A Catholic priest can bless a gay or other unmarried couple as long as it is not a formal liturgical blessing and does not give the impression that the Catholic Church is blessing the union as if it were a marriage, the Vatican doctrinal office said.

The request for a blessing can express and nurture “openness to the transcendence, mercy and closeness to God in a thousand concrete circumstances of life, which is no small thing in the world in which we live. It is a seed of the Holy Spirit that must be nurtured, not hindered,” the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith said in a formal declaration published Dec. 18.

The document, “Fiducia Supplicans” (“Supplicating Trust”) was subtitled, “On the pastoral meaning of blessings,” and was approved by Pope Francis during an audience with Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, dicastery prefect, Dec. 18.

In his introductory note, Cardinal Fernández said questions about a priest blessing a LGBTQ+ or other unmarried couple had been sent to the doctrinal office repeatedly over the past few years.

The need for a fuller explanation of blessings became clear, he wrote, after Pope Francis responded to the “dubia” or questions of several cardinals in a letter released in early October.

In his letter, the pope insisted marriage is an “exclusive, stable and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to conceiving children,” which is why the church “avoids all kinds of rites or sacramentals that could contradict this conviction and imply that it is recognizing as a marriage something that is not.”

At the same time, the pope said, “pastoral prudence must adequately discern if there are forms of blessing, solicited by one or various persons, that don’t transmit a mistaken concept of marriage.”

Cardinal Fernández said the declaration “remains firm on the traditional doctrine of the Church about marriage, not allowing any type of liturgical rite or blessing similar to a liturgical rite that can create confusion,” but it also explores the “pastoral meaning of blessings” in a way that opens “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.”

The church “remains firm” in teaching that marriage can be contracted only between one woman and one man, he said, and continues to insist that “rites and prayers that could create confusion” about a marriage and another form of relationship “are inadmissible.”

But in Catholic tradition blessings go well beyond the formal ritual used in marriage and other sacraments.

“Blessings are among the most widespread and evolving sacramentals. Indeed, they lead us to grasp God’s presence in all the events of life and remind us that, even in the use of created things, human beings are invited to seek God, to love him, and to serve him faithfully,” the declaration said. That is why people, meals, rosaries, homes, pets and myriad other things can be and are blessed on various occasions.

“From a strictly liturgical point of view,” the declaration said, “a blessing requires that what is blessed be conformed to God’s will, as expressed in the teachings of the Church,” which is why the then-doctrinal congregation in 2021 excluded the possibility of blessing gay couples.

But, the new document said, Catholics should “avoid the risk of reducing the meaning of blessings” to their formal, liturgical use because that “would lead us to expect the same moral conditions for a simple blessing that are called for in the reception of the sacraments.”

“Indeed, there is the danger that a pastoral gesture that is so beloved and widespread will be subjected to too many moral prerequisites, which, under the claim of control, could overshadow the unconditional power of God’s love that forms the basis for the gesture of blessing,” it said.

A person who asks for God’s blessing, the declaration said, “shows himself to be in need of God’s saving presence in his life and one who asks for a blessing from the Church recognizes the latter as a sacrament of the salvation that God offers.”

The church, it said, should be grateful when people ask for a blessing and should see it as a sign that they know they need God’s help.

“When people ask for a blessing, an exhaustive moral analysis should not be placed as a precondition for conferring it. For, those seeking a blessing should not be required to have prior moral perfection,” it said.

At the same time, the declaration insisted that the Mass is not the proper setting for the less formal forms of blessing that could include the blessing of a gay couple, and it repeated that “it is not appropriate for a diocese, a bishops’ conference” or other church structure to issue a formal blessing prayer or ritual for unwed couples. The blessing also should not be given “in concurrence” with a civil marriage ceremony to avoid appearing as a sort of church blessing of the civil union.

However, it said, a priest or deacon could “join in the prayer of those persons who, although in a union that cannot be compared in any way to a marriage, desire to entrust themselves to the Lord and his mercy, to invoke his help and to be guided to a greater understanding of his plan of love and of truth.”

