Vatican, 20 September, 2022 / 1:55 pm (ACI Africa).
In open defiance of the Vatican, Catholic bishops in Belgium on Tuesday announced the introduction of blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples in their dioceses.
The bishops of Flanders also published a liturgy for the celebration of homosexual unions.
“In doing so, they are going directly against the Vatican,” reported Nederlands Dagblad.
The Vatican published an official clarification in March 2021 that the Catholic Church does not have the power to give liturgical blessings of homosexual unions.
However, basing their argument on Amoris laetitia, Cardinal Jozef De Kesel of Mechelen-Brussels and other bishops of the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium on Sept. 20 published a document titled “Being pastorally close to homosexual persons — For a welcoming Church that excludes no one.”
The bishops’ publication contains a suggested liturgy for same-sex blessings, including prayers, Scripture reading, and parts in which the couple can “express before God how they are committed to one another.”
The bishops of the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium also announced that each diocese will appoint a person as “concrete response and fulfillment to the desire to give explicit attention to the situation of homosexual persons, their parents and families in the conduct of policy. Pope Francis also expressed this explicitly in his April 2016 apostolic exhortation on the pastoral care of families, Amoris laetitia (‘The Joy of Love’).”
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) issued its latest declaration on same-sex blessings on March 15, 2021, in a document known as a Responsum ad dubium (“Response to a question”).
In reply to the query, “Does the Church have the power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex?” the CDF answered, “Negative.”
The congregation outlined its reasoning in an explanatory note and accompanying commentary.
