By Michael Pakaluk

But first a note: Be sure not to miss tonight's 8 PM broadcast of EWTN's "The World Over." Fr. Gerald Murray, Robert Royal, and host Raymond Arroyo ("The Papal Posse") will be discussing the latest document released by the Vatican - Fiducia Supplicans - which has raised a firestorm of commentary in its claims that priests may perform blessings of "same-sex couples" (as long as such blessings don't give the impression of being the equivalent of marriage), while maintaining that it's impossible for the Church to bless "same-sex unions." This will be one not to miss. And, as always, episodes of the show will be available on the EWTN YouTube channel shortly after first broadcast.

Now for Professor Pakaluk's column...

The U.S. Bishops issued a statement earlier this week on the Declaration Fiducia supplicans, reassuring the faithful that "The Church's teaching on marriage has not changed." But to say this is to miss the point, wildly.

More pertinent is whether the Church's teaching on non-procreative sex acts has changed; also, whether by the Declaration the Church now wishes to recognize a distinct type of relationship, which it regards as good - call it "spousal friendship between members of the same sex." Either change would mark a major shift in the Church's teaching on human nature and, it seems, a repudiation of St. John Paul II's theology of the body.

Let us return to a time long ago, back in 2021, when the Vatican taught that "the Church does not have, and cannot have, the power to bless unions of persons of the same sex." More telling than the holding, however, were the three reasons given.

The first reason was that blessings are sacramentals, so that, "when a blessing is invoked on particular human relationships, in addition to the right intention of those who participate, it is necessary that what is blessed be objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace." But such is not the case, it taught, for relationships that involve sexual activity outside of marriage: "[God] does not and cannot bless sin." The Vatican emphasized that the presence of good elements in such relationships could not negate this point.

In support, the Vatican cited no less an authority than an Ecumenical Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium, 61. In that passage, tellingly, the Council Fathers refer to "the liturgy of the sacraments and sacramentals." The Vatican back in 2021 assumed, naturally enough, that since blessings are sacramentals, they are by their nature liturgical. That a blessing by a priest in a cassock at the back of a Church would be non-liturgical, in the broad sense of "liturgy", would be an absurdity. A blessing did not need to be situated in a ritual to be liturgical.

The second reason was that blessings of persons are inherently related to sacraments, so that, if a relationship were blessed, the blessing could not fail to import the significance of marriage, regardless of the intentions of the persons involved.

The third and related reason - apparently the least important - was that the blessing of same-sex couples would create confusion in the faithful, as it would lead them to think that the nature of marriage had changed.

If the Church is to purport to do in 2023 what it said in 2021 that it could not do, these reasons must be "handled." Fiducia, accordingly, handles the first by claiming that blessings are among the most rapidly "evolving" sacramentals. Then it identifies a new class of blessings, "pastoral" blessings ("of mercy"), which apparently are not even sacramentals. It supposes that if these blessings appear to be spontaneously sought after, and non-scripted, they will be non-liturgical.

However, already Fr. James Martin has tweeted a picture of himself in clerics at the back of a church holding up his hand in a priestly blessing over a professed "married" same-sex couple. And he himself explained the radical change of the document by saying, "Today I can do what I was forbidden to d...