This is what happens with sunlight. It is its refraction of matter that creates colors. There are red, green, yellow, purple and when it is bright, “the sky is always bluer” (R. Gaetano). It is a symphonic variety of immeasurable beauty. Reality is not black and white. Of course, “all cows are black at night” (F. Hegel). There is only darkness. However, the dark night can become the backdrop for a majestic spectacle when the stars shine. Who knows what depths the expanding universe hides from our eyes! The James Web Telescope provides us with breathtaking images. In reality there is something new to discover. Especially when it comes to the humanity of man, created in the image of God, Christ Jesus: In Him, through Him, from Him are all things. This is a truth event, it is not a doctrinal teaching. An experience of love that is eternal is manifested in the person of Jesus: in the beginning there is mercy. “Original sin” has a lot to say about how original it is: before sin, there is God’s mercy for eternity. The meaning is clear: there is nothing “outside” of grace that does not enter the horizon of love in Christ Jesus. In the transmission of the faith, in the pastoral activity of the Church, in the discernment of the shepherds, the beauty that saves the world remains unshakable: it is the mercy of God-agape that is “from the beginning”.
If you think about it (theologically), Fiducia supplicans asks the following: In every human situation, we must not forget the witness of Jesus who loves everyone, with a “primary” view of the poor, the abandoned, the impoverished and those who suffer from the existential discomfort of insurmountable “irregularities,” often imposed through no fault of their own Life so steeped in stupidity and injustice. The challenge is “pastoral”, because the so-called “pastoral” is nothing other than the cultivation of human relationships in all their infinite manifestations and conditions, seen in the light of the Gospel and therefore in the light of God's mercy. They are all included in this mercy.
In an ever more fluid world (Z. Bauman), the rock of God's love remains, from which no one can be excluded: neither “irregular couples” nor homosexual couples. In “foamy” cultures (P. Sloterdijk) – which prevent one from thinking outside the box – it is prophetic to be able to proclaim the plan of the Kingdom of God, the Gospel that restores the dignity of the children of God in its fullness good and beautiful humanity of Jesus: In this horizon it is possible to imagine and “create” a “pastoral blessing” (through the power of the ministry of love of the Successor of Peter) to proclaim that everyone is included in the gaze of the Lord more merciful God. God is close to everyone.
The unchanging teaching of the church tradition was thus confirmed and maintainedwho sees in the man-woman relationship the unsurpassable source of the mutual gift of love in indissoluble marriage, the pastoral challenge is to understand whether it is possible in which relationship one can use a gesture, an attitude, a word, any The form of the relationship can have a “collapse” of God’s mercy, who has decided from eternity not to exclude anyone from his benevolence.
Extra ecclesia nulla salus (outside the church there is no salvation), One essential truth remains: previously, however, it excluded all non-Catholics from salvation, after the Council – in concentric circles – calls everyone together, because it is understood that “the Church passes through the souls of people” (R. Guardini) and not through the rigidity of structures and rules. From Fiducia supplicans we accept the invitation to consider human reality – complex and contradictory – always blessed by God because human reality is always personal. And the person is – as the theological tradition of the Church reminds us – a relatio ad, a “web of relationships” that constitutes everyone’s identity. The person is a “loving relationship” (A. Rosmini): So if you can bless the person, you cannot do it abstractly, but concretely. “That” person is blessed: the series of loving relationships within (and with) in which the person hopes, loves, fails, weeps and rejoices, asks for forgiveness and receives it, through the mysterious ways of the Spirit who is not upon them looks appearance, but hearts.
Pope Francis invented a “Pastoral Blessing” which, by expanding the meaning of the liturgical and sacramental sense, makes it possible to bless “homosexual people in couples” and not so much the “homosexual couple union”, with all due respect to those who, Catholic, believe that this is wrong or even blasphemous. Can he do it? Yes absolutely. No theological argument could deny this possibility in a Catholic way. Well, he did it! Decide for the good of the entire church and thus be led back to the gospel of mercy – also from this side. In addition, pastors should be given the “freedom” to differentiate in any cultural context.
Now, however, the precious task of “theological discernment” begins for all pastors. (For clarity it is still called “catechesis”; but it is “wisdom theology”). Here we can enjoy a possible “doctrinal prophecy”: in the future, in the pastoral activity of the Church, we must start from the mercy of God (which includes and heals) and not from sin (which is necessarily the case). excludes and separates). And isn't that the Christian doctrine of predestination in Christ? And isn't that the eschatological teaching that you can only go to heaven thanks to God's mercy if you have truly loved?
The “pastoral blessing” of people in “irregular couples” and “homosexual couples” will lead us to ask forgiveness for having “blessed weapons and armies” in other times. blesses violence and wars (which is absurd!). He will then humbly ask us to ask the blessing of mercy also for those married with the sacrament of indissoluble marriage (i.e., “regular couples”), so that they may meet each other “according to God” and not “according to God “to love the world”, in mutual self-giving and not in mutual exploitation: a catechesis for the evangelical exercise of human sexuality is always expected from a pastoral care that is not negligent. Beyond all hypocrisy and disguise (Pirandello). In fact, love is not without justice of the love: and “What does love have to be like to be what it should be”? Pastoral education must answer this question in concrete terms if the shepherd truly loves his flock.