SOMEONE TELL THE POPE

(Also accessible online at the Guam Daily Post website)

TEXT:

When I was first approached by this publication to be a columnist, it was clear to me that the editor was looking for some “Catholic controversy” on the opinion page.

For my first few columns, I chose to address otherwise mild subjects. However, perhaps now is the time to do what I was “retained” to do.

Currently, if one wants controversy in the Catholic Church one need look no further than the pope, who, at World Youth Day in 2013, shortly after his elevation to Supreme Pontiff, ordered tens of thousands of kids to “make a mess,” and has henceforth led by example.

“Is the pope Catholic?” used to be a rhetorical question - a joke. Not so anymore. But to the point.

This past December 18, as an early Christmas present to the Catholic world, a Vatican dicastery, with the approval of Pope Francis, promulgated Fiducia supplicans (FS), a declaration sanctioning “Blessings of Couples in Irregular Situations and of Couples of the Same Sex.” (FS, III.)

Because “Couples of the Same Sex” is such a firebrand for both haters and lovers, let’s not address that particular “irregular situation” and move our discussion to “irregular situations” of couples of the male-female kind.

Pursuant to FS, a sacramentally married forty-something man may now show up at his pastor’s door with his curvy twenty-something mistress and request (if not demand) a “blessing” of his “irregular situation.”

Since, by now, no one should be surprised at anything Pope (Make-a-Mess) Francis says or does, the real issue is not so much Francis or FS, but the apologists (aka “popesplainers”) who rush to silence dissent with the usual narrative: “the pope didn’t really mean that” - something they’ve been rushing to say ever since Francis became Francis and discovered microphones.

The popesplainers argument is that that FS does not condone the clerical blessing of unions, same-sex or otherwise, but only persons in those unions, or “situations” as Francis labels them.  

However, as one African bishop recently said: “We already can bless anyone who asks for a blessing. We don’t ask who he slept with last night.”

And this is true. The priestly blessing of individuals, Catholic or otherwise, is already non-liturgical, spontaneous, unlimited, and flows directly from the priestly charism conferred by the sacrament of ordination.

There is no need for a document clarifying the blessing of individuals, unless…unless of course this is not about the blessing of individuals and about the blessing of couples in “irregular situations,” which of course it is.

Moreover, if Francis wanted to distinguish the blessing of  “persons” instead of a couple/union/situation, then Francis could have titled Section III of FS: “Blessings of Persons in Irregular Situations and of Persons in Same-Sex Unions.” But he didn’t. Francis titled Section III: “Blessings of Couples in Irregular Situations and of Couples of the Same Sex.”

And for rationale, Francis said this:

“To make those people feel that they are still blessed, notwithstanding their serious mistakes, that…even if their closest relatives have abandoned them, because they now judge them to be irredeemable, God always sees them as his children.”

At the risk of a mere layman sounding off against a pope, this layman - a father of eleven children, and no matter my children’s moral choices - will never “abandon them” or judge them “irredeemable,” even if it means I must suffer and pray for them till my end.

And my guess is that most parents will do the same.

Someone tell the pope.