The announcement from the Vatican last week that priests would be permitted to bless same-sex couples shook the Catholic Church. The Vatican declaration made clear (as countess faithful Catholics have pointed out, including myself) that the Church’s moral teachings and doctrines on homosexuality would remain unchanged and that, in the name of “pastoral charity,” only the individuals in same-sex relationships could be blessed — the relationships themselves could not be, as the Church considers such relationships to be sinful. But just as theological conservatives warned would happen, progressive priests have made the anomaly the norm.
Progressive priests and bishops have long pushed the proverbial envelope, diluting the perennial moral and theological instructions of the Catholic Church.
Quoting from Pope Francis, the Vatican declaration states, “Decisions that may be part of pastoral prudence in certain circumstances should not necessarily become a norm.” But even the Pope’s words won’t halt agenda-driven ideologues in Roman collars. (READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy: Anthony Fauci and the Apostate’s Arrogance)
Prominent LGBT activist and Jesuit priest James Martin publicly offered a blessing to a gay couple with whom he’s close. Although the Vatican’s declaration explicates that such blessings should be “spontaneous” and must be sought by the individuals, Martin texted Damian and Jason Steidl Jack after the declaration’s publication, asking them if they would like their “marriage” blessed. So much for obedience to Rome.
Stan Zerkowski, director of LGBTQ+ ministry at St. Paul Catholic Church in Lexington, quipped that the Vatican declaration “says to the LGBTQ community we see you not only as individuals but as couples,” despite the declaration specifically clarifying that it is not meant to “somehow offer a form of moral legitimacy to a union that presumes to be a marriage or to an extra-marital sexual practice.” Controversial Chicago-area priest Michael Pfleger, who has been accused of sexual abuse by at least four men, told a gay couple at his parish that he would be “honored” to “bless their union,” according to reports. Pfleger’s archbishop, Cardinal Blase Cupich, hailed the declaration’s provisions as “a step forward.” But a step towards what?
LGBTQ apologists are already subverting the clear, literal meaning of the groundbreaking declaration to abuse its provisions in service to their rainbow agenda. They will not be prevented from doing so, either. Towards its conclusion, the Vatican’s declaration states:
What has been said in this Declaration regarding the blessings of same-sex couples is sufficient to guide the prudent and fatherly discernment of ordained ministers in this regard. 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.
There will be no “inquisition,” there will be no clarification, there will be no accountability — not from Rome. There will only be moral chaos and liturgical abuse. Such an outcome was easily foreseeable and is, in fact, not unexpected, especially for those who know their Church history. (READ MORE: Pope to Oust American Cardinal From Rome Residence)
In 1969, for example, Pope St. Paul VI issued “Memoriale Domini, the Instruction on the Manner of Administering Holy Communion.” In it, he debated allowing Holy Communion to be distributed in the hand instead of being placed directly on the tongue. After a staggering 1,233 bishops advised against doing so, the Pontiff reiterated that the Body and Blood of Christ are of such sacred nature that every reverence must be shown, and Holy Communion ought therefore be received only on the tongue. The Pope allowed bishops in areas where receiving Holy Communion in the hand was already the existing practice, such as France, Belgium, and Germany, to determine whether or not they would allow the practice to continue. As with all things liturgical and theological, progressive priests made the exception into the new rule.
Similarly, the Second Vatican Council declared in no uncertain terms that Gregorian chant was “proper to the Roman rite” and “should be given pride of place” in the celebration of the Novus Ordo Mass. The Council warned that, although “other musical settings,” including more modern tunes, might be “used as the occasion demands,” still “the introduction into the celebration of anything which is merely secular, or which is hardly compatible with divine worship, under the guise of solemnity should be carefully avoided.”
Yet once again, guitars and tambourines dominated Masses for the following two generations or more, sometimes accompanied by the abominable practice of liturgical dancing. Some parishes still insist on making the music of the Mass sound like the soundtrack for a Vietnam War film. When was the last time that Gregorian chant was heard in the usual local parish? Progressive priests and their episcopal enablers made the exception into the rule.
By the grace of God, there are priests and bishops this time around who are fed up enough with the license that progressives make of exceptions and ambiguities. Archbishop Tomash Peta and Bishop Athanasius Schneider, both of Saint Mary in Astana, Kazakhstan, have already banned priests of the archdiocese from administering the blessings referred to in the Vatican’s new declaration, which they say would turn the Church into, “in practice, a propagandist of the globalist and ungodly ‘gender ideology.’”
Numerous African bishops have likewise banned the practice, citing (perhaps with tongue in cheek) “pastoral prudence,” the very mechanism by which Pope Francis’s pontificate approved blessing same-sex couples. (Thus far, faithful bishops in Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, and Uganda have forbidden their priests from offering same-sex blessings.) Poland’s bishops have done the same, and the Catholic bishops of Ukraine warned that the declaration’s ambiguities may be used to infer Vatican approval for same-sex relationships.(READ MORE: Jesuit Priest Declares Donald Trump an Antichrist)
Progressive priests and bishops have long pushed the proverbial envelope, diluting the perennial moral and theological instructions of the Catholic Church. Just as there have been (at least a few) priests and bishops bold enough to correct them in the past, so there are today. The difference is that, since the progressives have taken exceptions as license to formulate new rules, they now dominate the College of Cardinals and most bishops’ conferences, and their theological and “pastoral” licentiousness will be perpetrated with impunity, damning untold hundreds and thousands of souls in the name of “inclusion.” All are welcome in the Catholic Church, of course, but on Christ’s terms, not their own. All are also welcome in Hell, on anyone’s terms but Christ’s.
