The celebration of Christmas will have put on hold the disputes that have rocked the Catholic Church for more than a week. However, the ceasefire is likely to be short-lived. With the publication of the declaration Fiducia supplicans on December 18, which allows the blessing of same-sex couples – outside the liturgical context – the Vatican sparked an outcry in parts of the Catholic world.
In Europe, the conservative wing of the church has manifested itself loudly, despite the general support of the bishops' conferences in the west of the continent. At the top are the Polish and Ukrainian bishops as well as some figures known for their opposition to the Pope. The most important undoubtedly came from German Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith – the dicastery that published Fiducia supplicans – and one of the participants in the Synod on the Future of the Church in Rome in October. “Blessing a reality that contradicts creation is not only impossible, it is blasphemy,” Cardinal Müller denounced three days after the text was published. For the German cardinal, a priest blessing a homosexual couple would be a “sacrilege.”
Rejection of African churches
But in Africa the reactions were most violent. One after another, episcopal conferences have banned their priests from pronouncing such blessings: Zambia, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana… And other episcopates have not banned it, following the example of Ivory Coast, have the clergy and asked believers to wait for instructions from local church authorities.
At the continental level, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, member of the Council of Cardinals responsible for supporting the Pope in his decisions and President of the Symposium of the Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (Sceam), speaks for the Church of Africa to speak with one voice, after we collected all opinions. “The ambiguity of this declaration on the blessing of homosexual “couples”, which allows numerous interpretations and manipulations, causes great confusion among the faithful,” said the Archbishop of Kinshasa, justifying the January 15 deadline.
In this context, the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Victor Fernandez, main author of the criticized statement – published without prior notice or press conference – spoke to the media on December 23 and 24 to clarify the spirit of the text. It is the couples who are blessed, he clarified in the columns of the American media The Pillar: “The union is not blessed, for the reasons repeatedly stated in the Declaration on the True Meaning of Christian Marriage and Sexual Relations .” » But he rules out “a complete rejection of this approach called for by the priests.”
Cardinal Fernandez used this media sequence to criticize certain African episcopates that support laws that criminalize relationships between people of the same sex. “I fully understand the concern of bishops in certain countries in Africa or Asia where homosexuality can lead to prison sentences. “It is an affront to human dignity that certainly affects the bishops and calls their authorship into question,” he explained, not without irony.
An unprecedented outcry
In the past, certain texts or policies could provoke a reaction from national episcopates, such as the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae in France and Belgium. But the tensions between the different parts of the Catholic Church today represent a “major crisis” for the historian and journalist Christophe Dickès. “In the contemporary history of the Church, this is the first time that an entire continent has expressly refused to publish a text of the Pope,” he remembers. There may have been anger and backlash in the media, but not to this extent. »
For the Canadian priest and theologian Gilles Routhier, the resistance of many episcopates actually calls into question the unity of the Church, torn between a West that supports these advances, an Africa that strongly opposes it, and the Asian and American continents , who has so far remained silent on these issues and does not agree. “The risk is in fact that we are moving at several speeds towards a Church,” he explains, “and in which the Pope's authority has been undermined by a loud protest for four or five years, even since the publication of the encyclical Amoris “laetitia” about the couple and the family in 2016.
“In order to maintain community, dialogue is essential,” the theologian continued. In the past there have been compromises on questions of marriage doctrine, for example on the diaconal ordination of married men. But the fathers of the Second Vatican Council decided to authorize it without imposing it, and each bishops' conference moved forward at its own pace. We should not impose the Western point of view on all cultures and vice versa. »
Towards differentiated practices?
Can we then imagine that the idea that each country can move forward at its own pace was present in the Pope's mind with the Fiducia supplicans declaration? The non-normative form of the text could indicate this. “It is difficult to say, but one thing is certain: Francis, like John Paul II, is of the opinion that we can no longer govern a world church in the same way that a pope ruled a European church,” analyzes Gilles Routhier. From this observation we must recognize the possibility of a differentiated practice in communion, as is already the case in the Eastern Churches. »
For the theologian, this solution could save the Catholic Church from the danger of division that the Anglican Communion has faced for almost twenty years. Earlier this year, several African Anglican primates rejected the primacy of the Archbishop of Canterbury because he had approved the blessing of same-sex couples.
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Lorraine bishops react to “Fiducia supplicans”
The bishops of Metz, Nancy and Verdun reacted positively in the December 22 edition of Le Républicain Lorrain to the green light that Rome had given a few days earlier for the blessing of same-sex couples – outside the liturgical framework. According to Mgr. Philippe Ballot (Metz), this text should be read “as a supplement to another text from 2021”. “Same-sex marriage is still not allowed,” he recalls, but “we were inevitably faced with the question: how can we deny people marriage under the pretext that they are in an “irregular couple,” as they say , which of course we do.” to others, without question? » For Msgr. Pierre-Yves Michel (Nancy) it is “a positive sign that expresses the motherly heart of the Church”, a milestone linked to the approach of Amoris laetitia, the text of Pope Francis based on the reception and support consists of people. “We do not bless the couple as in a marriage, we bless the people.” It seems good and important to me to do this,” welcomed Mgr. Jean-Paul Gusching (Verdun).