The post Doctrinal dicastery explains how, when gay couples can be blessed appeared first on The Central Minnesota Catholic.

By Justin McLellan | CNS

Millions of pilgrims flock to Rome every 25 years to mark a Holy Year, or jubilee, the Catholic Church’s more modern celebration of an ancient Jewish practice of forgiveness. And through partnerships with prisons and incarcerated persons, the Vatican hopes to show those visitors that the spirit of forgiveness remains front and center of the church’s long tradition of celebrating Holy Years. 

While several distinct “jubilees” have been scheduled to take place at the Vatican for 2025, such as the “Jubilee of Teenagers” or the “Jubilee of the Sick and Health Care Workers,” the Holy Year is meant for “all people; the jubilee therefore exists also for incarcerated persons,” Giovanni Russo, head of the Penitentiary Administration Department of the Italian Ministry of Justice, said during a news conference at the Vatican Dec. 5, 2023, announcing a partnership with the Fabbrica di San Pietro, the Vatican office responsible for maintaining St. Peter’s Basilica.

Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica, presented two initiatives undertaken by the basilica rooted in the Holy Year spirit of forgiveness and including those who have been cast out of society. 

The first involves incorporating incarcerated persons into the workforce at St. Peter’s Basilica. One incarcerated person currently works in St. Peter’s Basilica six days a week and six hours a day. His mom still “goes around with a tissue to dry her tears of joy” over her son having a job, said Flavia Filippi, founder and president of the “Seconda Chance” Association which works to connect people in prisons to work opportunities. 

She added that the association had been asked to find another electrician to work in the basilica as well as someone to work in the refreshment stand for visitors climbing its dome, and that more incarcerated persons will be inserted into the basilica’s workforce by the Holy Year. 

The other initiative makes available in the basilica’s museum shop a “Rosary of the Sea,” a rosary made by incarcerated persons and refugees from wooden migrant boats shipwrecked off the coast of Italy. Two refugees currently work in the workshop of St. Peter’s Basilica and some 30 people work in prisons to make the rosaries, Arnoldo Mosca Mondadori, founder and president of the “House of the Spirit and the Arts” foundation which organizes the rosary initiative, said at the news conference. The first rosary produced through the initiative by those in prison was given to Pope Francis.

Mondadori said he was struck by the many people who visit the workshops in prison “who do not believe, who do not have faith, but want to understand what a rosary is and want to take it home with them; they study it and ask ‘what are these ten balls?'”

“It is then the incarcerated person that says, ‘they are the ten Hail Marys and this is the Our Father,’ so we have even seen an evangelization in the prisons,” he said.

During the press conference, Filippi gave Cardinal Gambetti a sports bag with a logo featuring the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica and sown by incarcerated persons. She said that the bags and other products made by incarcerated persons would soon be available for sale in the basilica’s museum shop and in the gift shop on Via della Conciliazione, the long pedestrian road that leads to St. Peter’s Square and the basilica.

The cardinal referenced the Jewish history of the Holy Year, which was celebrated every 50 years according to the Law of Moses and called for the restitution of land to the original owners, the remission of debts, the liberation of slaves and for land to be left uncultivated. The Catholic Church’s first Holy Year was proclaimed in 1300 by Pope Boniface VIII, who called for “a year of forgiveness for all sins” in response to the wars, diseases and suffering at the time. 

Even today, Cardinal Gambetti said, “this is the perspective of the jubilee: to fight so that all forms of misery, not only economic misery but also cultural misery, spiritual misery, are combated, because only in this way are the conditions put in place so that each person can in his dignity express himself, can grow, can enjoy the goods of earth and heaven.”

Russo said that justice “is the recognition of the dignity of all persons,” including those “whose freedom is limited, those confined to penitentiary institutions.” He added that “to be just in the execution of a penalty is to always consider (a person’s) human essence, and in this sense work plays a key role.”

He clarified that enabling incarcerated people to work is not an additional punishment or a “way of filling otherwise idle days” of people in prison. 

