Vatican’s_Fiducia Supplicans_: Matters Arising

 BY CHRIS UCHENNA AGBEDO (PhD)

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In 1870, the First Vatican Council defined papal infallibility (as part of the Christian Faith, which derives from three sources – Scripture, History, Logic), as “when the Pope (1) intends to teach (2) by virtue of his supreme authority (3) on a matter of faith and morals (4) to the whole Church, he is preserved by the Holy Spirit from error. His teaching act is therefore called infallible and the teaching which he articulates is termed irreformable”. The foregoing was the response of Dr. Jeffrey Mirus to a question about papal infallibility addressed to him in the ‘Ask the Experts’ section of EWTN Online services. Of recent, the Catholic Pontiff had chosen to ride the crest of papal infallibility to endorse a Vatican document – ‘Declaration Fiducia Supplicans: On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings’ – as prepared, signed, dated 18 December, 2023 and presented by the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez and Secretary for the Doctrinal Section, Monsignor Amando Matteo. The Document is a Declaration, which according to the liturgy office for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, “is a papal document that can take one of three forms: (i) a simple statement of the law interpreted according to existing Church law; (ii) an authoritative declaration that requires no additional promulgation; or (iii) an extensive declaration, which modifies the law and requires additional promulgation.”

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In summary, the following bullet points are considered as major take-aways of the 4-part document: (i) It expands the pastoral meaning of blessings; clarifies Vatican’s 2021 responsum, which taught that ‘the blessing of homosexual unions cannot be considered licit;’ (ii) rather than overrule or set aside the responsum, it confirms the teaching of the Catholic Church about same-sex and other relationships that do not qualify for the sacrament of marriage; (iii) deems “inadmissible” any “rites and prayers that could create confusion between what constitutes marriage – which is the ‘exclusive stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman naturally open to the generation of children’ – and what contradicts it;” (iv) the Church does not have the power to impart blessings on unions of persons of the same sex; (v) “when the prayer of blessing is requested by a couple in an irregular situation, this blessing should never be imparted in concurrence with the ceremonies of a civil union, and not even in connection with them;” (vi) “there is no intention to legitimize anything, but rather to open one’s life to God, to ask for his help to live better, and also to invoke the Holy Spirit so that the values of the Gospel may be lived with greater faithfulness.”

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What then is the raison d’etre of the Fiducia Supplicans document if Church teachings about the sanctity of the sacrament of matrimony remain firm; the 2021 responsum’s restrictions are still in place, and same-sex unions and other irregular unions cannot be blessed? For John Bursch, the primary essence of the Vatican Document is to help Catholics “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.” From the foregoing, two things are clear: the Church has neither changed nor has it the powers to change the Bible’s beautiful teaching that marriage is between one man and one woman; the purpose of a non-liturgical blessing being advocated is not to encourage irregular relationships but to implore the individuals in those ‘irregular’ relationships to live out the Gospel more faithfully and abandon sinful choices.

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Recall that 5 Cardinals, all of them conservative prelates from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas – Walter Brandmueller (Germany), Raymond Leo Burke (USA), Juan Sandoval Iniguez (Mexico), Robert Sarah (Guinea), Joseph Zen Ze-kiun – had submitted a set of five questions or dubia to Pope Francis in July 2023, seeking explanations on the position of Catholic Church on such issues as gay marriage, women’s ordination, authority of the Pope, among others. It should be noted that the dubia may not be safely divorced from synod politics of the Catholic Church. The five cardinals who posed the dubia are some of Pope Francis’ vocal critics, all of them retired and the more doctrinaire generation of cardinals appointed by St. John Paul II or Pope Benedict XVI. Raymond Burke, whom Pope Francis axed as head of the Vatican supreme court, were among four signatories, including Walter Brandmueller (former Vatican historian), of a previous round of dubia to Pope Francis in 2016 following his controversial opening to letting divorced and civilly remarried couples receive communion. The cardinals were concerned that Pope Francis’ position violated church teaching on the indissolubility of marriage. The Pope never responded to their questions, and two of their co-signatories subsequently passed on. However, Pope Francis responded to the July 2023 inquiries of the five cardinals. Not only that the cardinals never published Pope’s reply, they found it so unsatisfactory that they reformulated their five questions, submitted them to him again and requested him to simply respond with a yes or no. When the Catholic Pontif refused to oblige them, they decided to make the text public and issue a ‘notification’ warning to the faithful. Consequently, the Vatican’s doctrine office published Pope Francis’ reply to them wherein he reiterated that marriage is a union between a man and a woman and that “other forms of union realise it only in ‘a partial and analogous way.’”

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Nonetheless, he quickly added that “pastoral charity” requires patience and understanding and that priests cannot become judges “who only deny, reject and exclude. Although there are situations that are not morally acceptable from an objective point of view, the same pastoral charity requires us not to simply treat as ‘sinners’ other people whose guilt or responsibility may be mitigated by various factors affecting subjective accountability,” Pope Francis wrote.  This response to the cardinals seemed to mark a reversal from the Vatican’s principled official position articulated in an explanatory note in 2021, wherein the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith said flat-out that the church couldn’t bless gay unions because ‘God cannot bless sin’.

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It is in the light of the response of Pope Francis to the 5 cardinals’ dubia, which called for discernment on the possibility of “forms of blessing, requested by one or more persons, that do not convey an erroneous conception of marriage” as contained in paragraph 26 that the Declaration affirms that this kind of blessing “is offered to all without requiring anything,” helping people feel that they are still blessed despite their mistakes and that “their heavenly Father continues to will their good and to hope that they will ultimately open themselves to the good.” This part constitutes the sticky point of the Fiducia Supplicans, which has tended to generate roiling controversies and a plethora of (mis)interpretations and (mis)representations.

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John Bursch partly blames the likely misuse of the Vatican Document even by the clergy to “bless unblessable unions” on its inherent shortcomings. He contends that the Document failed “to articulate that love, truth, and a call to repentance should be at the core of every individual’s interaction with the Church…” Also, the Declaration missed an opportunity when it failed to “expressly call individuals in same-sex relationships to live chaste lives in conformity with God’s plan for marriage but instead merely insists that blessings bring grace that allow such change to be possible.” Another blunder is its failure to instruct priests asked to bless the individuals in a same-sex relationship to not only bless but to teach God’s marriage plan and why it is best for human flourishing. As a result, some misinterpret the declaration as a repudiation of the responsum just as others argue that the declaration authorizes the blessing of same-sex unions, so long as the blessing does not confuse the union with a marriage, all of which represent the opposite of all that the Document stands for. The controversies find expressions in genuine concerns for cultural sensitivities, outright misrepresentations, misinterpretations, disinformation, off-cut insinuations, and conspiracy theories.

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In the subsequent parts of this discourse, I shall seek to explore the extent to which the roiling controversies since the Document’s emergence in public space are driven either by deliberate misinterpretations (amplified by mainstream western media), biased narratives of arm-chair critics and traditional adversaries of Catholicism, spin doctors, conspiracy theorists, and disinformation entrepreneurs or real abhorrence of homosexuality in peculiar African context, outright ignorance and honest misunderstanding of the spirit and letters of the Vatican Document.

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AGBEDO is a Professor of Linguistics & Director, Centre for Igbo Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka.