By Their Fruits
The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued the Declaration Fiducia supplicans (FS), which says it’s possible to give “non-liturgical blessings” to people in “irregular relationships” (divorced and remarried, living together, same-sex “couples”), on December 18, 2023. The very next day, a photograph of Fr. James Martin, S.J. blessing a same-sex “couple,” who had been civilly married some time earlier, appeared in the New York Times, though the document had warned against that kind of public attention. Ten days later, Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie, who “identifies as Catholic” and was once a stout defender of marriage, cited FS for his shift to supporting same-sex marriage, saying “even the Church is changing.”
You would have to be very dense or very naïve to be surprised. Many of us predicted that this would be the result. And – only two weeks into the aftermath of this ill-conceived effort – things are just getting started.
It’s no surprise when political hacks or renegade clergy do whatever it is they’re inclined to do. But it’s the nature of things in an Internet age that their personal defections will have a much wider snowball effect, aided and abetted by anti-Catholic forces.
The tsunami of controversy after the publication of the Declaration mostly revolved around whether FS allowed blessings of “same-sex unions” (which it does not) or same-sex “couples” (which it does, Intro, paras 2, 31, 41). Some defenders of the document tried to claim the blessings were for “individuals” – mentioned once (para. 38), but that is not really the thrust of the whole text.
