Consider the following four propositions regarding eternal salvation:
- “Outside the Church there is no eternal salvation.”
- “Those who through no fault of their own do not know the teaching of the Church may attain eternal salvation.”
- “Baptism is necessary for eternal salvation.”
- “God offers ways to eternal salvation apart from Baptism.”
Are all four of these propositions part of Catholic doctrine? Yes. Are any of them contradictory or contrary? No. Can they all be true? Yes. As Catholics, we believe all four of them, but to many Protestants our beliefs look confused and incoherent, and the qualifications we place on our principles look ad hoc. I grew up in an environment where it was a routine exercise to identify apparent contradictions in the magisterial teaching of the Catholic Church and then to reject it. This attitude is prevalent among certain groups of Evangelical Christians. And yet in the end it seemed to me that they were missing the point and finding all kinds of contradictions where none really existed. The same attitude and practice can be observed among deists and atheists toward various texts of Sacred Scripture. It is a typical modern hermeneutic of suspicion, criticism, and opposition. The truth is often thus lost because of an unwillingness to use a classical hermeneutic of charity, affirmation, and reconciliation.
Believe it or not, the recent apparent contradiction between the content of the “Responsum of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to a Dubium regarding the Blessing of the Unions of Persons of the Same Sex” of February 22, 2021 and the related content of the response of Pope Francis and Cardinal Victor Fernández to the dubia of the five Cardinals Walter Brandmüller, Raymond Burke, Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, Robert Sarah, and Joseph Zen Ze-kiun on July 10, 2023 can easily be resolved.
The principle “The blessing of homosexual unions cannot be considered licit” holds true and should be maintained even in relation to Pope Francis’s more recent magisterial response. Any blessings of same-sex unions as such are still illicit. Nevertheless, we must also maintain the following qualification, as clearly stated in the 2021 Explanatory Note and the Article of Commentary in relation to the statement and interpretation of the general principle:
This statement [“The blessing of homosexual unions cannot be considered licit”] in no way detracts from the human and Christian consideration in which the Church holds each person. So much so that the response to the dubium “does not preclude the blessings given to individual persons with homosexual inclinations who manifest the will to live in fidelity to the revealed plans of God as proposed by Church teaching.”
It is very common in the development of doctrine for a universal principle to be formulated and taught by the Church and then later qualified by a particular authoritative interpretation. As implied in Luke 10, to enter the Kingdom of God it is necessary to welcome and trust the teachers appointed and sent by Christ, above all the Roman Pontiff. The highest emissaries of Christ are those to whom Christ has entrusted his word and given his magisterial authority. Using the cruciform distinction employed by St John Paul II in his anthropology, we can recognize that dogma, morals, and precepts are in the vertical and objective dimension of the human person, while linguistic meanings, private interpretations, and pastoral applications are in the horizontal and intersubjective dimension of the human person. All universal principles, even those which are moral and admit of no exceptions, must be interpreted in accord with the teaching authority of the Church, especially that of the Roman Pontiff. The moral precept “Thou shalt not steal,” for example, is absolute, but the act of taking property from someone without permission in cases of manifest and urgent need is not an act of stealing. The same consideration applies to the ecclesial precept “Thou shalt not bless same-sex unions.” Pope Francis is not necessarily setting that rule aside, any more than he is setting aside the rule that the Church cannot ordain female persons to the ministerial priesthood. It is very likely that he will toe the line on both rules. But the way that he magisterially interprets these rules is qualified as well as normative.
This has been true of every Roman Pontiff who has ever governed the Church. The Church merely recognizes truth and does not create it. Truth determines the consensus of believers, not vice versa, but statements of truth are relative to linguistic meanings, and the meanings of doctrinal and disciplinary propositions are relative to the judgments of the Roman Pontiff. This is not relativism but a legitimate use of magisterial authority to recognize truth more clearly and exactly. We must not set up a rival interpretation and oppose the Pope’s interpretation on any particular issue. Such opposition is inherently Protestant, even if it rigidly insists on Catholic principles such as there being no salvation outside of the Church. We must internally assent to the Pope’s interpretations and judgments with religious submission of intellect and will, even when he is teaching non-infallibly. It seems very likely that the licit blessings which he is talking about in his response to the dubia of July 10, 2023 are not of the same kind as illicit blessings by ministers of the Church on unions of persons of the same sex. Thus we can discern a specific difference. The apparent contradiction is resolvable.
Suppose, on the other hand, that there were a real contradiction of an infallibly taught truth or a previously taught non-infallible doctrine in an authentic interpretation offered by the Pope. Such interpretations are not infallible. In that case the inconsistency would eventually be corrected by the magisterium itself. We could ask questions about it and explain the reasons why it looks like a contradiction to us, but the judgment about whether it actually were a contradiction would reside with the magisterium alone, to which we must submit. To believe that Pope Francis has fallen into heresy, as some people are currently asserting, is unwarranted, and it is improbable that he is even in error. As the Successor of St Peter, he has the magisterial authority to qualify existing doctrine on conditions for blessings or on any other topic. Even when an authentic magisterial interpretation is merely ordinary and non-infallible, it is still far more reliable and probable than our own opinions. Even when it is possibly mistaken, every legitimate exercise of authentic magisterium must be interpreted with a hermeneutic of continuity and a principle of charity.
Submission to the Catholic Church and to the Sovereign Pontiff is required as necessary for the salvation of those who are not ignorant of the apostolic authority of the Catholic Church and the Sovereign Pontiff. Consider the content of the 1949 letter from the Holy Office, “Suprema haec sacra,” issued with the approval of Pius XII to Archbishop Richard Cushing of Boston regarding the case of Fr Leonard Feeney’s personal and narrow interpretation of there being no salvation outside of the Catholic Church.
