Twenty Questions for Cardinal Fernández (and Pope Francis?)
The Catholic Thing, 30 December 2023
At the Vatican, in the week before Christmas – same-sex blessings were hung by the chimney with care, in the hopes that Fr. James Martin soon would be there.
Earlier this year, Cardinal Daniel Sturla, Archbishop of Montevideo, and Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, then the Archbishop of La Plata, had Sees across the river from each other. Now they find themselves in opposing currents, as the former is distressed that the latter would plunge the Church into such conflict and confusion just before Christmas. “I don’t think it was a topic to come up now at Christmas,” Sturla said of Fiducia Supplicans (FS), the DDF declaration on blessing “irregular” and “same-sex” couples. “[That decision] caught my attention powerfully, because it is a controversial issue, and it is dividing waters within the Church.”
Not only the Tiber, but even La Plata.
Fernández and Sturla were both made archbishops by Pope Francis in his first year, and both for archdioceses adjacent to Buenos Aires. If now Fernandez has lost the support of a Cardinal created by Pope Francis on the other side of the river, it gives a measure of how poorly FS has been received. So Fernández has been scrambling to contain the fiasco of plunging the entire Church into conflict and confusion on a contested issue just days before Christmas, a time when religious voices are given a greater hearing in the secular press.
Cardinal Fernández had intended that his instructions on how to bless “irregular couples” – cohabiting couples, polygamous “couples,” adulterous couples, same-sex couples, the lot – would be the last word. “Thus, beyond the guidance provided above, no further responses should be expected about possible ways to regulate details or practicalities regarding blessings of this type,” wrote Fernandez on Monday. By week’s end, he had granted a Spanish-language interview to The Pillar. Things were not proceeding as planned. One of his predecessors in the doctrinal office declared FS to be “self-contradictory.”
At the Vatican, in the week before Christmas – same-sex blessings were hung by the chimney with care, in the hopes that Fr. James Martin soon would be there. With the dust now settling and prelates the world over registering their dismay, herewith a series of questions that Cardinal Fernández may choose to answer as he begins a new set of interviews to defend his declaration.
At his first Angelus address after his election, Pope Francis spoke of the superior theological wisdom of the abuela, a theme he has returned to many times. Does your declaration’s distinction between “ascending” and “descending” blessings resonate with the abuela’s experience? Will her soul fill with the joy of the Gospel when she hears that her son-in-law, who has abandoned her daughter and grandchildren, was blessed with his new mistress by the parish priest?
Upon your appointment as DDF prefect, the Holy Father wrote you a letter warning you against a “desk-bound theology.” Are the fine distinctions of FS – blessing “couples” but not the “unions” that make them a couple – the way ordinary Catholics see things, or more like the casuistry of the desk?
FS claims to be “innovative” and a “development” in the theological understanding of blessings. These novelties are “based on the pastoral vision of Pope Francis.” Is the pope’s “pastoral vision” now a theological locus, akin to Scripture, tradition, and the magisterium? Is such a supremacist understanding the papal vision consistent with the teaching of Vatican II on the college of bishops?
What is the “pastoral vision” of Pope Francis? Given that FS contradicts the 2021 DDF document on the same topic, also issued with papal approval, how does one know the pastoral vision? Or is knowing the pastoral vision a kind of Gnosticism, which the Holy Father has been unrelenting in criticizing?
FS instructs that “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.” Is it the view of the DDF that this is a widespread practice that needs correction? Has anyone at the DDF ever, even one time, witnessed a priest conduct an “exhaustive moral analysis” when asked for a blessing? Has any priest, anywhere, ever, demanded “moral perfection” before granting a blessing? What might that even look like? Is it possible that a straw-cleric is being fashioned here?
In the Pillar interview, you write, “I do not know at what point we have so exalted this simple pastoral gesture that we have equated it with the reception of the Eucharist. That is why we want to set so many conditions for blessing.” Is the DDF aware of anyone, anywhere, at any time, who has “equated” a blessing with “reception of the Eucharist”? Is this another straw-cleric fashioned out of the hay of the manger scene?
In the same interview, you write that, “Some episcopates had advanced ritualized forms of blessing irregular couples, and this is inadmissible.” Will the DDF be responsible for monitoring such compliance with FS, as, for example, the Dicastery for Divine Worship requires permission for Tridentine Masses to be offered in parish churches?
FS cites Amoris Laetitia that “what is part of a practical discernment in particular circumstances cannot be elevated to the level of a rule” because this “would lead to an intolerable casuistry.” Does FS intend to do for blessings what Amoris Laetitia did for reception of the Holy Eucharist, namely make the same act holy or sinful, depending on geography? Sins in Poland are holy in Germany, sins in Alberta are holy in Malta.
In FS, you write that the DDF has been working on this declaration since before you took office in September. Was this information shared with the members of the synodal assembly in October, who discussed this very issue? Were they informed that even if they decided not to address the issue in their final report, the DDF would be moving ahead boldly?
Were the managers of the synodal process on synodality for a synodal Church told not to bother addressing same-sex issues in the synodal report because the DDF would be handling that issue outside the synodal process? Did they accept amendments removing “LGBT” references from the final report already knowing what the DDF was planning, thereby playing for fools the synod members who proposed them?
Patriarch Sviatoslav Shevchuk of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the largest of the Catholic Eastern Churches, has declared that the DDF declaration “has no legal force for the faithful of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church” because it takes no account of eastern canon law, liturgy or their own theological understanding of blessings. Was the DDF aware that its guidance flatly contradicts the catechism of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which teaches that “the blessing of a priest or bishop is a liturgical gesture that cannot be separated from the rest of the content of the liturgical rites and reduced only to the circumstances and needs of private piety”?
Given the shared Byzantine heritage of the east, did the DDF consider the ecumenical implications of authorizing blessings that would contradict the understanding and practice of the Orthodox Churches?
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