The Catholic Church in 2024
Patrick Hudson reports in The Tablet religion magazine that in a private letter to the priests of his Westminster archdiocese, Cardinal Vincent Nichols unpacks the meaning of Fiducia Supplicans, the Vatican’s 18 December declaration that couples in irregular relationships, including same-sex couples, could ask for and receive a blessing. “It is to remain clear”, he writes, “that such moments of prayer and blessing are quite different from a blessing of the union or partnership itself.”
But no matter what it says in the small – and indeed large – print, the declaration marks a big moment in the life of the Church. As James Alison argues in his feature in this week’s Tablet, by reaffirming traditional teaching on marriage but insisting that same-sex couples are “blessable” rather than “contemptible” the Church has decisively changed the way it considers same-sex relationships. A way forward has been created that will allow LGBT Catholics to be understood and listened to on their own terms while at the same time maintaining the unity of the Church. Slowly but quietly, much of it through personal relationships and the everyday experience of family and parish life, acts of process and subtle nudges are moving us towards a place where, as Alison puts it, the Church recognises that “LGBT people are not defective straight people, and therefore that attempts to categorize who we are and how we live by means of negative deductions from the marital act open to procreation are both wrong and damaging”.
In the statement signed this morning by its Cardinal prefect and the secretary (as reported by Patrick Hudson) the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith seeks to calm the waters, to re-emphasis that there is no change to the Church’s teaching, and to soothe troubled bishops and reassure them that while it will not harbour “a total or definitive denial of this path” Rome respects their reservations and difficulties and will allow them to “discern the application of the document according to local context”. But for Alison, although it will take time, because changes in relationships, taking place in so many different cultures and at different speeds, cannot be skipped over by imposing new teaching without grave risk of schism, the movement is clearly in one direction.
The truth is, those who welcome the declaration and those who are scandalised by it are both right. Something momentous happened in the Catholic Church a few days before Christmas 2023.
No coincidence that lightening struck St Peter’s statue and took away the key and halo at the pope’s local church.