When Norman Prince heard the news last month about the Vatican’s new blessing for same-sex couples, he was excited.
“I thought, ‘Finally, they are recognizing us!’” said Prince, president of Dignity Canada, an organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons in the Roman Catholic Church.
But that excitement turned to disappointment when he read the whole document, titled On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings.
Released by the Vatican’s Dicastery for The Doctrine of The Faith, it says priests can bless same-sex couples. But it also reaffirms marriage in the Church as being only between a man and woman.
Reading that “felt like another slap on the face,” said Prince, who lives in Montreal. “Nothing in church doctrine had changed.”
Although disappointed, Prince saw some hope in the way LGBTQ people are viewed by the Roman Catholic Church today and the way it viewed Indigenous people in the past.
“For a long time, Indigenous people were seen as lesser, as not fully human,” he said. “That’s the way LGBTQ people are seen, because of their sexuality, not able to be fully Christian.”
Fortunately, that view of Indigenous people has been renounced by the Church — something he hopes can happen to LGBTQ people who want to marry, too.
Until then, Prince gives Pope Francis a lot of credit for addressing this topic and for his pastoral response to people on the margins in the Church like LGBTQ Christians.
“He can’t change things overnight,” Prince said, adding “I have great respect for the Pope. He’s doing the best he can.”
Not marriage
While much of the attention in the media was on blessings for same-sex couples, Richard Gagnon, Bishop of the Archdiocese of Winnipeg, saw the document as being more about the role of all kinds of blessings in the life of the church.
“It’s a pastoral letter from the Holy Father to the church, providing advice for bishops and priests about blessings,” he said.
Although it talks about blessings for same-sex couples, Gagnon emphasized that shouldn’t be conflated with marriage within the Church. “It’s not [the] same as the Church legitimizing a relationship,” he said. “It’s just a blessing done outside the official liturgy of the Church.”
As for whether he would bless a same-sex couple, the answer is yes. “I would do it according to the conditions spelled out by the Church,” he said.
As a priest, he added, “it’s my responsibility to bless everyone. It’s part of what I do, it’s a beautiful thing . . . I want to bless anyone who is seeking God’s will for their lives, not be unwelcoming and turn them away. I want to honour their desire to connect with God.”
Gagnon has not yet been approached by a same-sex couple seeking a blessing. “But I’m sure it will happen,” he said.
Pope Francis’ hand
For Albert LeGatt, Bishop of the Archdiocese of St. Boniface in Winnipeg, the reporting about the announcement by the media prompted a lot of confusion about what the document meant, with some — especially in African countries — thinking it legitimized same-sex marriage.
In fact, opposition from some African Bishops to the document was so fierce the Vatican issued a clarification on January 4 stating that the blessing of same-sex couples is not an approval or endorsement of such relationships, but that blessing them isn’t “heretical” or “blasphemous,” either.
Despite that clarification, some African bishops said they will not allow their priests to conduct such blessings.
For LeGatt, the document was clear about the Church not approving same-sex marriages. “It almost bends over backwards to say this is not a new teaching on the meaning of marriage,” he said.
At the same time, he sees the “pastoral hand” of Pope Francis behind it. “It’s about his compassion and care for individuals,” he said.
LeGatt would also bless a same-sex couple if asked, as long as it was not in contravention of Church guidelines.
“It would not be a blessing on their union, but on them as individuals,” he said, adding he would want to do it in a pastoral way that includes getting to know them.
“It would be a blessing from a God who loves us all unconditionally, who wants the very best in life for us. It would be a way of saying you have a place in God’s heart and in the Church.”
‘Seen as only sinners’
Thomas is a gay Roman Catholic in Winnipeg who is also a member of Dignity Canada. For him, the document’s release was “a moment to celebrate.”
Thomas, who doesn’t want to use his last name, knows the document doesn’t change official church doctrine on marriage. But he still welcomes its message.
Until now, he said, the focus of the Roman Catholic church has “been on our sexuality, what we do in bed. This rejects that. We are not to be seen as only sinners.”
At the same time, the Church isn’t going far enough, he said.
“There is still the understanding there is something disordered about being gay,” said Thomas. “We are still seen as people who need help.”
He looks forward to the day when gay Catholics will be seen like “every other human being, as people who are good, enriched, healed and elevated by the Holy Spirit.”
The Church is not yet ready to go that far, he said, in part because “it risks schism” with conservative Catholics in the developing world who want it to maintain a traditional stance when it comes to LGBTQ people.
And yet he is grateful to Pope Francis, “who really wants to make it clear that everyone is welcome in the Church,” he said.
For now, the document is a “positive hopeful step,” Thomas said, “even if there is a ways to go . . . the door is open a crack, the padlock removed.”