We must be careful never to let our interpretation be guided by private judgment against the teaching authority of the Catholic Church. Conservative and progressive Catholics alike fall into this error, especially in the US, which is heavily influenced by the philosophical assumptions of Liberalism and Protestantism. What is guiding our personal interpretations of the doctrines of the Catholic faith? Are we too attached to our own private judgments? We should repeatedly ask ourselves these questions and prefer the magisterial judgments of the living Roman Pontiff to all non-magisterial judgments, including our own.
It should also be said that the Catholic Church never asks us to do anything that violates our conscience. Even if it is permitted under Pope Francis’s qualification to give blessings to individual persons with same-sex inclinations who manifest the will to live in fidelity to the revealed plans of God as proposed by Church teaching, priests and deacons are not required to do so in any situation where their consciences inform them that it would be better not to do so. But preferring the recent judgment of the Pope to our own private judgment, we should admit that priests and deacons in general are permitted to bless chaste same-sex persons when it seems prudent to them to do so with some form of blessing that is not a blessing of a same-sex union as such and does not convey a misconception about marriage or sexual morality.
Whether those receiving the blessing are one, two, or more persons at a time is not the issue. The issue resides in the intention that the persons have in seeking the blessing of the Church, and in the specific nature of the activity that forms the basis for their relationship. This can be discerned only in the concrete situation. The minister who must decide whether to impart the blessing should first inquire about their intention and verify that it is morally sound and not scandalous. Persons who are going on a religious pilgrimage or missionary journey together, for example, are not in the same kind of relationship as those who are entering into a business partnership or a legal contract for a living arrangement. The Church cannot bless an intention or way of life that is essentially incongruent with the dignity of the human person, the nature of the marital covenant, or the revealed will of God.
It is always illicit for a minister of the Church to bless a same-sex civil union as such, for such blessings are clearly forbidden by the responsum of February 22, 2021, but we must understand the basis for the prohibition. It would seem that in the US, such blessings typically convey a misconception about marriage, because only a few states have laws that provide for civil unions that are legally distinct from marriage. Civil law in other nations often distinguishes between marital and non-marital forms of contract, with the latter being open to same-sex couples. But wherever civil law permits same-sex couples to make a contract which is legally equivalent to marriage and grants them legal rights which are proper only to marriage, such as the legal right to adopt children, it is clearly immoral and harmful to society, and citizens are always morally obligated to oppose it. There are solid moral grounds for civil law to restrict all marital contracts to adult heterosexual couples. No one can eliminate the moral requirement to oppose same-sex marriage, and Pope Francis has never attempted to eliminate it. Suggesting that he has done so is unjust, and suggesting that he intends to do so is uncharitable.
In 2003 the CDF under Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger with the approval of John Paul II published the document “Considerations regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons.” The narrow interpretation of that document is that John Paul II believed and intended to teach that no legal recognition of same-sex unions is ever morally justified, and that no nation state is ever morally permitted to grant any legal recognition to same-sex unions whatsoever.
The problem with the narrow interpretation, as indicated by canonists such as Dr Edward Peters, is that the term “same-sex unions” is ambiguous, which raises the question, still unresolved by any magisterial interpretation, whether John Paul II intended to require conscientious objection not just to same-sex marriage but also to allowing same-sex couples to enter into non-marital contracts in which one citizen designates another citizen as his or her “significant other.” Indeed, if a state has civil laws which permit non-marital contracts to designate a “significant other,” then it would seem to be a form of unjust discrimination to prohibit same-sex couples from entering into such non-marital contracts. Every citizen has the moral right to form legal contracts with other people for various purposes other than sexual intimacy and the procreation and nurturing of children. The more reasonable interpretation is that John Paul II intended to teach only that no nation state is ever morally permitted to make same-sex civil unions legally equivalent to marriage. On this interpretation, he was insisting that the traditional definition of marriage be maintained in civil law, because marriage is heterosexual by its very nature and ought to be recognized as such by civil law. Indeed, wherever the traditional definition of marriage is not recognized by civil law, the citizens of the state have a moral duty to practice conscientious objection.
Unfortunately, the CDF continued to employ the term “homosexual unions” and never clarified the ambiguity, which was present in the papal magisterium long before then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (Pope Francis) was elected to the papal office. The ambiguity of the term is one that he inherited from John Paul II, not one that he caused. He must have been aware of the ambiguity in 2010, because he did in fact propose a limited form of legal recognition of non-marital civil unions as an alternative to the political movement in Argentina to approve same-sex marriage, to which he firmly and publicly objected. On other occasions as well, Pope Francis has publicly practiced conscientious objection to legalizing same-sex marriage, and it is apparent that he is firmly upholding the infallible moral teaching of the Church regarding marriage and sexual morality. Furthermore, there is abundant evidence that he assents to the non-infallible teachings of his predecessors, which he does have the papal authority to clarify and qualify. Nothing in his authentic papal magisterium even comes close to suggesting that the legal or pastoral recognition of same-sex marriage is ever morally justifiable. The principle of charity demands that we interpret his magisterial responses with the same submission and hermeneutic of continuity.
Tracy Jamison is a Catholic deacon in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, Ohio. He is also a secular Carmelite (OCDS) and a professor of Philosophy at Mount St Mary’s Seminary & School of Theology (MTSM). Tracy and his wife Joyce met in a Protestant seminary and have been happily married for over thirty years.
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