Of all the rhetorical figures, the periphrasis would be the one that best identifies the narrative style of the Catholic Church, teacher in the art of playing with words when you want to express some controversial issue without seeming to be so. That thing about jumping into the water and not getting wet, but in Latin and with a more literary level. This vatican skill for circumlocution had a glorious moment this Monday, when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has published a “Declaration” entitled ‘Fiducia Supplians’, the first since the ‘Dominos Jesus’, presented in 2000.
It had been, therefore, 23 years since the Congregation had issued a document that, without presenting a new doctrine, corrected previous texts that had interpreted it. Plain and simple, the current prefect of the dicastery, the Argentine cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, has just made a severe amendment to his predecessor, the Majorcan cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, in a central issue in civil rights and of enormous importance in terms of the modernization of Catholicism. According to the new document, the Vatican accepts the possibility of bless couples “in irregular situations”, that is, the divorced, and “same-sex couples”, although it does not officially validate them, nor does it equate them to marriage.
It’s about a radical change of position, if one takes into account that Cardinal Ladaria maintained, in 2021, that the Church could not impart the blessing to gay unions. But it is an amendment “to the vatican”, because, far from contradicting the previous position, he decides to reinterpret the very meaning of the blessing, and this is where the change brings about an authentic revolution within Catholicism. According to the Declaration, The power to bless is granted by God to human beings, and “it is transformed into inclusion, solidarity and pacification.” Ergo, the blessing to “irregular”, gay and also trans couples means precisely this: inclusion and not rejection. In other words, the Holy Father, who sanctioned the text, has just considered divorced, gay and transsexual people included in the Catholic Church, whom It also authorizes them to be godparents at baptisms and communions and witnesses at weddings. And there is still an equally revolutionary advance: the acceptance of baptism for children whose parents are gay, although it points out that, to be included in the faith, there must be the willingness of the godparents to educate them in the Catholic religion.
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There’s also some exemptions, probably thought by the enormous impact that this Declaration of the Congregation will have on the most conservative sectors. For example, the baptism of trans people is allowed, accepted as long as “there are no situations in which there is a risk of generating public scandal or disorientation among the faithful. Which, unfortunately, leaves the door open to abusive and negative interpretations by the most fundamentalist sectors, which, without a doubt, will put up a fight. And as for gay couples, the blessing can never be carried out within civil rites, so a priest will not be able to bless a couple in a court or similar. That is, they can only be blessed in the context of a sanctuary, a pilgrimage, etc. The intention is not to legitimize the idea of homosexual marriage, but consider couples included in the Catholic community.
Be that as it may, and with the exemptions raised, the fact is that the ‘Fiducia Supplicans’ is a text of enormous relevance, whose impact can be comparable to the social impact that Pope Francis’ forceful position had on the issue of pedophilia. In that case, demanded an end to impunity forever; In the current case, lays the foundations to end stigma and exclusion. And in both cases, the intention is to put the Vatican on the map of the 21st century and make it circulate on the roads of civil rights. In this sense, it seems clear that Pope Francis wants to leave a deep mark on his mandate, perhaps as deep as the one he left John XXIII. As he himself says, it is about “bless and not curse,” that is, to accept, include, live together, a powerful message in these times of rejection, stigma and denial. After all, a god of light among the gods of darkness.