In San Francisco, with such a large LGBTQ lobby, this letter takes some guts. But it will only please some, makes others ambivalent and still yet, make some really angry.
But, that’s where we are today—priests for or against this, that or the other and a Vatican that stirs the pot of confusion, alienation and down right anger.
Fortunately, in my “retired” state, I won’t have to vet any phone calls where a couple of any kind of living in sin will ask for a blessing. I guess if I received such a call, I would ask them why they want the blessing. Are they about to break up and they want a blessing for them to stay together? Do they want a blessing to condone any sin in the relationship?
It would be more likely that a couple living in any type of institional sin might come up to me for a blessing after Mass. In such a spontaneous situation I would simply say “May almighty God bless each of you and then make the Sign of the Cross, without any other words, over each of them, meaning two Signs of the Cross, not one.
This is the letter from the rector and parochial vicar of San Francisco’s Cathedral:
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Prayer for Same Sex Couples
May Our Lord’s voice, which has been squelched in your conscience by the blindness of disordered passions and the insanity of sin, finally break through and be heard so that you cease your sodomitical ways and live the virtue of chastity and the life of grace, doing penance for your sins, and regaining the dignity He conferred upon you in your baptism. Amen.
That prayer could be used for heterosexual couples, validly married or not, who engage in disordered sodomitical ways and for them the sin and disorder is compounded as they can consent to ordered sexual sin in a natural way, open to conception at every moment of every sex act that is natural. But then i would have to interrogate couples of whatever stripe as to the type of sex they have which would make me a voyeur, no?
I note the paragraph toward the end of the letter that speaks to increasing numbers who are availing themselves of confession. Perhaps this is where he found the strength.
Yes, that prayer can be used for others if you know or have a well founded certitude that they are committing serial mortal sin of a sexual nature. But, as you point out, having that certitude is: difficult, creepy or both. With same sex couples it is far easier - it is part of the definition of that lifestyle.
Sophia here: Amen! Glory! Alleluia! Deo Gratias! I am not at all surprised by this clear statement of refusal, since I expected nothing less in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, but my heart but my heart still sings songs of gratitude in response to this! San Francisco is, after all, led by that lionhearted (as the translation of his name describes), orthodox, faithful, servant of God, true shepherd of souls, Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone! Who can forget the courageous stand he took when he drew up guidelines for who could teach and perform other work in Catholic Schools in his archdiocese as well as in the matter of whether Speaker (at the time) Nancy Pelosi would be allowed to receive Holy Communion there unless she publicly renounced her radically extreme, anti-Catholic Teaching position on abortion!
God bless all those shepherds who are standing tall, firmly on truth in this matter and refusing to twist themselves into pretzels, stand on their heads to view a painting that is clearly upside down to find some way to justify this egregiously evil proposal-actually mandate!
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