“No, work is an instrument, a means to find oneself, to find one’s dignity, to build and rebuild one’s personhood,” he said.

He specified that “prison work is paid work” in Italian prisons. Incarcerated persons in Italy are paid for their labor, have a right to paid time off, sick leave and make pension contributions. 

“We match together these needs, this jubilee mission with the needs of those who are on the margins of the margins,” Russo said.

Cardinal Gambetti urged the pilgrims that will descend upon Rome in 2025 to also prepare for the Holy Year spiritually, because he said living out justice and forgiveness “is only possible if one draws on a spiritual dimension that enables one to have a very wide gaze of the heart.”

He said that the initiatives are meant to “give concreteness to the ideas of the jubilee,” and that by inviting those on the margins to contribute to the activities of the church, “you can truly respect each person, everyone, and thus build social friendship and not social competition.”

The post Faith and forgiveness: Holy Year is ‘also for the incarcerated’ appeared first on The Central Minnesota Catholic.

VATICAN CITY | CNS

“As you can see, I am alive,” Pope Francis told a group of health care managers Nov. 30.

At the brief meeting with participants in a seminar on the ethics of health care management, the pope said he was suffering from a “bronchial condition. Thank God it was not pneumonia,” but he said it was a very serious bronchial infection.

“I no longer have a fever, but I am still on antibiotics and things like that,” he told the group.

He had canceled his appointments Nov. 25 because of “flu-like symptoms” and went that afternoon to a Rome hospital for a CT scan of his chest. In the following days, he canceled some appointments and had aides read his prepared texts at other events.

But, he said, “the doctor would not let me go to Dubai,” United Arab Emirates, Dec. 1-3 to speak at COP28, the U.N. climate conference. “The reason is that it is very hot there, and you go from heat to air conditioning,” he told the health care managers.

The most recent medical bulletin from the Vatican press office, issued late Nov. 29, said Pope Francis’ condition is “stable. He does not have a fever, but the pulmonary inflammation associated with respiratory difficulty persists. He is continuing antibiotic therapy.”

Pope Francis used the audience to thank medical professional for what they do — “not only looking for medical, pharmacological solutions,” but also putting energy into preventative care so their patients stay healthy.

“I thank you for coming,” he told the group, “and forgive me for not being able to talk any more, but I do not have the energy.”

The post Pope says he has serious bronchial infection appeared first on The Central Minnesota Catholic.

Sometimes we are the most helpful and life-giving at the very times when we are most helpless. We’ve all been there. We’re at a funeral and there’s nothing to say that will ease the heartache of someone who has lost a loved one. We feel awkward and helpless. We’d like to say or do something, but there’s nothing to be said or done, other than to be there, embrace the one nursing the grief, and share our helplessness. Passing strange, but it is our very helplessness that’s most helpful and generative in that situation. Our passivity is more fruitful and generative than if we were doing something.

We see an example of this in Jesus. He gave both his life and his death for us – but in separate moments. He gave his life for us through his activity and his death for us through his passivity, that is, through what he absorbed in helplessness. Indeed, we can divide each of the Gospels into two clear parts. Up until his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus is the active one: he teaches, he heals, he performs miracles, he feeds people. Then, after he is arrested, he doesn’t do anything: he is handcuffed, led away, put on trial, scourged, and crucified. Yet, and this is the mystery, we believe that he gave us more during that time when he couldn’t do anything than during all those times he was active. We are saved more through his passivity and helplessness than through his powerful actions during his ministry. How does this work? How can helplessness and passivity be so generative?

Partly this is mystery, though partly we grasp some of it through experience. For example, a loving mother dying in hospice, in a coma, unable to speak, can sometimes in that condition change the hearts of her children more powerfully than she ever could during all the years when she did so much for them. What’s the logic here? By what metaphysics does this work?

