Could Pope Francis Be Right?
The Blessing of Same-Sex Relationships in the Catholic Church
Can it be an act of charity to bless the relationship of a committed same-sex couple? I plan to answer this question from within the teaching of the Catholic Church for three reasons: (1) I’m Catholic and it is the tradition I understand best; (2) recent events in Germany, questions put to Pope Francis by some of his cardinals, and the Vatican’s recent replies have brought these questions to the fore; (3) the Catholic Church has striven to address such questions in a collective manner that is not possible for most Protestant denominations. And finally, all Christians have a stake in how the Catholic Church answers this question.
Orthodox Christians could be forgiven for thinking this question was closed. First, because perennial Christian teaching on marriage and sexuality has never been (and cannot be) changed, any more than the natural and divine law can be repealed. And second, because in 2021, the Vatican answered the question in the negative.
And yet Pope Francis reopened the question in responding to questions put to him last summer by five cardinals (in a letter known as a dubia). In December, with his approval, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) issued a document titled Fiducia Supplicans, which builds upon Francis’s reasoning, in the reply to the dubia, in favor of permitting spontaneous blessings for same-sex couples as acts of pastoral charity.
Before turning to the Vatican’s reasoning, it is fitting to recall what Scripture and tradition teach us about marriage.
The Biblical Teaching on Marriage
The Bible’s narrative of the first marriage, between Adam and Eve, is rich with significance. God creates them in his image; “male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). God institutes marriage in the Garden: “man is destined to leave father and mother, and cling to his wife instead, so that the two become one flesh” (2:24). The first “blessing” recorded in the Bible is God’s blessing of the first marriage: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it” (1:28).
Marriage is thus an objective good for human beings, to which they are inclined “by nature,” which is to say, they grasp it as objectively reasonable and desirable. It is a special kind of friendship that is marked off by a “one-flesh” unity. “One-flesh” connotes the unique sexual congress of man and woman, in which they join in body and will in a complementary, reproductive-type, interpersonal matrix. Achievement of a one-flesh unity is, intrinsically, to accept in potentia the role of father or mother. Hence, God blesses the marital union by encouraging its twofold purpose: the rearing of children and the friendship of the spouses. Moreover, as Christ confirms in his discussion of the relevant Genesis passages, marriage is both dyadic and permanent in this life (Matt. 19:3–9).
While these deep truths are imparted by the Bible, the truth about the meaning and goodness of marriage is knowable by unaided reason. It is part of the natural law just in virtue of the inclinations toward procreation and childrearing that we share with the animals, and the evidently practical and reasonable requirements of virtuous childrearing. In his reply to the cardinals, Pope Francis affirms that marriage is “an exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to procreation.”
Francis on Charity in Blessing Same-Sex Unions
These orthodox Christian teachings notwithstanding, Pope Francis makes an argument that it is possible same-sex unions could be blessed, from the virtue of charity. In his words:
In our relationships with people, we must not lose the pastoral charity, which should permeate all our decisions and attitudes. The defense of objective truth is not the only expression of this charity; it also includes kindness, patience, understanding, tenderness, and encouragement. Therefore, we cannot be judges who only deny, reject, and exclude . . . the same pastoral charity requires us not to simply treat as “sinners” other people whose guilt or responsibility may be mitigated by various factors affecting subjective accountability. . . .
He concludes that priests (and by implication, all Christian pastors), in pastoral charity and prudence, can seek to discern ways to bless persons who may be in situations “that are not morally acceptable from an objective point of view”—i.e., same-sex couples—without equating their relationships with marriage. Unfortunately, the authorities that Francis points us back to don’t seem to provide support for this conclusion.
Kody W. Cooper is UC Foundation Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and 2023–2024 Visiting Fellow with the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the coauthor of The Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2022). He lives with his wife and nine children in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
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