After pushback by some bishops in Africa, Poland and elsewhere, the Vatican on Thursday defended the recent move by Pope Francis to allow blessings for same-sex couples, insisting there is nothing “heretical” involved.
In a five-page statement, the Holy See’s office to safeguard doctrinal orthodoxy expressed understanding that some bishops’ conferences need more time for “pastoral reflection” on the pontiff’s formal approval for such blessings.
But “there is no room to distance ourselves doctrinally” from the Declaration about the blessings “or to consider it heretical, contrary to the Tradition of the Church or blasphemous,’’ said the statement by the office, formally called the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The new rule of blessings came last month in the form of a declaration, an important Catholic church document.
Look, the doctrine of papal infallibility means that by definition this is anything but heretical, and any who don’t like it can go and form their own church with blackjack and hookers.
Yeah this is one thing that’s been irritating me.
I had friends in highschool who were catholic, one even got about 75% toward being a priest, and they always said whatever the pope says is catholic “law” (not their word, but I can’t remember the words they said exactly)
Now suddenly the pope can be wrong? What changed? The bible certainly didn’t…
They were idiots? I’m older than most of y’all and Catholic School always taught that the Pope is infallible in matters of doctrine. If your friends only listened to the first half, that’s on them
Papal infallibility only applies when he speaks ex cathedra, this is, explicitely defining doctrine, which wasn’t the case here. Read more.
Regardless, if you want an actual unfallible argument as for why homosexual unions should not be denied blessings on the basis of them being gay, is that it takes a bigoted moron to oppose gay marriage. No need to cater to delusions that are only given value when they reaffirm preexisting bigotry.
I am not an expert on this stuff but I thought it wasn’t anything he said it is only if he says the magic phrase before saying something.
So if you bless a same-sex couple you just have to say ‘no heresy’ afterwards???
Or one of the couple can say “no homo” before, I guess.
This will not lead to anything good neither for LGBTQ organizations (which simply don’t care of the Pope’s pronouncements as they never did before) nor for Christianity which is already splitting around this issue. You can’t change your mind like that if you are the head of a great institution: obviously your former followers will be confused, especially after you insisted that you held the only unchangeable truth for centuries. Personally I belong to the group of people who don’t care much about what the Pope says and do not consider him a moral reference, but I’m seeing the reaction this is having in Italy where politics, economy and religion are tightly coupled.
That’s bs. Obviously you’re welcome to choose your own path, regardless of what some guy in a white hat says, but the Catholic Church has been on a [very slow] March toward acceptance for at least the last half century. Any organization can change and evolve, and the current pope is notable for increased acceptance and compassion for all people … maybe not as quickly as most of us prefer but it can and is happening.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
ROME (AP) — After pushback by some bishops in Africa, Poland and elsewhere, the Vatican on Thursday defended the recent move by Pope Francis to allow blessings for same-sex couples, insisting there is nothing “heretical” involved.
In a five-page statement, the Holy See’s office to safeguard doctrinal orthodoxy expressed understanding that some bishops’ conferences need more time for “pastoral reflection” on the pontiff’s formal approval for such blessings.
“Prudence and attention to the ecclesial context and to the local culture could allow for different methods of application” of the new blessings rule, “but not a total or definitive denial of this path that it proposed to priests,” Thursday’s statement said.
Zambian bishops said there should be “further reflection” on the blessings and cited the country’s laws against homosexuality and its “cultural heritage” that rejects same-sex relationships as reasons for its decision.
The statement was signed off by Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, an Argentine prelate who is a theological adviser to Francis.
It concluded by saying that in some places, some “catechesis will be necessary that can help everyone to understand that these types of blessings are not an endorsement of the life led by those who request them” nor an “absolution, as these gestures are far from being a sacrament or a rite.”
The original article contains 646 words, the summary contains 213 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Who cares? Stop giving these LARPing fools any power by pretending their opinion matters more than anyone else’s.
Plenty of people obviously care. The Pope influences the lives of hundreds of millions directly and indirectly. Especially, people in power who have the ability to enact religiou -based laws that affect everything
People that buy into this shit will give up the pope long before they give up their bigotry.
The Pope turns out is not Catholic. Catholic from καθολικός “universal”.
That’s another problem to solve then. Continuing to pretend that an old piece of shit with a big hat is some kind of moral authority does everybody involved a disservice. Don’t give them power, don’t give them attention and don’t vote for their followers.
Progress is progress but keep shitting on it
As a signal to the backwards bigots of the world to be slightly less shitty once in a while, it’s great. Still shouldn’t be pretending that crusty old useless institutions have anything of value to add. No points awarded for only being a few decades behind the majority to (grudgingly) recognize the gays as fellow humans.
If you were proposing to create a crusty old institution where there previously were none, I would agree they have no value to add.
But as an imbedded institution that has centuries of built up influence - right or wrong, those institutions can add a lot of value, particularly in cases like this where they are being led someone who is progressive relative to the mainstream of said institution.
If we scoff at any progress that isn’t ‘enough’ progress, we will find it tough to find a broad base of support to eventually get to ‘enough’.
“Can add value” is a long way from “does add value” and it’s been few generations since you could say the latter about the Catholic church and religion in general. Longer if you tack on “equal to or greater than what they take” but that’s not where I set the bar up the comment chain.
It’s not admirable for them to allow themselves to be dragged, kicking and screaming, toward the minimum standard for being decent to your fellow human being. It’s disgusting that they’ve taken this long, fought this hard against it and still aren’t even close to where they ought to be.
This is what I was responding to, and I could swear you wrote it (emphasis mine):
Still shouldn’t be pretending that crusty old useless institutions have anything of value to add.
So are you even sure what point you are trying to make? You say they can’t add value, I suggest they can, and your response is that just because they can doesn’t mean they do, and…yeah? But what does that have to do with your original point? Do we need to start over?
Or I can engage on your new point. It is valuable for the Catholic Church to change their stance, and that value is not diminished by the fact that they had to, as you say, be dragged kicking and screaming. If their old view was harmful and their new view is less harmful, then that has value, and based on their reach, substantial value that could translate into a better overall quality of life for many, many people.
Whats not valuable is shitting all over anyone who wasn’t as quick to be as awesome as you are. You’re just spreading poison. No one is asking you to admire the Catholic Church, least of all me, but there is nothing at all wrong with speaking supportively about a good thing, even if it is too late and not enough.
You hate the catholic church - got it, so do I. You wish they didn’t exist, well ditto but guess what they fucking do. Complaining about their existence on a thread about them making a tiny bit of progress is just high school edgelord shit.
I’ll clarify but there’s only so much of the reading comprehension I can do for you. What they are doing now and what they have done in the past is harmful. My interpretation of the tiny little steps they’re taking toward being less awful is that they’re trying to find the minimum acceptable level of forward progress to ward off the executioner for a little while longer. No praise for this exercise in self-preservation, it’s the very least they can get away with and even then, it’s long overdue.
Well, that was a valiant attempt to establish a cohesive through-line to your various points. Let’s just chalk it up to my poor reading comprehension and let it go there. Have a good one.