Let me begin abstractly and circle this question before venturing to an answer. The atheistic thinkers of the Enlightenment (Nietzsche, Feuerbach, Marx, and others) offer a very powerful critique of religion and of religious experience. In their view, all religious experience is simply subjective projection, nothing more.  For them, in our faith and religious practices, we are forever creating a god in our own image and likeness, to serve our self-interest.  (The very antithesis of what Christians believe.)  For Nietzsche, for instance. there is no divine revelation coming from outside us, no God in heaven revealing divine truth to us. Everything is us, projecting our needs and creating a god to serve those needs. All religion is self-serving, human projection.

How true is this? One of the most influential professors I’ve studied under, Jesuit Michael Buckley, says this in face of that criticism: These thinkers are 90% correct. But they’re 10% wrong – and that 10% makes all the difference.

Buckley made this comment while teaching what John of the Cross calls a dark night of the soul. What is a dark night of the soul? It’s an experience where we can no longer sense God imaginatively or feel God affectively, when the very sense of God’s existence dries up inside us and we are left in an agnostic darkness, helpless (in head, heart, and gut) to conjure up any sense of God.

However, and this is the point, precisely because we are helpless and unable to conjure up any imaginative concepts or affective feelings about God, God can now flow into us purely, without us being able to color or contaminate that experience. When all our efforts are useless, grace can finally take over and flow into us in purity. Indeed, that’s how all authentic revelation enters our world. When human helplessness renders us incapable of making God serve our self-interest, God can then flow into our lives without contamination.

Now, this is also true for human love. So much of our love for each other, no matter our sincerity, is colored by self-interest and is at some point self-serving. In some fashion, we inevitably form those we love into our own image and likeness. However, as is the case with Buckley’s critique of the atheistic thinkers of the Enlightenment, this isn’t always the case. There are certain situations when we can’t in any way taint love and make it self-serving. What are those situations? Precisely those in which find we ourselves completely helpless, mute, stammering, unable to say or do anything that’s helpful. In these particular “dark nights of the soul”, when we are completely helpless to shape the experience, love and grace can flow in purely and powerfully.

In his classic work The Divine Milieu, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin challenges us to help others both through our activity and through our passivity.  He’s right. We can be generative through what we actively do for others, and we can be particularly generative when we stand passively with them in helplessness.

—

Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher, and award-winning author. 

He can be contacted through his website  www.ronrolheiser.com.
Now on Facebook www.facebook.com/ronrolheiser

The post Father Ron Rolheiser: Helplessness as Fruitful appeared first on The Central Minnesota Catholic.

Pope Francis has recognized the miraculous healing of a toddler in Argentina as the miracle needed for the beatification of Argentine Cardinal Eduardo Pironio, a close collaborator of St. John Paul II and the person who organized and oversaw the first six international celebrations of World Youth Day.

Cardinal Pironio died of cancer in 1998 at the age of 77.

During a meeting Nov. 8 with Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, Pope Francis signed the decree recognizing that the healing in 2006 of a 15-month-old baby, Juan Manuel Franco, in Mar del Plata, Argentina, was due to prayers for the intercession of Cardinal Pironio, the city’s former bishop.

The baby had inhaled and aspirated a toxic substance that caused acute respiratory distress. His parents, family and friends prayed that the cardinal would intercede to heal him, and he recovered. Doctors said there was no scientific explanation for why he survived.

The recognition of a miracle clears the way for a date to be set for the cardinal’s beatification.

Born in Nueve de Julio on Dec. 3, 1920, Eduardo Francisco Pironio was the 22nd child of Giuseppe and Enrica Buttazzoni Pironio, who emigrated to Argentina from Italy. After seminary studies in La Plata, Argentina, and Rome, he was ordained to the priesthood in 1943.

St. Paul VI named him an auxiliary bishop of La Plata in 1964. In 1967 he was named apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Avellaneda and was elected secretary-general of the Latin American bishops’ council, known as CELAM. In 1972 he was made bishop of Mar del Plata and was elected president of CELAM.

Pope Paul named him an archbishop in 1975 and called him to Rome as pro-prefect of the Vatican congregation for religious. He was made a cardinal in 1976 and participated in the conclaves that elected Pope John Paul I and St. John Paul II.

