Francis himself said. Many people wonder why this document was even necessary. This document is actually the first response to the German Bishops who want same-sex weddings and same-sex marriages and want to be able to bless all of that sin. It is saying: “No, you cannot bless sin.” Secondly, it says: “Those who manifest a homosexual orientation can receive the assistance they need to understand and fully carry out God’s will in their lives.”
Wow! How many thousands of Catholics and news media sources have said that “The intention of this document was to bless sin. The Catholic Church is now endorsing mortal sin!” Except that, it literally says the opposite many times. So, these people are being extremely dishonest. This is just one example from many news sources. People of other religions just do not understand. The document says, “It (a blessing) is to help them, to assist them to understand God’s will and to fully carry out God’s will in their lives.” What is God’s will for us? It is to give up our sin and not live according to our sin. Rather, we are to live according to virtue, the teachings of the Church, and the commandments of God.
And this has been brought out and said over and over again. Even Pope Francis and Cardinal Fernandez have said, “This has been ad nauseam.” It has been repeatedly stated in these documents that we cannot bless sin, and we are calling people out of their sin. Yet, what do some Catholics say? That the Church is blessing sin now! What does the secular media say? That the Church is blessing sin now; it is okay. But, what does the document itself say? It is not okay. The opposite. This is why I want to bring out what the actual text says because we need to clear up this confusion. There is just so much demonic spewing from the gates of hell through people who are sowing this division in the Church. That is why I want to counter that with actual truth and share what the documents really say. I know that every Catholic out there, with ears to hear, will hear this and understand it.