St. John Paul named him president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity in 1984, a position he held until his retirement 12 years later. When the pope instituted World Youth Day, he gave the task of organizing the event to the laity council.

Cardinal Pironio welcomed thousands of young people to the first gathering in Rome in 1985; he continued to orchestrate the mega-events later held in Buenos Aires; Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Czestochowa, Poland; Denver; and Manila, Philippines.

At the Nov. 8 meeting with Cardinal Semeraro, Pope Francis also signed decrees recognizing that three religious lived the Christian virtues in a heroic way: Italian Rogationist Father Giuseppe Marrazzo, who lived 1917-1992; Indian Sister Eliswa Vakayil, founder of the Teresian Carmelites, who lived 1831-1913; and Italian Sister Eleonora Foresti, founder of Franciscan Adorers Sisters, who was born in 1898 and died in 1953.

The post Pope clears way for beatification of Cardinal Pironio appeared first on The Central Minnesota Catholic.

If it would not cause scandal or confusion among other Catholics, “a transsexual — even one who has undergone hormone treatment and gender reassignment surgery — may receive baptism under the same conditions as other faithful,” said a document from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The document, signed Oct. 31 by Pope Francis and by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, was posted on the dicastery’s website Nov. 8.

A note published with it said the document was a response to a letter submitted in July by Bishop José Negri of Santo Amaro, Brazil, “containing some questions about the possible participation in baptism and weddings by transexual persons and homo-affective persons.”

The questions about weddings involved whether transexual or other LGBTQ+ persons could be witnesses at a Catholic wedding. The response to both questions was that “there is nothing in current universal canonical legislation that prohibits” either from serving as a witness at a Catholic marriage.

Responses to the questions about baptism were longer, more nuanced and urged pastoral prudence to minister to the people in question, safeguard the sacrament and prevent scandal.

Whether deciding to baptize a person or to permit him or her to serve as a godparent, “due pastoral prudence demands that every situation be wisely pondered, in order to safeguard the sacrament of baptism and especially its reception, which is a precious good to be protected, since it is necessary for salvation,” the document said.

Special care must be taken, it said, when “there are doubts about the objective moral situation in which the person finds him- or herself, or about his or her subjective dispositions toward grace.”

The church teaches that when baptism is received without repentance for serious sins, it said, he or she receives the “sacramental character” but not “sanctifying grace.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, the note said, affirms that “this configuration to Christ and to the Church, brought about by the Spirit, is indelible, it remains forever in the Christian as a positive disposition for grace, a promise and guarantee of divine protection, and as a vocation to divine worship and to the service of the Church.”

Because that mark is indelible, once the person baptized without the proper disposition repents, sanctifying grace is present, it said. That possibility, it added, is why Pope Francis, in his 2013 exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel,” wrote that the church must have very serious reasons for turning someone away and must be especially hesitant before denying someone baptism.

Therefore, it said, even if there are doubts about the person’s current commitment to living a fully Christian life, “one must never forget this aspect of the fidelity of the unconditional love of God, which is capable of generating even with the sinner an irrevocable covenant, always open to a development that is also unpredictable.”

The church and its ministers do not simply wait for a person’s conversion, though, it said, but constantly call people “to live fully all the implications of the baptism received, which must always be understood and unfolded within the entire journey of Christian initiation.”

On the question of whether a transexual can be a godparent, the document said it is possible “under certain conditions,” but because the role is not a right, “pastoral prudence” is required to avoid the “danger of scandal” or confusion among the faithful.

It also cautioned that gay persons living together in a relationship like a marriage, especially if it is known in the community, probably should not serve as godparents, but can be invited to serve as witnesses to the baptism.

The dicastery repeated an affirmation that the child of a gay couple can be baptized when there is a well-founded hope that the child will be raised Catholic.

The post Doctrinal dicastery says transexuals can be baptized appeared first on The Central Minnesota Catholic.